November 13th, 2007
“I identify with those people because they are human beings, and nothing human can be alien to me.”
-Maya Angelou
I surely thought the hardest part of my day would be giving back tests to 2nde, then hearing them complain and try to compromise the grades. But I almost broke down when an administrator came into my classroom and started hitting children left and right. He called some names from a list I had of kids that has been talkative and had them line up in the front of the class, just as I imagined the Nazis lining people up before shooting them. He even hit a little girl in the front who wasn’t doing anything. She was on the verge of crying and so was I. His frightening energy that is accepted here was way too far for me. In my efforts to save some of my kids from this insane wave of anger, I took the list of students from a girl that was reading off names to come up. “Ca va, ca va” I told her. She looked surprised to see me so disturbed by this, but did not contest my demand. It will be no secret that I cannot take seeing children get whipped and beat, to the points that some of them were slightly limping as they were running back to their seats. I ask myself how I’m going to make sure that a raging massacre like this never happens again. Not in my class.
