My day...
Two girls in tears. Two girls in gasping sobs. I must negotiate between their dispute. I talk with one girl for half an hour while the rest of the class works on their projects for their BIG NIGHT performance in two weeks. The other girl sits at her table and whimpers.
Then I ask the other girl to come to my desk and tell her side of the story. It's a complicated story involving one crazed theatrical (she's a playwright) mother, a passive father, another therapist mother who allows her 10 year old daughter to watch R rated videos (like The Wedding Crasher!) and another father who is absent while off in on some business trip one week after the next selling his healthy snacks. Oh, and it involves the two girls -- one who is confident, dramatic, popular, and talented; the other who is insecure, slightly overweight, formerly a bully (at her previous school) as well as a victim...but both girls very sweet and very good friends...up until today.
When...in the midst of teacher playing therapist and trying hard not to say what I really feel...another student comes up and says, "The music you're playing isn't any good. Can we listen to the Classical I-Tunes station, though it's not really classical."
And I say, "Sure," while I'm handing the sobbing girl at my desk another box of tissues. So the girl who thinks my music sucks (how can anyone hate the Be Good Tanyas?), comes around my desk, messes with my computer (where the speakers are hooked up) and selects, Classical Iranian Music from the I-Tunes radio menu.
The rest of the afternoon, while I counsel the friendship back together, we listen to traditional Iranian music -- drums, chanting, the whole kit and kaboodle -- and the rest of the class works like a hive in honey season.
Go figure.
And in the back of my mind I'm thinking, "So, if someone is monitoring my computer, will I get arrested for playing 'subversive terrorist' music to a class of 5th graders?"
I'm glad, oh so glad, it's Friday. If I have to deal with one more friendship crisis (this makes number 10 in the past four weeks), I will throw up my liver...I swear.
At least I'll have good background music while I'm puking or while I'm being arrested by Homeland Security...or both!
2 comments:
It's spring.
(The good news? Lightweight linen
for political prisoners)
Negative effects of parents on children seems to be super-sized these days. That's probably an illusion. Maybe it's just that parental behavior these days has been drug out into public view.
Sounds like you have to deal with a lot of juvenile emotional teetering on the edge.
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