It’s my second year teaching, and admin has (rightfully) been telling me to send emails to parents or school authorities for misbehavior, which makes this story even more infuriating…

For a while, I’ve had a very difficult student; for this post, I’ll call her Tracy. One day, another student was goofing off and I went over to tell him to stop. Tracy felt the need to chime in and say, “If you touch him, that’s sexual harassment!” (I never touched him and was never going to.) So I turned to her and said, “Excuse me, do you care to repeat that?” And she doubled down, “What? I just said sexual harassment.”

So I reached out to my supervisor and explained the situation. I would assume that my supervisor would agree that such a flagrant and dark false accusation would warrant an email to Tracy’s parents and the school authorities… but NO.

My supervisor said, “I don’t think she was calling you a sexual harraser” (even though that’s literally what she said), and that I should “just let the guidance counselor handle it.”

And the next thing she said was the most ridiculous part: “You were basically asking for it when you asked her to repeat it.”

?!?!?!?!?!

I said, “Asking a child to repeat something is an age-old technique of getting them to back down from an inappropriate comment, right?”

And she responded, “Tracy isn’t one who backs down.”

*sigh*

So let me get this straight, after telling me to email parents about a student’s behavior (which I agree with), a student can lie and slander me by insinuating that I am a criminal… and not only does admin not take it seriously, but they’re blaming ME for her comment!

And they wonder why there’s a teacher shortage…