A teacher told my kid his "existence is insignificant"

How is your week going?

On Tuesday, a supervising teaching in my eight-year-old’s classroom told him that his “existence is insignificant” or “worthless and meaningless”. It depends who you ask.

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I mean, yes, he did take his friend’s marker, and then she scratched him, and then he kicked her leg. They’re eight. But still, that’s on him.

But an adult took that and escalated it, which seems counterproductive. Sitting on the floor in Math Centres, the supervising teacher demanded he look up at her, demanded he stand up, and then when he stood up, said things to him.

He is adamant she said his existence is “worthless and meaningless”.

He told me this.

The principal quoted it to me.

I quoted it to my husband.

A weird game of telephone.

Are you sure that’s what he said? Yes, I drew a box around it in the notes I was taking. Question mark.

That makes no sense within the context. I know, but that’s what I wrote in my notes.

His actual teacher, who was in the hall doing a language assessment, heard her say “your existence is insignificant”.

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I mean maybe. Our existence is insignificant, if we compare it to the 14 billion years our universe has existed. The 4 billion years our planet has existed. In the light of stars that have been dead for millions of years. Living on a planet travelling 671 million miles an hour. Carl Sagan called our entire planet a “mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam” (Pale Blue Dot, 1994), I mean, yes, then, indeed, anyone’s existence would be insignificant.

And what’s even more prescient is that for Carl Sagan, viewing our planet, his blue dot, from so far away, filled him with the sense that humans should “deal more kindly with one another.”

And maybe that’s what the teacher was trying to say. In the grand scheme of things, this marker business is insignificant. Maybe.

When his actual teacher came into the room to see what was going on, the supervising teacher had my son by the wrist.

His teacher is smart. She’s been teaching for three years, so it’s not because she has eons of experience to rely on. She took Ollie for a walk to the principal’s office to have him recount what happened because she knew, from what she had seen, and what he told her, that something wasn’t right. And I’m glad. And it took guts to do that. And I thanked her for it.

The phone call I got from the principal + Ollie’s recounting + his teacher’s email offer a very interesting overview of what went on.

But the supervising teacher still hasn’t emailed me back.

And now that it’s Friday, it doesn’t matter to me if she ever emails me. The time for that has passed.

Tick tock.

I filed our complaint on behalf of Ollie this morning, attaching a copy of my notes, the emails, a summary, and our requested resolution. It’s already been nearly an entire school week. I don’t want to carry this into the weekend. Would you?

If I wanted to be mean, I would say that her silence is obviously an admission of guilt. But really, I don’t care about the full veracity of it all. I just wanted her to plug in the missing pieces for people for whom none of this made any sense. And maybe that’s why she won’t email me back. Now that it’s over, it doesn’t make sense to her either.

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There is more, but you get the gist of it without me going into the minutia. I’ve spent a lot of time in functional freeze since Monday. I can’t imagine saying this to another person. I can’t imagine what he must have felt like, standing there in front of everyone. That’s a vulnerable position to be in. Separated from the group. Being berated by an adult.

And I feel tired. I can’t tell you how much back-and-forth there has been. Why? At this point it doesn’t even matter what really happened. What matters is that clearly the supervising teacher cannot be in a room with Ollie and, following discussions, he would prefer that she never be in a room with him again. Same. Same. He says there have been other instances. I don’t doubt it. It must be hard for people who demand respect, but who have not yet realized that respect is earned.

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And it’s not that I didn’t try to be empathetic to the teacher.

I practice what I preach, mostly. Probably.

I asked Ollie every question I could think of to contextualize this escalation - had the class been loud? had he been corrected earlier in that session? did she seem frustrated? had other students been making things difficult? Maybe he’s not all that perceptive, but he had nothing to offer. The class had been relatively chill, doing their math centres stuff. Until he grabbed his friend’s marker.

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No more pranks at school, I tell him.

And maybe more importantly, even though you got in trouble for it: Don’t make yourself small to make other people feel big, I tell him.

n xx