Do you know what? I love my job. I love working with kids. I take a lot of pride in the work and skills I have developed and researched over my limited career.

I teach kindergarten, quite actually my dream job. I love being here. I may not have. A perfect class (because who does), but they are by and far the best kinder class at our school with 5 kinder rooms. I don’t have anymore ‘major’ behaviors. Even with a large demographic of your typical high fliers, (Ihave 25 kids which is a lot to manage already, but 4 have IEP’s, 5 are MLL’s, 2 of which speak zero English, and working in a low income district with a high refugee population) (also I’m not saying I have bias against those students, I’m saying they typically have more going on with their personal needs that require them to have more anxiety, fear, needs, etc.), my class is so manageable that subs are willing to RETURN when we do get them.

Again, they aren’t perfect, but I’ve put a crazy amount of time and dedication to my craft and my kids that we are in a good place. Here comes Friday morning. To give you background, my teammate (of 18 students by random reasons) just got a new student on Wednesday. He had done one day at another school before mom had to come here because of listed address, had a sub teacher at our school on Wednesday, the regular teacher Thursday, absent Friday, and starting with me Monday. On Thursday this child was for lack of better words a terror. Screaming, hitting, physically destroying the class (mess and destruction of property), throwing wooden puzzles at kids, refused to learn or listen, ruined property of other students and the list rolls on.

Cue stage right for my AMAZING admin who decides that instead of supporting the kid, the teacher, the family, before even meeting with the team, the family, ANYONE, decides since my class has no “extreme behaviors” like the other classes, that they should move him into my class cause ‘he needs a positive male role model’ in his life. They then said it was actually a balance issue and since the teacher had a 2:1 ratio of boys to girls, that since we get a new girl on Wednesday, we will remove him and put him with me to reduce her ratio. How come no other teacher was in line first? I have 25 compared to their 18, 21, 20, and 21. Why can’t you just be honest with me? Or why can’t you offer more support to the teacher or family, why is this now my problem just because someone else couldn’t handle him for 1 day?

He was supposed to start with us in August, but mom hates the school system and didn’t want him going, but only brought him because they receive state services and they were told that would be cancelled if he didn’t attend school. I’ve sent mom a bulk email with everything she missed, tried to set up a conference to meet family, reached out multiple ways, and she’s refusing to have anything to do with me.

I know some of you martyr will be out there crying/commenting “if you’re management is that great maybe you’ll be good for him and help get him what he needs” or “you can’t complain about the students we get, you wouldn’t be saying this if you had the 18 kids”. This is a place to rant. If I end up helping him like he needs? Great? I’m not mad at that, I’m mad at the logic behind it all. My kids are like this because of the 3 months of work we did, all the stuff we did that I don’t have time to individually work on with a kid who doesn’t want to learn in. I’m just so overwhelmed at it all, and for the first time in years, I’m not looking forward to work. If there are typos, whatever, take them at face value. I’m on mobile.