At Brea, I had on parent conference one time, and this was the first day
that I was on the job.
This student was an unruly type, a kid who loved to push and act up in
class. He was a really tough customer, in terms of the fact that I could not
get him to calm down.
I sat in on this meeting because the previous teacher had forgotten to
reschedule it for another date. The woman was scattered as she was
unsympathetic to my plight. I was expected to pick up the pieces for one of the
most unruly classes on campus.
The pressure was on me, though, to get these students from deficient to
proficient. I demanded better than the run-of-the-mill disrespect, yet the
students formed a line at their respective counselors' office demanding to be
removed from the class.
In the parent conference, I was faced with a student, Sergio who did not
speak English that well to begin with, and now he was trying to learn another
language. This scenario reminded me of the unending frustrations that I tried
and failed to forge my way through in South Gate.
The mother sat there and listened to us take down Sergio one class at a
time. The science teacher gave off the sense of interminable exasperation, a
sound that I would be making a lot in the next few week before I stormed off
the job in nervous rage and fear.
Sergio sat there through the entire thing, the one time in the entire month
when he sat nice and quiet, a posture which he was incapable of bringing into
the classroom. Peer pressure, or fear of looking like a failure, kept this kid
from any potential.
Just before I quit the job, I talked with his counselor in the main office, who
said that he probably should never have been placed in the French class in the
first place.
Have I forgotten to mention: I was a French teacher, and I did get to teach
French, really I did, but in many ways, it was not worth the effort of staying
in for the long haul.