I spend a ridiculous amount of time with ‘the youth’ and I actually get paid for trying to teach them something. Granted, I am sometimes blessed with minor breakthroughs and warm fuzzies, like seeing it click when a Chinese girl understood why I kept correcting her writing from ‘a honest girl’ to ‘an honest girl’. Damn those silent ‘h’ words – it’s a silly rule. English is a tricky language to explain sometimes and my regular retort: “Because what I’ve written is just right, OK? I don’t have time to explain it to you now!” usually buys me some time.
But, I bitch all the time about how ‘the youth’ are rude and disrespectful and their parents aren’t disciplining them and how i’m sick of it. But today I was at Pacific Fair having coffee with my entire family (all 11 of them) and a group of kids starting calling out “Miss! Miss!” and then came up to me and told me how I must be rich to afford coffee and they’re so povo they have to go to Coles and buy HomeBrand. I was actually quite surprised and pleased that they thought they could approach me – especially because I was with my whole family. Maybe it was because I gave one of the girls a serve when she admitted that she’d ‘ghosted*’ me at Robina the weekend before. I’m fairly sure I would’ve steered clear of a teacher outside of the school grounds. Who knew they actually had lives and did things like went out for coffee and shopped!
Anyway, it’s stuck with me. Perhaps some parents are doing the right thing. It’d just be nice to get some support when ‘the youth’ make my job difficult instead of telling me that their daughter “is a right little bitch at home too”. One parent actually said “Yeah, he’s really difficult. Anything you could do would be great.” Pass on the parenting to the teachers. We probably see more of your kids than you do anyway. What’ s happening to society?
Bring on the holidays. Two weeks to go. And I’ve just successfully lost another half hour or so of marking and reporting time.
I am a success.
*ghosting is when you follow someone without them knowing. It’s a stupid private joke that kids think is hilarious and is now a form of bullying. Geez, keep up people.
G.
