Thursday, July 20, 2006

To the Rude Man at the Library Today

What were you thinking when you interrupted my tutoring session to ask my student if he needed a lawyer? Did you think this was cute? I thought you were joking at first. After all, it takes awhile for this particular student to loosen up each lesson, so I do tend to ask a lot of questions in the beginning and get minimal response each time. But no, you soon made it clear that you were not joking when you replied that it sounds like an interrogation and that I needed to "lighten up." Are you a teacher? Do you understand the idea of having a student reach a conclusion by leading them towards it through questioning? Did you realize that I was not accusing the child of "cheating" as you declared but merely trying to get him to explain how he did his revisions since I didn't see them? Were you having a bad day? Had you recently been accused of cheating and now see it everywhere you go? I am trying so hard to understand why you felt the need to confront me while I was TEACHING but I'm really drawing a blank. In any case, as I said to you as you walked away, cursing my teaching ability, thank you for your opinion. In the future, could you please write it down and pass it to me AFTER my tutoring session? You see, I'm trying to encourage this particular student to write, so I want him to see how writing can and SHOULD be used in the real world. So next time you feel so inclined, please put your criticsm in writing and I'll get to it as soon as I can.

Thank you,
The Teacher you tore into this afternoon

2 comments:

Lucy T said...

Oh Rachel! How frustrating that must have been! You are an excellent teacher. I suppose he just wanted to hear himself talk and wasn't taking the student into consideration or he would have approached it differently. Don't let him rent space in your head. Any of your thoughts could be right. He probably was relating to something in his life, but also, he could just be mental! Don't spend anymore time second guessing your teaching abilities. Laugh it off! Hopefully you vented it all out through your blog.

Domestic Goddess said...

OH NO HE DIDN"T!!!!
Man, I would have tore him a new one! GRRRR!!!!!