2004-01-15 - 8:13 a.m.

Email from a student:

Ms. SilvaVocat,

Hi this is mitten-quotes, I honestly wasnt making fun of you or trying to disrespect you in any way. I was standing behind you waiting for you to turn around so you would be "surprised" because i do that to you a lot. I wouldnt do anything like that to you because you really are like my favorite teacher and I wouldnt even do that to a teacher I dont like because its just stupid. I just think Mrs. Bipolar was confused as to what I was doing and Im not saying i think she did anything wrong I just figured i would try to explain what actually happened so you wouldnt be mad at me because i dont think that would be good. Also im sorry if the grammar in this letter has offended you in any way.

(closing),

mitten-quotes

Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Mitten-quotes is one of my really good kids. He and his friends are bright, and get along much better with adults than with other high-schoolers. The good news is that there happen to be enough of them this year that they aren't really outcasts, even if they do hate a lot of the people in their grade. Mitten-quotes and I have a fairly casual relationship as teacher-student things go, and this is what got him in trouble.

Mrs. Bipolar is another teacher here at my fine institution. Some days she's very, very good, and other days she's horrid. She tends to think the worst of students. She also tends to blow things out of proportion.

Yesterday afternoon after school, I stepped into the hallway to ask a few students to quiet down, as I had a student making up a test. Mitten-quotes came and stood a few feet behind me, hoping to startle me when I turned around to go back in the room. He does this frequently. It never works.

Unfortunately for Mitten-quotes, all of this occured near the doorway, in full view of Mrs. Bipolar. It must have looked like Mitten-quotes was trying to mock me, at least to someone who assumes that all students are evil. Bipolar shoots up from her desk, rushes to the door, and tears into Mitten-quotes. Mitten-quotes made the unfortunate mistake of trying to explain himself.

If I were braver, perhaps, I might have tried to interrupt Bipolar in the middle of her tirade, and defended Mitten-quotes. I say perhaps because there is an excellent chance that letting her finish her tirade actually made it easier on everyone. She might never have forgiven me, or the student, if I had stepped on her ranting in front of a student. Bipolar is a grudge holder. She would also have spent some amount of time telling some other teacher all about my inappropriate relationship with my students.

Two points on that: first, I don't have an inappropriate relationship with my students. My favorite students feel the wrath of my red-pen as much as my least favorites do. And I never, ever, socialize with students outside of school. I have standards.

Second, I don't really know that Bipolar would have gossiped. While she has something nasty to say about pretty much every member of the administration, faculty and staff, I have never heard her say anything bad about a current member of our department. Of course, it's also possible that she complains about the science department faculty while she's in planning with the English or Religion department.

Mitten-quotes came to me this morning, before I'd checked my email, and explained himself. It wasn't overly necessary. I knew he wasn't mocking me. I told him that we were straight. I also tried to explain that it is sometimes best to step back and let people blow off whatever steam they've built up. He didn't do that yesterday, so Bipolar kept building until she finally threw him out of the building.

Bipolar is like that. It think it's a combination of a bad marriage and perimenopause. It makes her hard to work with, and hard to share a room with. I'm glad I don't have to live with her. And I wish I had my own classroom.