As a former teacher...

Thursday, February 17, 2011

9 comments:

Barbara Kloss said...: Thanks for sharing that! I'm also neither a parent or teacher, but I get so frustrated that 'kids' seem to be running the world. My hubby and I went to Disneyworld last month (we're 30ish). Wow. I think we would've dropped dead if one kid at least say "excuse me". Of course, I'm not allowed to have an opinion on the matter since, as I mentioned before, I have no kids.; February 17, 2011 at 1:40 PM
Kristi Helvig said...: I have such enormous respect and empathy for teachers, and I hope that woman isn't fired (although the blog wasn't the best idea). I volunteer several hours each week in my son's 1st grade class. Even in 1st grade, there are parents who consistently do their child's homework for them!

I'm also a clinical psychologist and am amazed at how many parents I've seen who thought it was more important to be a "friend" than a parent. They come to see me because they haven't set limits with their kids for sixteen years, and then wonder why their teenager is out of control. The blame is often placed on the youth (who are doing the acting out), but it stems from a lack of involved parenting.

Schools are supposed to educate children, not raise them. Sorry for the long comment, but this issue pushes my buttons. :); February 17, 2011 at 2:16 PM
Tara Tyler said...: Thanks for the link to the fabulous post! She was accurate in her whining, but inappropriate in her whining to the world, like she was daring someone to challenge her. Teachers and students should be like church and state - separate. Communicate, yes; socialize, no. It only leads to trouble.

I'm a teacher and a parent. I appreciate the above comments as well - looks like we're preaching to the choir here...; February 17, 2011 at 3:19 PM
Amber @ A Little Pink in the Cornfields said...: Interesting. I saw Natalie's blog and read the posts she got in trouble for... as a student studying to be a teacher, I am still ignorant of what it is REALLY like in the classroom, but I was a student once and in a school that is deemed a "dropout factory" so I know how bratty and awful kids are. I think her blog was tacky though... you just shouldn't do that. If she needed to vent maybe she couldn't made it private, or vented to her husband. Sticky stuff! But, makes for interesting news! ;); February 17, 2011 at 5:13 PM
Anonymous said...: Maybe you should have stayed being a teacher. You lack talent.; February 18, 2011 at 12:31 AM
Joanna said...: Dear Anonymous,

Your comment wasn't interesting or constructive.

This blog is not for throwing insults. If that is how you feel, then just read another blog. We don't force you to read this one.; February 18, 2011 at 8:26 AM
Janet Reid said...: Hey Anon,
Thanks for the good laugh. And I mean rolling around on the floor laughing my ass off. Cause of any person you could have said lacks talent, ANY of the agents I know, you picked the exact last one.

Suzie Townsend has a natural gift for agenting. She's done more in her first year than most agents do in five.

She has extraordinary taste in books, and the evidence for that is that most of her projects sell at auction (multiple editors want them) and for substantial money.

I'm not sure what motivated you to post an anonymous comment here; I won't speculate that perhaps you're a disgruntled querier, or worse.

Suffice to say you're so wrong it's really very funny. And godiva knows, it's good to start the day with a laugh, so thanks Anon. Come by and visit more often. i look forward to your next howler.; February 18, 2011 at 8:38 AM
Jeanmarie Anaya said...: That was a great discussion! I think they'd have to put me in a straightjacket if I was a teacher. It's got to be so hard to put aside personal feelings toward kids who are rude/entitled and help them to learn and grow. I think most teachers are capable of it. If that woman needed to vent, I don't mind. Doing it on the internet was an unfortunate choice of forum, but okay.

A para in my six year-old daughter's school called her a "big mouth" while waiting on line for something, and moved my daughter to the back of the line for punishment. While I'm not thrilled with the name-calling, I told my daughter she might want to shut her mouth when she's supposed to. It's a tough world out there--not everyone is going to hold your hand and pat your back. better get used to it now and learn how to deal with it.

Anonymous, you get the Douchebag of the Day award.; February 18, 2011 at 8:57 AM
Dan Krokos said...: I, however, will speculate that Anonymous is a disgruntled querier.

Don't worry! Try Suzie with your next project.; February 18, 2011 at 12:24 PM

Five Random Things About Suzie

1. I drink so much orange soda, it's probably running through my veins. I've been known to go through a twelve pack of diet sunkist in a day.

2. I'm legitimately nocturnal (or a vampire). I will be so exhausted at two pm that I'm falling asleep standing up - it has happened before, at Six Flags no less - but as soon as the sun goes down I'm wide awake.

3. I have a gorgeous unused $6000 Reem Acra wedding dress hanging in my closet, and it showed up on my doorstep the same day my (now ex) fiance broke up with me. And thank God for that. I wouldn't have wanted to waste that dress on him.

4. Social anxiety plagues me daily. I write a script and practice in front of the mirror when I have to make a phone call, but most people who interact with me have no idea how nervous I am (or perhaps they lie) because I've worked so hard to try to overcome it.

5. I'm actually worried that I will never love my children (when I do have them in the far off future) as much as I love my dogs. I just like animals better than people - they're sweet and innocent and soft and furry - is that so wrong?

quotes

金不一定閃
流浪者不都迷路

"I dreamed you bewitched me into bed

And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane
I think I made you up inside my head
I fancied you'd return the way you said
But I grow old and I forget your name
I think I made you up inside my head" ~Silvia Plath, Mad Girl's Love Song

"Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired." ~ Robert Frost

"Love is not love,
Which alters when it alteration finds." ~ William Shakespeare, "Sonnet 116"

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter- tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…And one fine morning-...So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, THE GREAT GATSBY

"For deadly secrets strike when understood
and lucky stars all exit on the run:
never try to knock on rotten wood,
never try to know more than you should." ~ Sylvia Plath, "Admonitions"

"The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become." ~ Milan Kundera, THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING

William Wilberforce: "No one of our age has ever taken power."
William Pitt Jr: "Which is why we're too young to realize certain things are impossible. Which is why we will do them anyway."

"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man." ~ Mark Twain

"Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform." ~ Mark Twain

“You know what I am going to say. I love you. What other men may mean when they use that expression, I cannot tell; what I mean is, that I am under the influence of some tremendous attraction which I have resisted in vain, and which overmasters me. You could draw me to fire, you could draw me to water, you could draw me to the gallows, you could draw me to any death, you could draw me to anything I have most avoided, you could draw me to any exposure and disgrace.” ~ Charles Dickens, A MUTUAL FRIEND

"I think the idea of life after death is a bad idea. It distracts you from appreciating the uniqueness of the here and now, the moment you are living." ~ Joseph Campbell

"Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear...Cry for the broken tribe, for the law and the custom that is gone. Aye, and cry aloud for the man who is dead, for the woman and children bereaved. Cry, the beloved country, these things are not yet at an end." ~ Alan Paton, CRY, THE BELOVED COUNTRY

"To laugh often and much.. to endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better... To know even one life has breathed easier because you lived, This is to have succeeded." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"After telling the hard facts to anyone from lover or friend, I have changed in their eyes...[Some see it as] a mission, as if ...they can pull me back from the wreckage of that day. Of course, their best efforts are largely useless. No one can pull anyone back from anywhere. You save yourself or you remain unsaved." ~ Alice Sebold, LUCKY

"Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete?
Proving nature's law is wrong it learned to walk with out having feet.
Funny it seems, but by keeping it's dreams, it learned to breathe fresh air.
Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else ever cared." ~Tupac, The Rose That Grew From Concrete

Confessions

Thursday, February 17, 2011