@[email protected]

Today I have to chance to make up for last week during the Green Party, being rude and inappropriate in the chat I can act normal for an hour or so, but it’s so boring It’s so so boring. All the minutes, the notes, the agenda, the procedures I don’t enjoy these things at all. I also don’t want to 1) call anyone because I wouldn’t want someone to call me 2) knock on anyone’s door (same reason) 3) ask for a signature (same reason)

I don’t want to do the boring stuff at all but I won’t drop out, because what else is there??? I KNOW that this is the real work, the groundwork, the footsteps and these things need to be done in any system especially politics Someone has to figure out the details!?

I don’t want to, but i keep feeling there is something i will want to do mostly I just don’t want to be alone and these are friends that won’t offend me and many of them are comrades and they’re better potential friends than anywhere else i might meet people like church (fuck no), the bar (no) work (no) So i’m showing up for friendship.
they don’t need to know that plus i’m not doing that great so far at it keep getting bored and impatient or leaving or getting too drunk or falling asleep

My real leadership style is dictatorial in my classroom, i’m the top boss of all bosses if i don’t wanna talk about it, the convo is over if the answer is no, talk to the hand i can do whatever i want, and don’t have to explain it but i’m always trying to make everyone happy at once this is my vision, the one they have to submit to because my brain is the handler and sorter of feelings and desires in the room, for adults and kids i almost always decide to make other adults happy and all the kids happy but when i decide not to, that is also that So what’s this about the democracy etc.?

Sometimes I take a vote, and then I don’t honor it I change my mind because I wanted the thing that lost so i’m a bad person for green party politics long story short and this is because i trust myself the most and can’t really commit to anything like opinions, mine keep changing

Tuesday was St. Patty’s day, and in preparation for it I made my class watch a bible study video version of who’s St. Patrick He was a slave sent to Ireland, then he escaped, then he went back on his own volition to convert pagans to Christianity, by arguing that his God could save them from famine, and they needed that. I didn’t watch the video before showing it.

Marquis came to class wearing a green, plastic tophat that said Happy St. Patty’s Day on the front, and Bud Light on the back We silently laughed so hard about that. Marquis don’t know what that is. By today, Friday, Marquis’s Aide or One-on-One told him it’s all done with the hat. Take it off.
Marquis was furious. He tore the hat apart with his nails and teeth and threw it on the floor. He banged his head off the front of his desk. We started prompting him to take space, and everyone moved away from him Thank god he went, and I let him have the daily reward at the end of the day for turning things around.

In the past, that child has broken the computer monitor 3 times, broken a thick glass window with his head, and bitten the hell out of kids and staff. So that’s why we jumped away from him. He’s also floridly psychotic, all the time. You can interact with him, but it’s only one reality that he’s experiencing and he only uses scripts to communicate (easy to figure out ones- to us).

When they got Marquis into the gym, we heard him shrieking, BIIIITTTCHHHH His aide said, I don’t know if I should go out there, since he’s mad at me, but I said, you’re still the best person with him, and she went.

I didn’t give the daily reward to Martinez, who targeted Ms. Mary all day, again. He threatened to kill her both softly and loudly, and when he got our response, which started patient and got quickly to “enough’s enough,” he shouted, “I don’t care!” He walked by me, gave me the finger, and left, slamming the door as hard as he could. He kept trying to engage her in the abuse cycle. It’s so obvious, and he’s trying to speed it up.

First, say abusive things and insults. He called her a pig. He whispered here and there, “I just don’t like Ms. Mary. I want her out of here!” then making Ms. Mary a card with her name in crayon, and if she accepted it, returning to tear it up and repeat his threats. We have at least 4 adults intercepting and distracting him, trying to help him participate in activities. I kept one eye on him all day. When he’s thinking about how he wants the daily reward, he starts over-doing niceness. Offering people weird things to eat, like some of his carrots at lunch, a half eaten apple, or random papers, he asks for compliments about everything good he does, and I usually give them. “That’s right, those are good manners (please and thank you). But at the end of the day, he didn’t earn it, in my book, or in Ms. Mary’s book.

We have one teammates who’s been extremely absent, playing the good cop, not being there during drama, taking naps somewhere. It’s annoying. But not the most annoying thing a teammate can do. But she’s accusing us of being “negative” and non-therapeutic at points, although I’m not sure if her criticism was directed as us or others I’m not always therapeutic. I have to keep many petty comments to myself. But I directly told Martinez several times, “You do not get the reward because you threatened to kill Ms. Mary several times today, and you said many unkind words to her.” “Well, I just don’t like Ms. Mary,” he said. That’s fine, I said, but that’s why you don’t get the reward. He pounded the wall, accused Ms. Mary of staring at him, shook his fist at her, and spent the rest of the day in the gym. I hope she doesn’t quit because she has a solid core for this type of work, and it’s her next stage of growth.

He’s triggering her, which is further triggering Martinez, the energy alone. His mean words make her want to cry, and remember her ex-husband’s abuse, and I see her shaking a little bit. When Martinez wants his reward and starts stalking me (hanging out by my desk), he’ll say. I’m safe. I’ll be safe. Can I have (all these things)? but I told him, That’s good, that’s good that you’ll be safe. He said, “I won’t hurt Ms. Mary,” I said that’s right, and also because I won’t let you “I won’t hurt her,” Right, and if you try to, I will stop you. He thinks about it. He bites his hand. I stand firm. Safe hands, I say.

I really don’t know where this situation could go next. He’s perseverating her and projecting everything on her. She probably reminds him of someone. someone he definitely did not like, or someone who did not like him. perhaps the stepmom. He was exposed to domestic violence for years. His IQ is around 50. But he knows when someone is laughing at him. And he knows right from wrong. “Don’t hurt Ms. Lisa,” he’ll say, “Or I’ll go to prison?” he smiles for some reason. This is a calming script for him for some reason.

Jermiah tells Martinez to stop bully Ms. Lisa. “Or Jeremiah will punch me?” Martines asks, looking to me.

I don’t think he’ll punch you, although you never know, but we don’t like it. we don’t like you talking to Ms. Mary. I don’t want you to speak to her or about her at all anymore.

I guess only time can tell where this will go. I bet if Mary’s energy shift, Martinez’s will too. He’s sensing her history of being victimized, and he’s relishing the bully’s role. This child is having heart surgery soon. He’s not a strong kid. He’s slow. He laughs maniacally for no reason sometimes. His mood is like the wind. But he sure hates tf outta Mary.

I don’t know if I want to be in the Green Party anymore. It’s mostly because someone is going to run who’s not good enough for me. A petty reason. I went to the GP social last week at the bar I picked because it’s close. Then I went. And it was weird. It was only two other people. I had picked a black bar. I’ve been before and it had good reviews. I pictured 10-15 people there, eating. I drank and all that before I went. I drank a lot that night. But it was only two people. I gave them my full social attention. It was one of the leaders, and a guy from Texas who said he had moved here for school. I forgot for what. I thought he looked like a drifter, and he reminded me of a roommate I had around 2006, named Phil. He was a slob, and a womanizer, and he chainsmoked inside, wanted to tattoo rats, stole my whiskey, and had impulsive sex in the middle room while I was home, and we had to hear it. My cat was traumatized, but I was living a chaotic life so it was only a detail. The leader told me that before I got there, the patrons came over to them and said, “You guys are making us nervous,” because they look suspicious. The leader is petite, and (to me, at least), flamboyantly gay. He’s wrapped in rainbows, and talks like a kindergarten teacher. The only guy DOES look like trouble! That’s why I grilled him, and he put up a high, thick wall, and hid behind it. He was young, a little handsome, wearing a jean jacket-jeans type outfit with shoulder length, brown hair. He sipped a single drink for an hour. I offered to buy him another, and he declined. Both guys took the bus to the bar. I felt bad that I got to drive home, afterward, and they’d be waiting for the bus. I thought about driving the Texas boy home, but immediately didn’t feel safe. Who knows who he is? He didn’t show me, that’s for sure.

I tried to convey friendliness and a tiny bit of insider connection by naming the song playing, while ordering drinks at the bar. “Jodeci,” right? The bartender ignored me. “Forever My Lady.” See, all the people in the bar were my friends in high school. They don’t recognize me, because I look different than I did then, in 1995 in South Minneapolis (12 hours from here, at least). I was in a black community there, a diverse, mixed community, and my best friends were biracial with black and white parents. Most of the moms were white and black dads weren’t there anymore. My first boyfriend was mixed like that, and “Forever My Lady,” by Jodeci was popular in 1991 when I was about to meet him. The other bands we liked were: Boys to Men, BBD (Bel Biv Devoe), and singers like: Mary J Blige, Sisters With Voices, and En Vogue. I went a long way from home, but I started there, with them.

Now they’re at the bar- this is their bar- this is their SPOT, their family, These patrons come here every single night. The music is loud. We don’t fit in. The company I invited look like Hitler (gay boy has a Hitler mustache) and your average hitch-hiker/serial killer, and I’m high on legal stimulants. I put in time and we left.

Then the next night I actually went out again for my sister’s birthday. I had fun dancing to grrrl power punk rock from the 2000’s and both earlier/later- like, the YYYs and Bikini Kill. It was a white scene. I noticed that. But it was a soldout party and we reveled in memories. In college, my life was like that— all female parties all the time. They are way better than parties with guys, I’m sorry, but it is. I’m not sorry. Men ruin everything. They make shit scary, when it was silly and they’re always on the prowl. At lesbian events (more or less) we only let in a half dozen guys that are safe, because they’re gay or in some other way, aware that this isn’t a place to fish for prey.

We had fun. The next day and rest of the weekend I was hungover and mostly slept it off. Then I bailed on social events I had loosely committed to, like coffee with thh DSA at a cafe downtown (“too far”- I say about anything where I need to cross a bridge in my car). I was supposed to do outreach calls for the Green Party, and I said I was going to the Democratic Socialists (our friends) coffee event. But I knew deep down I might not go.

I have a writing group online every saturday and sunday morning. After that I like to walk my dog. Then go back to bed. But I wanted to go. Working takes up all the energy. At least my work is love work. Practicing radical acceptance and love. We’re good enough, we’re lovable, we deserve safety, we deserve acceptance, we deserve access to resources, just the way we are. Just the way you are, no matter what.

Ambivalent team players have a hard time joining a team even to win

I joined the Green Party in my area and now someone might run for governer that I don’t like

When I heard them speak my imagination said, That is a bad guy voice. I said, I know. We said, that guy looks like he’d solicit underage girls for sex, and they said, please be nice. Don’t assume the worst of people.

But I am. I’m assuming the worst. I think that guy is an asshole, and cares too much about his outfits and his hair. I think he’s a man, and that’s enough evidence against his goodness. Enough with men. Haven’t they shown us who they are, in politics, if nothing else?

Men can’t handle work. They’re too obsessed with sex. It’s like a disability for them. They’re like a hamster on a wheel, running for sex, running for sex, run run run

Like wtf is wrong with you anyway It’s just sex

And the thing is, men, especially RELIGIOUS MEN have spent 2,000 years trying to blame us for being sexy and blame us for not liking angry shitty men and letting them own and control everything, they don’t deserve

the benefit of the doubt, anymore. I don’t doubt it at all. I can picture it easily.

You, trying to be cool with some agent online that you meet because you’re an idiot thinking with your penis and they set you up and you were talking poetry to a 15 year old and they know nothing about predators like you, looking to steal because no woman would ever want to give it to you for free but children don’t know any better and a lot of their parents aren’t paying attention

What I’ve learned from working as a special education teacher is that most problems just need time, or nothing might help Don’t take it all on. People (including children) do what they’re going to do. Hurting people want to hurt people. Most of the time, the best way you can help, is to not react.

We’re all living in our own movies. We see what we see. Others see differently. If we can offer ourselves with the humility of the fact that no one is perfect (not child or adult), but safety is paramount and we’re going to make sure everyone is safe, but we’re not breaking up every fight, and we can’t be determined to see the immediate effect of showing care (it’s a longer journey), so it’s enough to be. And it’s enough to be there. And you’re allowed to have emotions, and show them so long as it doesn’t create unsafety, and we can see people (children) as just like us Just like us, They are just like us, and if we can see children as just like us, people who are confused and upset, and like all things, that passes, no matter what you do, then we can make a family.

If we can make a family, then life is worth living. If it’s a family of one, and one person finally accepts themselves as a child, who wanted something else Children might have wanted what the parents wanted or something else altogether but we don’t straight get what we want, do we? I’ll help you bear that.

This is the most anonymous blog I’ve ever had and I’ve written hundreds of thousands of pages on half a dozen blogs, for absolutely no reason.

This is my favorite one, yet, because it will be the most honest blog of all times.

Today I didn’t feel like teaching ideally I would’ve been able to hermit as a verb but I had to go to school

I rolled up in my white banger, only slightly late moderately pissed off at the world and printed out a bunch of shit “to do” today then when the kids arrived, within a half hour I called it a movie day. It was so fucking crazy upon arrival. Sounded like a recording from Bedlam Asylum. Looked worse. I gathered my orphans into our tiny actual asylum, our classroom. Who’s going to be an asshole today, who will it be It was Martinez. Yesterday he was sweet, won “student of the day” This morning they told me during the handoff— he’ll probably need to be in the safe area (padded gym) all day. But he’s smart enough to know what you want him to do, and he’s determined to do the opposite, just to have a conflict-interaction. He wants the showdown. He targeted Mary, spit at her. called people N words, wandered the room repeated threats against my teammate Mary And I feel bad for her! She has PTSD, she’s an abuse survivor, and she’s 100% triggered by Martinez targeting and trying to bully her. She tries to punch back with sarcasm and passive aggressive comments and it just gets worse. He knows he’s hurting her feelings, and it’s his glory What a dick. Fuck Martinez. That’s why I shut him out the room for the last hour and a half, shut the door in his face, and told him, I’m all done talking about that I’m ignoring you because I’m all done talking about THAT and everything else. When I lose patience I say YOU NEED TO GET UP OUT OF HERE WITH ALL THAT YOU’RE DOING WAY TO MUCH AND I’M READY FOR YOU TO GO then if they don’t go my teammates physically escort them out

They might try to bang on our door, cry, or forget about us out there the only thing I can control (even mildly) is “in here.”

I may have said, yesterday to Beret, “You need to get the fuck up out on of here.” but he didn’t, he crawled under my desk, and they pulled him out that’s what I like about this job (one thing) when we say a students needs to leave they make him leave they don’t blame us or roll their eyes. Like if I was a better teacher this kid wouldn’t have stabbed me in the hand with his pencil Team mentality matters here. We co-parent. If you undermine a teammate, that could be a broken arm, or chunk of hair pulled out, or a bite out of somebody’s shoulder like a red apple that looks delicious. You can’t undermine each other. You have to walk a precarious line.

I try to show kinds (nowadays) how to compromise. I’ve gotten better at it. I’m less defensive. I trust my teammates more, now. Not with everything not all the time, but I think I shit out that inner supervisor that was sitting in my bowels, giving me gas and indigestion. I’m not supervising anyone. I’m modeling shit for them (how to stay focused on the mission) or I’m not modeling it. They’re showing me. It’s give and take. Sometimes we are shitty parents. Sometimes we do everything right. If nothing else, we show up (almost) every day for “Yeah, I’ll still fuck with you, kid no matter every shady thing you’ve done, and that you’d probably slit my throat if I was asleep and you wanted something lodged in my thorax. I know you’re a serial killer minus the ability to I know you saw shit You saw blood You were born in blood I expect not much here and now and then they show up

They show out, they start to bloom, You never know Blooms don’t last anyway Seasons are the real kings and queens The real hereditary power Spring will come, and the sun will help us recover Until it grows hotter, and tries to kill us again

Pros and cons of me (as a teacher) in 2026 I used to be ambitious and want to please professors.

Now, I wouldn’t stand on my hands for anything on the syllabus. Schools and colleges will blow your whole donation on one firework during the fireworks on alumni weekend in May. But now I’m a teacher. They didn’t completely stop me and I just kept stepping forward every once and awhile.

Why I rock as a teacher now—I do “fun” science experiments that make a mess. We made paper mache planets, we tested whether ice melted faster in salt or sugar (they melted the same), we did a “float or sink” test with stuff in the room in a big bucket of water, and we did the egg drop challenge today. Off of a ladder in the room. We broke at least 4 eggs. Some kids were overwhelmed bc they realized too late that there weren’t going to be “instructions” other than “build something with this stuff,” and they were too ambitious to make decisions leading to an imperfect outcomes, so we made stuff for them. The coolest one I thought was where we put an egg in a balloon and then blew it up, and tied it to other balloons. It didn’t crack when dropped. In the past I’ve helped kids make slime, make paint/snow sludge in the garbage can (more something I let them do than that I planned), leading me to a strength and weakness: I don’t plan If I plan, I never follow my plans It seems like it goes against my nature. I quit my last job as a teacher when I realized they needed me to follow my lesson plans because I just can’t. It’s like trying to shit when you aren’t ready to go. It feels wrong. It’s like eating food separately, when it could be enjoyed as one giant salad (the way it should be). I gotta do me, you know? I just don’t want to follow plans. I hate making plans. I hate thinking about something difficult that I could just assign to my subconscious and have faith that that person inside me will have or make a plan. She always does. Honestly, she’s never let me down, not on even one impromtu lesson.

I definitely had supervisors for whom this wasn’t good enough and as soon as they said so, I said, that’s fine, but I’m moving on just looking for a good fit, where I can be me.

I don’t read scripts. I don’t memorize scripts. I just initiate various school type activities and provide materials. I model the thing we’re doing, if needed, and then directly assist. We don’t need lesson plans.

Graduate school was so hard and so unnecessary teaching would never be as hard as graduate school for teachers especially at Hunter. I ended up not liking them, and it was mutual.

If I’m going to teach special education, I gotta do it in a special way because I’m just as trifling as anyone else. And I’m slow. And I can’t make decisions until they have to be made based on what’s happening.

I’m just doing the least work possible. I’m not a superhero. I’m not training for an academic marathon anymore. I’m just teaching kids basic shit during times of war. I’m spending every day with them, reading, writing, arguing, picking movies, eating together, while the united states blows up our own body, our mother’s body, our baby’s body.

Why I’m a bad teacher: I already said.

To be honest, if I had 1 or 2 more days to myself not with the students, I would plan. When I do plan, I feel way less anxious, overwhelmed, and confused because sometimes I’m still high when I arrive and all the piles of papers get mixed up, and I forgot what class is next and skip something because I teach all the subjects and always have.

Lesson plans are like gumballs in my gumball machine brain.

I have a million ideas and I just put in a quarter when it’s time to teach.

Deep down I want to make every day a movie day and just meet physical needs. But the day would get too long and boring. However I make my class sit and wait patiently for the next thing and I think it’s good for them. In life, you don’t get to be entertained every fucking second and a lot of times, it’s just you and your thoughts, so you might as well get comfortable with mastering your thoughts and your breathing and your mood, now. “What am I supposed to do?!” This child demands attention and engagement 100% of the time. You can draw or read a book. What am I supposed to draw??? Boy, Draw anything. This is your life. Enjoy this five minutes because when the timer’s up, I’m handing out the next assignment for the next activity.

Nothing pleases him. So spoiled! He’s doing good with us, actually. But he crashed at the end of the day, and we had to kick him out. And we swore. I swore. My teammate swore. All day we kept swearing. I lacked patience today. I had a flat affect (that part is fine). I had no idea what we’d be doing when I arrived late to work, which means I had to figure that out, and print papers, while interacting with kids, and a million things are going on, which is just harder. With another day or two, and a basic plan, even if I don’t follow it, I wouldn’t have the stress of “okay what are we doing next” and knowing my team is like “this teacher is a hot mess.”

They help me though. I couldn’t do it without them. They compliment me. I used to be a passive aggressive snitch. Now I either say something or just accept it. My position is, the less I snitch on people, the less they snitch on me. It’s an instant karma thing. Based on multiple blind trials, it’s a scientific fact. Snitches get stitches. on the street

but snitches burn bridges at work. Talk to the person yourself. If you can’t? Then forget about it. Suck it up. You’re not perfect either. No one is.

Very Smelly Monday

This morning when I got to work, one of my team was already there.
She’d worked the night shift. We get along easy now, so I concerned myself with fixing the wrong feeling inside my sock, of which, both socks and feet felt hot, but it also felt like there was lint in my toes. So I took my whole sock off and shook it out. I’ve been fired for less than this before, it occurs to me now, but the issue is what are people sensitive about? If it’s feet, then fire me. So as I brushed off what I thought was lint, way too much came off the sock and off my foot, and from the smell, I knew it was dead flesh. Eww, oh my god. So I used a paper towel to brush as much of my dead foot off as I could onto the floor, then used cleaning wipes to wipe it up. Then I swept. Then I went to the bathroom and washed my feet in the sink one by one, with handsoap and dried them with paper towels that held up rather well not shredding like my actual foot. Each sock was soaked in sweat Why? I don’t know!? My feet are insane? They’re working out when I’m not? I wanted new cotton socks so badly, but here come my students and I stuff my feet back into these leather tennishoes that should be fine but aren’t (no shoes are fine), and try to ignore the wetness and idea of dead flesh needing to be removed.

Everytime I bathe I shave the callouses and dead stuff off my feet. I really enjoy it, even though after doing each foot twice, and filling the garbage can with a covering of dead skin flakes there’s always more to cut. I use a surgical steel blade, disposable. I feel like I’ll never get down to the real foot, or feet. I had a lederhosen growth on my left foot as a child that somewhat ruined my life, to be honest. I’ve never gotten to enjoy walking. I stopped being able to run, stopped exercising, started smoking.

So after talking to so many surgeons about this in the 2000’s and 10’s and getting a couple surgeries, stitches, physical therapy all that I watched some podiatry videos on youtube and realized I could do it myself- handle the problem. First, I slowly cut a wart off. Of course I used the creams and stuff on it, but I also cut it off. I used a kitchen knife at first, super gross, and never told my roomate then I ordered the disposable surgical blades, and since then, happier feet There was like .5 centimeter of dead flesh I had to walk on, some of it would bleed when I first started cutting it away, but the blood was superficial. Once I cut off the wart I started going at the other parts whatever was white after I got out of the bath, I cut it off.

So the night before, I did the whole pedicure thing, cutting, slicing then rinsing and applying cbd ointment.

This led to the gangrene of this morning. But here is an awful coincidence. A child came in who had even worse smelling feet than me.

He wears foot and leg braces, and they are turning fetid. No one made him change his socks all weekend. So all day long, our classroom smelled like Cheese balls and body odor

The body odor was me- for some reason my chemicals were off the hook today- and I wasn’t the only one. The boys are teenagers. They stink. I stink. They stunk more. Then Julius passed gas while using the computer at my desk and I said it smells like vegetables after they’ve been in your belly 2 weeks and can’t digest.

Basic Teaching Strategy

if you have a kid gone into a tyrannical rogue state of emotional, physical, and spiritual disregulation you don’t talk to him anymore about rulse you don’t prompt him, lecture him, remind him (he’s openly at war with the world and not logical)

this is not a hard one, actually all along you have had stuff/something they want if you didn’t, they wouldn’t talk to you at all maybe it’s attention maybe it’s candy maybe it’s a prize they could earn if you have nothing, then fuck you you’re an idiot you should’ve seen this coming

if you didn’t see this coming then you have to consider taking things from them which is wayyyy harder than simply witholding something they already want i’m an expert at ignoring annoying behavior and will starve that kid to death of it until he talks to me safetly not screaming and shit if you have stuff people want, you can give it out for behaviors that create a prosocial environment. afterall you’re the teacher.

so you withold the thing the asshole wants and prepare to withstand the temper tantrum, get support get a bunch of adults in the room just watching calmy then tell him, get it the fuck together or we’re escorting you out to scream by yourself where it doesn’t bother other people who are just trying to color, do worksheets, and watch kids shit on the tube so that’s that. and your muscle does it’s job. safely escorts them out, DON’T NEED TO BREAK PEOPLE’S ARMS shouldn’t be no injuries this isn’t that hard either

they can come back when they play nice and operate in good faith. or they can yell threats for hours in the calming area, an open gym space with mats. banging on walls and shit. that’s fine. we move on with our scheduled program.

Socializing at Young Brothers the bar

I’m going. I took a nap after work, to shake off the day with mini-dreams.

Today was difficult. I overslept, first. Got to my class late, and my team had to do my jobs of getting “morning work” ready because our education system is modelled on creating consumers and workers even though there’s not much work anymore, and my students will never work.

They won’t. They’ll have the life I fantasize about living in a group home (communism) with a cafeteria and helpers who tie their shoes and zip their coats and force them to shower and brush their teeth and administer medicine and run activity groups if they’re lucky, if not, just watch tv. Just play their preferred game on an ipad. That will be their best life. They also might be in prison or nastier hospital situations. With less freedom, less care, and more control (and less clean).

Today, Martinez (10th grade, IQ approx 50) targeted Ms. Mary, my teammate, whose role is to assist another student with all his work and tasks). Martinez has slowly cultivated a trigger-type hatred of her, and is getting bolder and ruder about it every day. For “no reason” he does things like give her the middle finger as well as posture and stalk her with proximity, whispering “I just don’t like Ms. Mary,” or “I hate her.” or “I’m going to kill Ms. Mary,” or “I just want her to leave,” or “Get her out of here!” or “I don’t like Ms. Mary.” It was all day, meanwhile, she’s taking every word personally, and she’s triggered because she shouldn’t even be there to begin with, she’s not healthy anough. She wants to talk about her illnesses all the time, even when there’s kids’ needs to manage, and the kids’ have their own illnesses and attention starved PTSD but Ms. Mary is my friend, and I remember being new to special education. This doesn’t mean she can’t do this job. It does mean she is experiencing the natural consequence of doing much “bad cop” type feedback to kids. She doesn’t have to “discipline” kids, and I used to tell her that. Once I said she also needs to change her face because it looks miserable. She really cares about the kids. She’s also deeply traumatized by abuse and today was talking about how her ex-husband would be hateful and say similar things (that Martines is saying) and then buy her a gift to make up for it. And yeah, after lunch, Martinez started worrying about if he would get his “reward” for having a good day (fuck no) and started trying to make up for it by apologizing to Ms. Mary and scribbling her a heart picture with her name spelled wrong. Martines really dominated our day, and I hate when one kid is able to do that. I also don’t know how to solve the problem. Ms. Mary might just quit. But she might not.

I said to her, at lunch at the staff table, think about Calvin: he’s black and he was ruthlessly targeted by psychopath student (say, Adam) for days that became weeks and months. Until he changed rooms, now the kids is out there calling anyone names and assaulting people That kid called Calvin the N word at least 50,000 times, along with other sexualized terms, spoke of raping his kids. Mary. Think about that.

Calvin somehow tolerated it. To me, he said he told himself how he needs the job and can’t afford to “lose his clearances.” This phrase helps us keep it together for times like this. If you show aggression or violence in response to the baiting, you’ll definitely not be allowed to work with kids anymore.

I had an older, white lady supervisor back in the day who was going to retire soon, (not my direct boss, the boss of the social workers), who crashed out in front of tons of people, pointing her finger at an elementary school kid, and saying with a rageful quivering voice, “If I saw you in an alley… (she made the gun motion), I would shoot you.” bang bang, buddy.

So, she had to “retire early,” like the next day. They announced it on the intercom. As if they could make up for employing her for 20 years.
They prob let her keep some benefits.
. Because it’s not about you (the adult being targeted by a child at a residential treatment center), it's about what they’ve seen adults at home do and say, and now, in juvenile setting, what they’ve seen their peers do and say, but THEY DON’T KNOW YOU.

Ms. Mary looked sick. I couldn’t really help her. My goal is to protect her from Martinez, but it might be too late. He’s got the idea that she’s a bad person, and he’s not going to let it go. She’s not a bad person, but she used the wrong tone, too much. She showed her fear, and her inner child, and did weird things with low boundaries. I could be her friend, but working together can be impossible. It all depends on the chemistry of the group. If it’s just us, she’s different. I feel like she might die soon anyway. But she’s very passive aggressive, which also reminds me of some former parenting I experienced. Teaching is parenting.

Hope I can detach from all that, and connect with MY peers in an appropriate way. Not be too weird. Not talk about my job. The main thing I’m looking forward to getting a beer on draft. Beer on draft is sometimes good. I will try to stay for a full hour. Should I clean up? Look in the mirror? Nah. My pretty days is gone.