I normally am not a person who ever falls. My foot will slip out from under me, but I hardly ever actually fall, especially all. the. way. down. Apparently I shrieked during my fall as Al saw me disappear behind the dumpster as he was walking in the road and I in the grass. I do not remember this as I do not even remember the fall it happened so quickly. I do remember lying on my right side on the ground. My right cheek was the last thing to hit the ground. Once I realized what happened and how badly it hurt and how startling it was, I yelled a lovely explicit phrase. Al scooted over to me and helped me up. Good thing he did; I felt like I was stuck to the ground.
As we were making our slower-than-usual walk to school, I could feel my cheek getting hot and probably red in color. My head also started to ache a little. Good thing I keep a few ibuprofen in my purse. We got to school and my cheek felt warm and pink all day long. I finally got to look in a mirror around 1 this afternoon to see it was pink, had a few red dots on it, and one little place that was skinned up. Wonderful! Not too bad. I was partially so surprised about the whole fall, but scared at what it could have been. I hit my face on the sidewalk. I could've broken my nose or my cheek bone. Luckily I didn't.
Not until about 9 or 10 hours later did my right side start to feel sore. I'm feeling more sore now. I'm developing a nice bruise on the right side of my thigh, I think. My back is hurting, but I can't tell if that's related to my fall or just my crooked spine. Either way, I'm feeling sore and know it will feel worse in the morning. At least it's Friday. I'll wear jeans.
I felt less bad about my fall. Just on the rest of the treacherous walk to school I saw two students fall. I found out one or two other teachers fell (or admitted to falling!), the really nice German custodian at school fell, Terry fell twice, and a few students told me about their falls that morning before school started. It was awful out this morning!
My battle wound:
School itself was fine as usual. I got a lot of work done, but realized how busy being a librarian can be. I didn't think I was going to get my lunch eaten without being interrupted. I did get it eaten, though, don't worry.
After school was a discipline committee meeting I attended with my supervising teacher, J. Because a specific student was mentioned at the end of the meeting, I was able to bring up an incident that happened walking home from school on Monday that involved this student. I hadn't brought it up yet to anyone because I was kind of embarrassed about it.
There is one student who I've noticed is always checking me out since Day 1 at Baumholder Middle/High School. He never did anything inappropriate; I just always noticed him looking at me. When we actually interacted at school (which was only once or twice), he acted shy or neutral.
During Monday at school I instructed a biology class on a certain note taking graphic organizer the school uses. They are about to begin science fair projects accompanied by a paper, so the teacher wanted them to have this schpeal. One boy in the front was just awfully smiley at me, but nothing weird or anything.
These two boys were in a gaggle of about five boys walking home from school around 3:45 Monday afternoon. They were all horsing around, walking slowly, being loud and carrying on as boys might do. None of these boys seem like particularly bad students, but just .... not the top, over achievers, I guess.
Anyhow, I was walking faster than them and didn't want to be behind them the whole walk home, so once I caught up with them, I just went around them. As I was walking down the hill in front of them, I could hear all their comments of, "She's finer than a lead pencil," "She's finer than a sharp thumbtack." There were quite a few other clever phrases--some I couldn't quite hear and a couple didn't even make sense I can't remember what they were now.
I was embarrassed. I was really annoyed and irritated. I didn't know what to do about that situation. I was far enough away from them I just kept walking and acted like I wasn't listening. I'm sure they knew I could hear them. How rude of them. I am supposed to be a teacher figure to them. Just because we were right off school property does not mean they do not have to respect me. It's hard because I know that some of these boys think I'm cute. I am not much older than them. I am much smaller than most of them. What was I supposed to do?
My roommate suggested I tell Terry or J. After I mentioned it to the two male student teachers, they acted like it wasn't a big deal at all, so I didn't know how I should feel about it. I was going to tell J., but then I got too embarrassed about it. How was I to bring that up? I feel like because of my age, size, and gender I may get treated like that sometimes or walked on a lot. I've experienced that in the workplace before because I'm young, cheery, cute, and a girl: people think they can walk all over me or think I'm dumb. It sucks. So I need to make sure it doesn't happen, but I also don't want to overreact to situations. Plus, I've never experienced this specific situation before (i.e. a student), so I didn't have any past experiences to base it on.
Anyhow... Today, though, that first boy was mentioned at the meeting. I asked, "Wait, what about M.?" They told me a little about him and that he has behavior management problems, especially with disrespect. I said, "Yeah, he was inappropriate toward me walking home from school the other day. I heard him and (I described the other boy. They knew who I was talking about.. that whole group of boys who pal around together) making comments about me." J. and the assistant principal were glad I told them and the assistant principal is going to put a stop to it. I'm glad I brought it up. But it still embarrasses me; I don't know why.
Tomorrow is Friday, thank goodness. After school, one of the supervising teachers invited us to her house for dinner. We are all going to that. Saturday, some of us are taking a train to Cologne all day. I'm looking forward to going to a big city. Sometimes I feel stranded out here in the boonies. It will be nice to get away from base and a small village for a while.
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