So many things are true simultaneously:
That there is NO excuse for an adult to deliberately humiliate a child. It’s bad enough when it happens in private. When it happens in a school setting that teacher should be publicly humiliated for the damage they have done.
The other truth thing is that kids are sometimes obnoxious and out of control. Sometimes, they are also “bad seeds.” Now that my kids are older, I often am harshly judgmental of such children when I encounter them in a public setting. I think that they are horrible and that their parents are probably f*&k-ups as well. But that’s for me to think in private…or share with my friends after the fact. (“Ugh, I saw the most horrific child today!”)
While I am sympathetic to teachers who are faced with out-of-control kids, I do think that people who go into this profession need to be first and foremost child advocates. They need to squelch their frustration and be creative to work on solutions to distract difficult children. They need to figure out if something else is underlying the disruptive behavior. They actually need to be better than a parent would be in similar circumstances.
My oldest son, now a successful writer living abroad, was sent into therapy in KINDGERGARTEN after he kicked a teacher in the chest. The teacher had just torn up his work of art, the one he refused to stop drawing when it was music time. Understandably, he went ballistic.
I supported him then and I support him now.
And that bitch of a teacher was fired at the end of the year.
