#it's very unlikely that this woman on her best day was still pro-yelling-at-children-like-that

[inklingofadream]

Just randomly remembered an incident in 5th grade where a sub mentioned she'd spent her summer in, like, the Caribbean. Somewhere that was extremely exotic to 10-year-olds. And I was like "oooh, jealous!" because... that's not the Best way to interact with a stranger but it one I'd seen modeled. Like that's a common response to someone talking about a cool vacation. Also, again, 10,

And she SNAPPED at me that no! she worked hard! to earn that vacation!!!11!!!

I would love to hear her side of that. Like... was there some serious personal life stuff that made her overreact? Did she really hate substitute teaching and was already in a bad mood? What was her logic behind yelling at ten-year-old me

Because I stand by my logic from then, once I'd calmed down enough to think about it- it doesn't matter if she worked hard for her vacation. I was ten. I could be the hardest-working ten-year-old on Earth, and it is still quite unlikely that a vacation would manifest itself. A vacation you bled to earn and a vacation handed to you on a silver platter are both equally unobtainable to a child who cannot buy plane tickets.

Like I get being annoyed if a peer said what I said, I acknowledge that that's a response you save for friends, not strangers... But I've done stuff teaching summer art classes for a few days, and while that's obviously a big leap from regular school subbing* not once was I tempted to raise my voice in anger. What is the end goal of yelling at a child, exactly? What was going on in her life that led her to that?

*(in some ways harder, since I was the one lesson planning and there were Many things that could go wrong and result in stains/injuries if my gang of 4-15 year old kids was supervised too lightly, but easier because literally every kid I've ever met would rather play with rhinestones than learn math and even the kids who were obnoxious I had to deal with for One week)