Still a student teacher, but I’ve already had a few pretty creepy encounters while doing observations. Oddly enough, both were female students. I am a young woman myself so maybe that could explain why they felt comfortable telling me these things. The first was with an 8th grade girl during my first teaching experience ever, in my college we are sent out every semester for a period of 12 weeks to a local school. My subject is English and one of my first duties was to work with students in ISS (in school suspension). I felt awful for one student especially who had been stuck in ISS after her journal had been found in which she wrote about wanting to harm herself and another student. I tutored her for a few weeks and eventually she was allowed to go back to class. The first day she was out of ISS she bragged to me that she was going to get back at the girl who had told teacher’s about her diary, another student of mine who I knew who never hurt a fly. I had to be the one to go to the principal and make a report in case the unstable student wanted to her the girl. She went back to ISS that same day, I had a long cry about that one and almost re-thought teaching. It’s a lesson all young teachers have to learn, protecting your students comes first.

The second experience is a little more frightening. I was volunteering as a teacher’s aid at my mother’s school, she is also a teacher (it’s a family thing). I met a 6th grade student who’s mother was ALSO a teacher. It was after school and she was waiting for her mom to finish her pick up duty, so I was talking to her to keep her busy. This was one of the first times I met her, and she immediately began telling me how her stepfather was abusing her, trying her to the bed, and how her parent’s liked the other children in the family better. She never once changed expressions, telling the whole story as if she were bored. Then, she immediately switched gears and asked me if I had any baking soda so she could make a GLITTER PIPE BOMB. It may sound a little heartless but, I didn’t believe her for a second. Being an abuse victim myself, I knew something was fishy and later asked my mom about it. She sighed and told me how it was the third time she made that claim to a teacher, who by law are responsible for reporting child abuse, and that when they did investigate none of her claims were true. She didn’t like her mom’s husband and especially hated her baby sister. She confided in me that the girl’s mother was so frightened of her and was afraid she might hurt her little sister. I didn’t go back to her class again.