Something needs to be done about teachers who hate kids tbh
My sister is currently getting her doctorate in child psychology & education, but years ago she worked as a substitute english teacher at a high school in nyc. She spent half a year subbing for a woman who was out for surgery, and had been teaching english there for years and years. Most of the kids in this class were remedial; they had failed english before and had to retake it. Most of them hated the class, and they hated literature, because they had been made to feel unintelligent. My sister decided to introduce them to poetry, which was a little easier to digest than long form prose, and had them read Robert Frost’s “Fire and Ice.” And the kids loved it! They connected with it, they were spirited and engaged in class for the first time all year. They wrote their own poetry! They started seeking out and reading poetry on their own! They were all on track to get a C, B or A in that class. And then the original teacher returned and failed every single student, to “teach them all a lesson”. That was the moment my sister decided to go into administration so she could hopefully prevent that sort of thing from happening. But it’s difficult. Despite numerous complaints from parents and other teachers, that teacher had a job there for decades. She continued to have a job there. There are a lot of teachers like her, wielding power and taking their frustrations out on kids, especially disabled and remedial kids. And students have so few advocates in the classroom.
A lot of people ask me what my biggest fear is, or what scares me most. And I know they expect an answer like heights, or closed spaces, or people dressed like animals, but how do I tell them that when I was 17 I took a class called Relationships For Life and I learned that most people fall out of love for the same reasons they fell in it. That their lover’s once endearing stubbornness has now become refusal to compromise and their one track mind is now immaturity and their bad habits that you once adored is now money down the drain. Their spontaneity becomes reckless and irresponsible and their feet up on your dash is no longer sexy, just another distraction in your busy life.
Nothing saddens and scares me like the thought that I can become ugly to someone who once thought all the stars were in my eyes.
this fucks me up every single time
I never expected this to be my most popular poem out of the hundreds I’ve written. I was extremely bitter and sad when I wrote this and I left out the most beautiful part of that class.
After my teacher introduced us to this theory, she asked us, “is love a feeling? Or is it a choice?” We were all a bunch of teenagers. Naturally we said it was a feeling. She said that if we clung to that belief, we’d never have a lasting relationship of any sort.
She made us interview a dozen adults who were or had been married and we asked them about their marriages and why it lasted or why it failed. At the end, I asked every single person if love was an emotion or a choice.
Everybody said that it was a choice. It was a conscious commitment. It was something you choose to make work every day with a person who has chosen the same thing. They all said that at one point in their marriage, the “feeling of love” had vanished or faded and they weren’t happy. They said feelings are always changing and you cannot build something that will last on such a shaky foundation.
The married ones said that when things were bad, they chose to open the communication, chose to identify what broke and how to fix it, and chose to recreate something worth falling in love with.
The divorced ones said they chose to walk away.
Ever since that class, since that project, I never looked at relationships the same way. I understood why arranged marriages were successful. I discovered the difference in feelings and commitments. I’ve never gone for the person who makes my heart flutter or my head spin. I’ve chosen the people who were committed to choosing me, dedicated to finding something to adore even on the ugliest days.
I no longer fear the day someone who swore I was their universe can no longer see the stars in my eyes as long as they still choose to look until they find them again.
This is so fucking important and I think it’s something I needed right now
Brew a pot of coffee, pour it into the blender, add honey, cinnamon and nutmeg (and a little bit of clove if you have it), your favorite non-dairy milk, and a couple of tablespoons of canned pumpkin. (US grocery stores have it year-round. It’s in with the canned vegetables.) Blend till foam forms on top. Pour into a mug and sip.
500 times better than Starbucks pumpkin spice, plus it has nutrients, plus you don’t have to wait for Starbucks to release anything, plus it’s vegan,* plus you don’t have to go to a coffee shop in a pandemic
*don’t @ me about whether honey is vegan. Honeybees are better compensated for their labor than baristas
Honeybees are better compensated for their labor than baristas
Concrete, 100% effective way to tell if someone doesn’t belong in a LGBT+/queer space:
They openly and actively hate/ want to hurt the people in that space
Controversial opinion here, I know, but just because you’re in a safe LGBT+/Queer space doesn’t mean you have to disclose their identity to everyone there. And people are allowed to bring their partners, regardless of their orientation, to those same spaces.
Obviously there are certain spaces that are for specific people, but at the same time, y’all are so obsessed with micromanaging queer spaces. The only thing that should be a litmus for entry into those spaces is: “does this person want to hurt someone else in this space and I know that? Yes? Then they aren’t fucken welcome. Regardless of identity.”
I volunteered in ine of the biggest queer youth clubs as an educator / guide (there isnt a word in english for these stuff).
We had so many queer kids that brought cishet friends and some of them didnt come out later, some of them really were cishet and that is fine.
They did no harm to the queer atmosphere and when someone new joined for the first time we gave them a little tour of the club and invited them to a one on one talk with one of the volunteers.
Ive had many of these conversations with teens at the ages of 12-19 and everyone calmed down when we told them there is no criteria to being there that this is a safe space and after a short explanation and some questions where many of them just blurted out their stories.
The non queer identifying people came for years either because they just met some friends from different places along the country and it was their usual hangout or because they really needed a safe space with no judgment in their lives.
Cishet people also need safe spaces where there are no gendered expectations of them and they can play with makeup and dresses and just be calm and learn about safe sexuality and consent.
Why in the world would you kick people who need safe spaces and benefit from them out???
Queer people seeing cishet people in queer spaces not acting weird and for once seeing the atmosphere is queer and the cis person has to adapt does marvels to one’s sense of how real it feels, how you could bring this safe space outside and this culture to other friends.
Introduce some of the stuff you learned to your friends and family maybe to some willing coworker idk.
The point is that our way to smash the patriarchy, gender roles, rape culture and more shit is too bring it outside and allow allies to be there cus why the fuck not
Thanks for sharing! This really highlights a collection of reasons why it’s important to not create these arbitrary rules to who can and can’t come in.
Also?
When I was in college, I had a cishet friend who was Christian and quietly felt homosexuality was a sin. I never heard her say so out loud….
…..which is why it STUNNED me when last year, she admitted she felt that way in college. But, she said, spending time with me in what we called the LGBTQIA+ group, to support me through a time when I was on and off suicidal, she discovered that queer people were, well….people. Who just wanted to be allowed to live. That might sound like “wow, the bar was belowground and she was doing the limbo with Satan,” but you must understand: this was 2006 in a very tiny town. Our senator had just compared homosexuality to both bestiality and pedophilia and there was a concerted push going on to write “one man, one woman” into the Constitution. Allison’s position (“I feel a certain kind of way but I’m not going to say it aloud”) was actually KINDER than most of the people around me.
And just spending time in our spaces, being around queer people, she realized “hey, what I have been told my whole life is a lie. These people are just people. Telling terrible jokes, having cookouts, fighting for basic human dignity, arguing over whether or not face painting is an appropriate college activity. There is no difference between them and me.”
Without a welcome into queer spaces, Allison might still be part of a homophobic church. Instead she helped organize her town’s first Pride parade in 2019.
“The queer kids, whether they’re gay or straight, need to stick together.” — Tim Miller, gay performance artist
Gatekeeping kills. STOP THAT.
Again, if you tag this post “q slur” this post was and is about you. You are the danger to our spaces.
funny how when a “straight” person finds themselves surrounded by a bunch of gay and lesbian and bisexual friends they often end up realizing they aren’t straight it’s almost like heteronormativity and being surrounded by heteronormativity keeps people in the closet and being in an environment where gay love is more normalized allows people to connect with parts of themselves they otherwise probably wouldn’t be able to
thinking of when vincent van gogh said that “poverty stops the best minds in their tracks” and how art would see a new era if we funded struggling independent artists instead of hiring talentless nepotism babies.
One night, you decide to put your phone under your pillow. When you wake up in the morning, your phone is replaced by cash totaling what you paid for your phone. Turns out the tooth fairy takes more than just teeth.
You regret the loss if your phone, of course, but the tooth fairy gave you brand new market price and so you bought a new one with the cash and pocketed the rest.
You experiment. Sticking items under your pillow is better than the hassle of Facebook marketplace.
She doesn’t take the plastic plate set you’ve tried to sell for weeks, but she takes a gold rimmed china saucer from your Grandma’s old set. You get brand new market value for it - from 1946 when it had been bought.
She ignores jeans and books, but trades for spoons and costume jewelry. The tooth fairy, you realize, is a bit of a magpie. If it’s a little bit shiny, she’ll give you cash.
You clear out the jewelry table at a garage sale, place them one by one under your pillow. The amount you get varies, but still is brand new market value of when the item was originally bought. Nothing more than $50, but that’s better than the $8 you bought it for.
After a few weeks, something changes. Your bank account isn’t as empty, your pillow is thicker. You take a nap, because sleeping on items isn’t the most comfortable. You wake up to a crinkle, a note next to your nose.
The writing is tiny, you need your phone’s magnifier to read it, but it turns out just as you’ve been using the tooth fairy, she wants to use you. She’s dropped off a list of wants; hints at a finder fee in cash or precious metals.
It’s specific, odd stuff. A clean dollar coin. A chandelier crystal. A reversible sequin pillow. Antique holiday ornaments. Photo hooks. All, you think, easy to get.
You sign her contact with purple sparkly gel pen and offer it as a freebie.
