the old-school guestbook archives
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teacher X and the terrible, horrible, no-good very bad feeling ~ May 25, 2003 - 5:43 p.m. I'm just a mess today. mainly because I let my blood sugar crash, which is something I try to avoid at all costs. it makes me feel a little crazy. but what happened was, I woke up late, feeling exhausted and kinda sick, not really wanting to go anywhere. so I relaxed for a bit, drank some iced coffee, got started on memoirs of a geisha, which I'm enjoying so far. and then, right about the time I was thinking I should go to get some lunch, a storm blew in. and I just wasn't in the mood to get soaked, and there wasn't any food in the house and so... crash. and by the time I pulled myself together and got myself out of the house, it was already too late to do most of the things I was going to do today. and I seem to have put off printing up my CV until tomorrow, which makes me feel just a little more crazy. and I'm realizing I must be feeling a little blocked on this whole job-hunting thing. which is a bit intimidating at the best of times, but in a whole new country where you don't necessarily know all the ropes, it's pretty damn scary. I just didn't realize how scared I was of it until I started to notice how blocked I've been on finishing this CV. and the ridiculous thing is, it's done. the only thing that's holding it up at this point is the damn photo. which employers want with a CV here, I guess so they can figure out if you're too ugly ahead of time. and leeanne, the very cool DP of the school I work at now, said that the Big Boss had said things to her like "he looks like a fat faggot-- I'm not hiring him." reason #265 why I'm looking for a new job. not to mention the fact. that I haven't been mentioning. because I haven't quite been able to cope with it. with how to deal with it. with any of it. because each grade has two teachers-- a lao teacher and an english teacher. I am the english teacher for grade four. the lao teacher is-- let's call him-- teacher X. and I liked teacher X well enough at first, although he seemed like a bit of a weird little man. and I wasn't comfortable with his sense of space boundaries when he'd help me with my lao language lessons during lunchtime. I mean, I know there are cultural differences, but where I come from-- and I think perhaps here as well-- a man doesn't sit with his thigh and his shoulder pressed up against a woman on a bench where there is plenty of room unless they are very good friends. which we are not. so I began to move away from him. I had to do this several times before he got the idea, but finally he did. now he sits with several inches between us, which is much more comfortable for me. but I had a weird feeling about him. from the beginning. a weird feeling that I've felt before. and it scared me. but weird feelings, disconnected from anything else, aren't much to go on. especially in a new place, a new culture, where you don't understand just how everything works. but then I began to see things. things I couldn't believe I was seeing. like: one afternoon, in the library. very common, for teachers to take naps in the library in the afternoon. teacher X lay down on a bench. a really sweet little boy-- let's call him "jude"-- was in the library, and teacher X called him over to where he was lying, asked him to sit with him for a minute. and jude didn't want to. "please?" asked teacher X, and jude did. teacher X started pointing to jude's arms, hands, legs, asking the english word for each. then he got to his crotch, and brushed it with his fingertips, and said "what's this?" and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. and teacher X laughed, and jude giggled uncomfortably, and this went on for a couple of minutes while I sat there, frozen, no idea what to do. and then jude got up and ran out of the library. and I went up to the DP and asked to have a word with her in private. and told her what I'd just seen. and she was at a loss. she knew if she reported it to the big bosses, there's no way it would be handled properly. they are very protective of their lao teachers, and chances are good that it would be laughed off as a joke. the oddest thing, the DP just walked into the internet cafe and said hello as I was typing this. anyway. so she really had no idea who to go to, or what to do about it. she said she'd talk it over with her husband that night, and get back to me. when she did get back to me, she and her husband agreed that there wasn't much we could do at this point but keep an eye on him. without any more evidence to go on. so I kept an eye open. and began to notice more and more. like, his jokes are often in poor taste. he's started joking with me about wanting to sleep with me, which where I come from is something that married men don't do in the workplace. a thing men don't do in the workplace at all, if they don't want to be sued. and then one day, when I and a young girl were in the library, he came in and began changing into his gym-teachher clothes. casually, as if stripping down to his underwear in front of women and girls at school is a perfectly ordinary thing to do. and then, on friday, another teacher told the DP and I about seeing him grab a different boy's genitals, as a "joke". and at that point, she and I realized that there was no way we could continue to not do anything. if this were america, there's no way he'd even be allowed near kids after incidents like that. so. she's going to report it to the big bosses. whether they bung it up or not, it is their responsibility to deal with him. and I'm going to talk to him directly. because I do have an open line of communication with him, and I have personally witnessed many of these things. and it scares me. but I have to. and what really scares me is that I do believe he is secretly doing horrible things, and will be allowed to keep on teaching anyway. and this feeling I've had about him, from the beginning, absolutely terrifies me. because the last time I felt this way about someone, was when I was working at the group home for homeless teens. I was a supervisor, with a swing shift counselor who worked under me. he and I were a team on the weekends. compadres. but I had a weird feeling about whether he was keeping appropriate boundaries with teenaged girls. who'd been so sexualized, they played up to any man who came around. and he seemed to eat up the attention. but it was just a weird feeling. and with nothing more to go on, what can you do? you can't wreck a man's life on the basis of a weird feeling. so I did nothing. and later, when he did abuse one of our girls, one who had a problem with attempting suicide, I felt so sick. I still know there was nothing I could have done without evidence. but when horrible things did happen, I wished I'd done something. so in a way, it feels like the universe is giving me another chance. maybe this time I can do something about the creepy man before he hurts anyone else. but what if I do something, and nothing happens? that's the hard part. the scary part. but all I know is, that I have to try. I'll let you know what happens.
(((rings))) |