Unfortunatelyyyy today was kind of not so good. I have this pretty surly girl in my Sunday school class...you know, isn't interested in anything we do or talk about, rolls her eyes every time she talks. I have eighth graders, so this is expected behavior. Plus, for some reason I notice more girls with bad attitudes than boys. Anyway. I made her cry today (I'm not entirely sure how because all I was doing was asking her what I could do to make the class more interesting for her?) claiming that she was feeling really "frustrated" and that she felt like she was really "on the spot" (hard not to do when she's the only student) but after she went to the bathroom to go wash her face (or calm down or whatever) she seemed a bit more...I don't know. But she wasn't crying any more. Anyway, I apologized for upsetting her and just tried to talk to her about Buddhism in life and whatnot (standard fare for my class) and let her go at the regular time, chalking the whole thing up to 13-year-old-girl dramatic tendencies.

Anyway, I went to go find Leanne so we could go get lunch and this chick's mom stops me on the way out. She asked if we could talk and I told her "Absolutely." I figured that she saw her daughter was upset or her daughter told her something and probably wanted to find out what happened...but as soon as we got into my classroom she slammed the door and started yelling "HOW DO YOU GET OFF AT YELLING AT MY DAUGHTER???" and all sorts of other things like "Why are you saying mean things to her" and "Why are you putting her down" and "You shouldn't be yelling at her" etc etc. It was shocking and funny at the same time...absolutely amazing. I literally couldn't get a sentence it because as soon as I'd try to say something she'd start yelling something else at me at which point I was wondering what she was trying to accomplish with this "talk" anyway. Some of the stuff she was telling me what pretty weird too...like how I should "go back to the younger classes and learn how to play" (personally I think that dealing with 1st graders is waaay different than dealing with 8th graders but that's just me) that I need to "lighten up" that I need to "make it fun" but that I need to "give them a lecture" and that I was "too inexperienced" and that (this is the weirdest one) I'm "trying to be an adult when [I'm] just a kid" (wha??). She calmed down after yelling for a while and I was able to talk to her and explain my "curriculum" and the MO of the class. The amazing thing...she seemed totally shocked when I told her that nothing like this has ever happened before and even better was that when I asked her what I had done wrong specifically so that I could be sure and change it, she said that all her daughter had told her was that I was "mean". That's it. She never told her that I yelled at her (probably becauseee I didn't?), she never said why she thought I was "mean". So, wth.

All of you out there who do this for a living? Madddd props to you guys, seriously. This is exactly why I decided years ago that I'd never want to teach for a living. UGH. Anyway, I'm mostly pissed off because they left kind of a bad taste in my mouth and it's kind of ruining my day. Chyeah thanks dudes.