I try to be a good person.
First and foremost, I try to be good, to be kind, to do right.
I quit.
Two weeks ago, someone in a local Facebook group attacked my friend's teenage child with autism. "If a child with autism attacked another child unprovoked, and if he had a history of doing this, what would you want to happen to him?"
Friends. This is not how discipline is done.
We don't crowd source it on Facebook without any actual facts. We don't publicly shame disabled children.
And so I wrote, on my own wall, this:
"Last week, I told some third graders that when another kid is breaking a rule and a teacher is handling it, their job is to say NOTHING. Some adults on Facebook could stand some lessons in 3rd grade behavior. #subtweet #snarkyday"
Friends, it so happens that I am a substitute teacher in our district. It also so happens that that has nothing to do with what a subtweet is.
So today I got a phone call from one of my administrators that these same parents who wanted to publicly shame a disabled child had called and reported my post.
That I, an employee of the district, was posting on Facebook about telling kids to keep quiet and keep secrets.
And this administrator called me and said that if he read that post, he would have those same concerns. That I, a substitute paid $100 a day for 1-2 days a week, was a representative of the district and as such was held to a different standard on social media.
I deleted the post. I cried for the rest of the afternoon. I went into a shame spiral.
I'm tired of trying. I'm tired of being a good person. I'm just so tired.
