Questa è Enida

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It just wasn’t her day. Kitreena forgot to bring her violin to school, and so she went straight to the music room just like what she had been doing the whole of last week, to wait for me to bring the violin. When she called me from the music teacher’s phone, I gave her a hard time for not setting it out by the door like usual. But I came back to school anyway, with her violin.

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Her class teacher came to the music room after Kitreena called me (as I was told later that Friday) and scolded her for being ‘blur’. Kitreena was ‘supposed’ to be in her class – although it had been okay for her to be practicing her orchestra on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday (and not having to be in her homeroom). She felt embarrassed and offended, to say the least, being yelled and shouted at by Ms. S in front of everyone in her orchestra. I have heard stories of her being yelled at in her classroom, but this time it wasn’t in front of her other friends who are used to being yelled at.

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And on top of all that… Kitreena fell during recess. Though much of the pain is self chosen, I knew the pain on her knees and elbows was nothing compared to being humiliated by her own teacher for something very trivial. And what was with the name-calling and scolding students for being ‘blur’? Is it not a teacher’s job to clarify rules to the children and to remind them when they forget? I was not going to defend my child for her tendency for being confused. But the yelling and shouting was beyond me.

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I am going to school this Thursday for the parent-teacher meeting. And someone who has been yelling and humiliating not only my child but many other eleven-year-old children, damaging their self-esteem in the process, is so going to have a professional slap on the wrist from me. And from the Principal. I do not send my kids to an international school to be yelled at and embarrassed by an incompetent English teacher who pronounces the word silhouette as sil-how-tea. Na’ah!

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Watch me.

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