After Happy Hour: A Blog about Sexism

It's Friday night. I'm finally home after tackling Happy Hour with some of my co-workers. It was meant to be relaxing but in effect it extended shop talk into the night and I now feel like I've been working for 15 hours straight. I'm exhausted, sore from leading the students in push ups at PE yesterday, sore from having my privacy invaded and my money stolen, and tired of it all. A hug at the end of all of this would do me good. The cat wasn't very responsive to my need for a little bit of affection tonight.

The last few days have been hard to detach from. The sexism I am facing from my students and the blatant disrespect of my position, heightened by the fact that I am a women, is shocking. I was not prepared. In my experience as a substitute teacher, the boys were obedient if not subservient. Once, as I prepared to fill in for a fourth grade teacher who had lost her voice, I saw the boys run up to the window and take a peek at me, their teacher for the day. Then they shouted to the other boys, "Our teacher's fine! I'm gonna be so good today." I may not be fine, but there certainly was some sort of womanly power at my service with the boys I've taught in the past. It was the girls I had trouble with, generally. They seemed to get territorial with me. But at this school, it's the reverse. A class of all girls (which I practically have in the afternoon with 21 girls and only 10 boys, would do me well at this point. I was not expecting to feel so tested, judged, and even disliked by the boys in my classrooms. I am not imagining this. The other female teachers are battling it too while the male teachers at my school suggest I call the boys out on it.

Yesterday, when we split the boys and girls in PE and the assistant principal left me with the boys... we were in the courtyard doing stretches before running the mile, and one of my advisees, a very beautiful girl, walked by. One of my ninth grade boys who has been a handful since day one, made some very explicit and inappropriate comments about her as she walked by. I called him on this and told him it was inappropriate, which got me no where. Immediately afterward, I was in the lunch room discussing this situation with my colleagues (there are more male teachers at my school than female). One of my colleagues suggested that I should have said to him, "Man, you have to work on your game. How do you think you'll ever get the ladies if you talk like that?" This suggestion disgusted me. As soon as my colleague suggested it, he rescinded the idea stating, "I guess that wouldn't really work coming from you, but a guy could say it." That's just it folks, this is much larger than any conversation I could have with the kid if the men at my school are discussing women in this way even if it's their way of reaching the boys on their level. Women are game. How am I ever to earn the respect of the boys in my class when they are steeped in a school culture where male teachers egg their male students on and where the boys are raised in a culture where women are subservient, nevermind that women are the foundation of their lives and many of their fathers are missing in action? It appears to me to be a battle I can't win. But the battle I must somehow win is not believing the message that I'm inferior because I'm a woman. I would be lying if I didn't admit that I feel low right now. I think I must have been somewhat sheltered from this stupid man's world, at least partially. Did my own school, my own family, my own culture do such a good job of promoting me as a full and equal citizen despite my gender that this encounter can be so jolting? I have faced chauvinism in this country, in Spain and Morocco, and in personal relationships, too, and yet I feel unhinged and unprepared for this.