Chinarchy

You Look Down But Far From Out

by Anderson | 07/01/10 | 5 comments

In the interest of keeping this brief: I lost.

Before I explain that further, I just wanted to thank everyone and anyone who listened to the initial podcast and offered me advice or support. It really, really meant a lot to me. Thank you.

Okay, so I did what I thought was most risky, but also had the greatest chance of getting Cathy fired. I called a parent behind the headmaster’s back.

I talked to one of the parents I trusted and told her about what happened. If the headmaster ever found out, I would be immediately fired. She would be extremely embarrassed — it would be a huge loss of face — and she’d feel completely betrayed. But I thought it was my best shot.

Anyway, the parent told me that her daughter, and other children, had complained about Cathy, and other parents knew she wasn’t a good teacher.

Until my phone call, they thought she was just a mean person. I explained that it was much worse than that: she is a violent, terrible person.

We talked for almost twenty minutes, and the parent was very sympathetic and understanding and sounded very concerned. But she didn’t want to call and demand that Cathy be fired. She told me she would pass along the info to the other parents (without my name) and maybe they would decide to do something. But, she said, probably the best thing to do was just wait and see what happened over the next few weeks.

Yeah. Part of me is hopeful that the rest of the parents will decide to take action. But most of me just feels frustrated and defeated. If I can’t even get foreigner parents to take a hard stance on this, what can I do? It’s depressing.

After we talked, the parent sent me an email saying that it might be better that Cathy didn’t get fired. Now she’ll be watched closer and won’t just transfer to another school and do the same things. It just sounded like she was trying to justify her inaction to herself. I didn’t bother replying.

So Cathy is back in the classroom. And the general climate in the school is pretty cold right now.

It’s not all bad. I heard from one assistant that not all of the other teachers are angry about what I did. Some of them know Cathy is terrible but felt like they couldn’t speak out against her. The pressure to protect other teachers is too strong. But they are glad that I did something.

Still, it’s not a victory. It’s a not-fully-crushing defeat. But I guess I’ll have to take it…

Cathy is still here. But so am I.