Worst Day of My Life

This past week is one that I am more than happy to forget, but I doubt that will happen anytime soon.

Wednesday was a day that I was not looking forward to seeing. We had a meeting scheduled with the parents of one of my students. This is a student who has a hearing impairment, but it is totally corrected with his hearing aids. His mother continued to make excuses for his behaviors and his lack of work ethic. She continually sends us nasty emails and wants us to make concessions to lower our expectations of him. Sorry, I don't lower my expectations for any student. If we don't push them beyond their limits they will never strive for more.

So we get to the meeting at 12:45 Wednesday afternoon. In attendance for this meeting were me, my two teammates, the hearing specialist for the school system, the system diagnostician, our principal, the director of special education for the system, the parents, and the psychologist hired by the parents. As we all sat down for the meeting I saw the stepfather lean over to the mother and whisper "It's us versus them." I knew at that point we were headed for trouble.

The meeting began with the mother expressing her concerns and demands. We spent the first hour explaining what we expected in our classes and our daily routines. The psychologist continued to interrupt us and kept saying what we were doing would be ineffective for the child since his learning disabilities were so severe. At 1:45 I stopped the meeting to let them know our kids were coming back to class. I asked my student teacher to go back to my class, one teammate went back to her class, and two of us stayed in the meeting to finish up.

For the second hour of the meeting, the school psychologist decided he wanted to run the meeting. He kept shelling out all these observations he had made and what needed to be done to help the child. At one point, the psychologist made an inappropriate comment about the teachers and how we had no clue what was going on with the student. It was right then that I stopped him. I basically told him that his comments were offensive and not appreciated in the slightest. I told him I have been teaching for a number of years and have seen all types of students, and we continually work to make sure ALL my students succeed. I was fed up with all his comments and it had to be stopped. He was doing nothing except add tension and issues in this meeting.

Around 2:20, I excused myself from the meeting because it was about time for our students to transition to the end of day activities. I was needed with my kids more than in that meeting. I get back to my classroom and was filling in my student teacher as to what had happened. As I spoke with her I noticed my left hand was twitching...not shaking, it was twitching! I felt my anger begin to rise, so I excused myself from the classroom and headed for one of the workrooms.

I shut the door to the workroom and totally lost it. I was leaning against the wall and began to cry. My anger continued to rise, and I was then yelling out, kicking the wall, hitting the doors, stomping the floor, praying, etc. I had never been to this level before. I lost all control of my emotions. I stayed in the workroom because it was a safe and secure place to be. I finally calmed down and went back to my classroom. It was the last few minutes of the day, and I saw my kids off for home. They knew something was up, and kept asking if I was okay. I assured them I was okay and would be back to normal in the morning.

Once the kids left, I kept thinking back to the meeting. I once again lost control of my emotions. I just sat in the center of my classroom and began to cry. There I was just rocking back and forth as I lost control of myself. I had to turn on some music just to calm myself down. A few of my friends came into my room to just chat (which was normal), and they were shocked to find me in that state. I asked them all to leave so I could compose myself. It took me a while to quit the crying, shaking, rocking, etc.

Our faculty meeting began at 3:00, but I was in no state to attend. I finally gathered my composure at 3:30 and went to the meeting. However, as I sat in the meeting all I could think about was the earlier events. I just got angry again, and I left the meeting at 3:35. Once I got back to my room, the crying resumed. However, this time I was pacing the floor by doing continuous laps around my student desks. As I was pacing, I also found my left hand continue to twitch. I could not stop it. I was not myself in any manner. I had lost all control. There was no stopping the twitching, the crying, or the pacing. It just had to play out. I continued it all until about 5:15 or so.

What stopped it all? One of my friends came down to my room after the faculty meeting to check on me. I was able to stop and focus enough to talk with her. I could not sit down, though. The hand was still twitching, but I had stopped the crying and pacing. After talking with my friend, I was able to sit down and try to relax for a bit.

I gathered myself and my belonging, then I left the school around 6:30. I got home and fielded several phone calls from those who found out about the meeting and my breakdown. As I tried to explain what went down, I saw my hand begin to twitch again. I finally made the decision to not speak of it again for a few days.

All I can say about what had happened is that I have never seen myself in that state before. I am typically excellent at controlling my emotions. However, something snapped that day, and I had no control. I have been left completely confused as to why I was unable to control myself. It has scared me for days. It has seemingly controlled my life since then. I am afraid that I can somehow get to that state again, and I NEVER want to see that side again.

One more point...the worst part of all this is the feelings of being alone that I have felt.

For now, I am good. I am being careful about what I discuss when friends and family call to check up on me. I have been distancing myself this week just so that I can get back in control of my emotions. I have spent the weekend not interacting with anyone. I have just been keeping to myself.

Thanks for listening, my friends! Talk to you soon.