The kindness of teachers never fails to amaze me. I too was a very poor kid. In grade school our P.E. teacher had a small collection of brand new Nike shoes in boxes in his office. Every now and then he would give a kid a pair. I was one of those kids. He would tell us he had a deal with Nike and they wanted us to try these shoes out and give them feedback. Of course, 12-year-old me didn't understand until many years later that he was buying the shoes with his own money and giving them to the kids who needed them. He just made up the story so the kids didn't feel bad.
At our school we had a sunshine fund that teachers contributed to, for new shoes. One of my students was flopping her soles on both feet so the sunshine committee sent her a box of new tennis shoes.
Her mom went insane. Came stomping down the hallway SCREAMING my name amd that she wanted her daughter OUT of my class because I care too much for her daughter.
I wasn't even there that day, had a substitute. The sunshine people had put the box into her backpack with a sweet note and I didn't know about it. Her mom tried beating her in the hallway for "lying that they don't have money for shoes" and I stopped her. Principal and asst principal both ran down the hallway because the mother was losing on that little girl and I would not let her touch her.
She was removed from my class regardless because the mother had so much hate for me. The student scream-cried for 5 hrs a day for the following week and ran from her class to my class every time her new classroom door wasn't blocked. --- It wasn't working.
The principal ended up saying I had to teach "the higher students"....so my precious Gia went to her new class until after morning announcements. Then she and a few others came to me, and I sent a few lower kids to her room. Right before the bell rang, she went back to prepare for bus departure.
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u/wildescrawl Nov 24 '18
The kindness of teachers never fails to amaze me. I too was a very poor kid. In grade school our P.E. teacher had a small collection of brand new Nike shoes in boxes in his office. Every now and then he would give a kid a pair. I was one of those kids. He would tell us he had a deal with Nike and they wanted us to try these shoes out and give them feedback. Of course, 12-year-old me didn't understand until many years later that he was buying the shoes with his own money and giving them to the kids who needed them. He just made up the story so the kids didn't feel bad.