Divine Angel said:

Today I was mostly with older kids, years 5 and 6. They wrote about their school holidays. Some kids had really shitty holidays and refused to write about it, but some kids talked to me about it instead. Some kids didn’t get anything for Easter. Some kids witnessed, or were part of, DV situations. Some kids have generational trauma. Some kids were forced to stay with relatives they don’t like/hurt them.

I just don’t understand how people can do things to their kids, partners, and ex-partners. I’d never make it through Arts’ course.

I also corrected a year 2 teacher who had written “what are galexy’s made of?”

:(((((

It is really heartbreaking.

I was at a large high school, and an adolescent was very concrete about his suicide plan for that evening. So, between classes I was desperately trying to find out what systems were in place.

One Year 7 had seen his father try and hang himself the night before. So I got all the kids to write a caring and soothing thing for him. They wrote a lot and I got everyone to read what they had written out. Before I could explain I got a serve from not giving them the busy work.

I had a student tell me about this terrible bullying they were undergoing. They were in a very bad way.

Then teachers being bullied by other teachers and the politics. That was disturbing.

The endless paper work. Got there at 5.30am to get everything done for the day, left at 7pm and went home to prep for the next day. We had to differentiate for 5-6 levels in the class which can take 15 hours preparation.

If I had had a mentor maybe I could have made it through.

Another student sobbed as, even though both parents worked, they have had lived in a tent for three years. She was crying because she couldn’t get her homework done at night.

The bigotry in the staff rooms against Aboriginal students and Students with Disabilities was out there. But when they said things directly to the students. Yeah.

If it was Wednesday and a kid tells you they haven’t eaten since Monday and you give them $5 for lunch the Queensland Teacher’s Union will write you up for favouritism. At the time it was well known that 1 in 5 kids went to bed without dinner or to school for breakfast. So feic the Queensland Teacher’s Union.

I then did some work for OzHarvest collecting up the food from Woollies and Coles and redistributing that food to lower socio-economic communities and running corporate events where it was a team building exercise to create 300 meals in a day.

That’s a lot in one day Divine Angel.