The teacher: ‘I had to jump between two arguing parents’

Monday evening, at home by the fireplace, cat on your lap, husband and teenage son watching Netflix. I read the questionnaires that my students have completed. They had to write down their favorite food (‘eating’), what they most like to do after school (‘keemen’), what makes them happy (‘walking into the evil’), of which sad (‘When my fish fell on the floor ‘). Timmie’s answer to the last question makes me laugh: ‘When Mommy cries.’ ‘Some quarrels between my parents’, Ilse writes.

Divorce Protocol

Timmie and Ilse’s parents are separated, like those of five other children in my class. So I have to make a difference for all these unlucky ones, I think gloomily. This is stated in the Divorce Protocol: ‘At our school, the teacher makes the difference for children whose parents are divorcing.’ How the teacher should do that is also stated, namely by ‘identifying, interpreting, formulating the request for help and acting effectively with the aid of the risk model’, and so it goes on for a while. All I can remember is: “Show genuine warmth, interest and respect.”

Just a traffic controller

I take another questionnaire from my bag, filled in by the divorced parents. It says to whom I have to give their children the next day after school: (step) father, (step) mother, (step) grandmother, (step) grandfather. Or the nanny. Sometimes I feel like a traffic controller. In the case of an unannounced collection, I have to contact the first parent by telephone; while in the meantime I have to keep track of whether the other eight children in question are being picked up by the right person.

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Today I went into the mist

You also have to be careful with school activities. Today I went wrong with sports day. Yesterday I emailed all parents that I had too few help parents. Jolie’s father volunteered at the last minute. In my delight I forgot that Jolie’s mother also came to help, and she had checked in the questionnaire: ‘The parents have problems meeting each other during school activities’. As the teams lined up, Jolie said anxiously: “Teacher, here comes daddy. And mom is there too.”

Arguing Parents

It was as if two planets collided. The entire football field watched as the two began to argue. I jumped in and apologized. Jolie’s father went away angry; her mother wore the goat wig for the rest of the day. I am dying of guilt, especially towards Jolie. I have failed like a stone for ‘signaling, interpreting and acting quickly and effectively’.

We got lucky

I look at my husband and son. It is not self-evident that the three of us are sitting here by the fireplace. Ten years ago, my husband fell in love with a colleague. I was furious, our son inconsolable. My husband eventually chose me, and I managed to forgive him. We got lucky, I realize. “Tea or wine?” he asks. “Wine,” I say. “A big glass.”

This article was previously published in Kek Mama.

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