Rita

Rita is Julius’ history and geography teacher. She has deep-set, staring eyes, bony, square features, and hair that’s a sort of mauve-red (an interesting colour choice for someone in their fifties). When everything’s put together, it gives her a certain gypsy look. This should make her interesting.

But she never smiles, at least not that I’ve ever seen or heard about, and, by many, many accounts from both children and adults (including other teachers), she has a proclivity for yelling … at children. In some cases this yelling doesn’t always appear to have a clear cause, a rational grounding, or a logical pattern. It’s unclear whether this “unjustified yelling” is in the majority or minority (when compared with the (debatably) “justified” yelling), but the fact that it’s even a contest is concerning, not only to a parent, but also to protectors of the principles of good, all-round education.

It’s so bad that Julius asks to stay home on days when he has Rita for anything more than 2 hours. Thursdays in particular he faces with dread, given the four hours of Rita torture that await. It’s highly unfortunate, given his love of geography and history.

It got so bad that he asked Maria to talk to Rita. She did, asking for a more gentle hand given Julius’ struggles with the language, friends (or lack thereof), and the loss of Mr Young (a continuing aching hole in his life). She (Rita) was very receptive, and even horrified that she might be the cause of Julius’ disinclination toward the scholarly dimensions of his life.

She thanked Maria for approaching her, and told Julius to let her know when she was overdoing things. Well, my dear son, contrary to my expectations of his reaction to such an invitation – his shyness manifests itself in a reluctance to join groups that do things he loves (e.g. play soccer, music, etc) for fear of being “shown up” as inadequate – called her on it the first opportunity he had. He told me this in a straight matter-of-fact tone as if it was the most natural thing to do (how our children, like our parents, never cease to surprise).

Unfortunately, Rita’s reaction wasn’t quite as welcoming as her initial invitation. She turned on two of the other boys in the class and told them to “calm down” (this is what Julius had suggested she do). Julius felt the whole point was lost, and therefore that her invitation was insincere. Since then, she has been markedly cold to Julius, even more critical than usual of the other kids, and – of even greater concern – seems to have similarly influenced the demeanour of her normally warm and approachable husband, who is both the headmaster and Julius’ math teacher. Perhaps needless to say, Julius hasn’t told her to calm down since.

We have toyed with the idea of keeping Julius back a year to repeat the fifth grade and allow him to develop a better grasp of Italian before making the big leap to middle school. Methinks that if we do, we’ll be driving a little further than we do now, to a different school …