| Hey Ellie, I'm also entirely new to this site but here are my thoughts. Sadly, this sort of objectification isn't limited to your school, it permeates through otherwise vastly different cultures and blankets the world. ... that came off as pretty dramatic, but it is. To point, I work at a school for disabled special needs kids and we had something like this happen with some of our students last year. While I would suggest (especially if you have any kind of evidence / proof this happened) you take this to the most sympathetic / strong willed authority-type figure at your school; even if this isn't someone involved or you think can really help you. As a note, unless you're in some kinda private school (if you are you're probably in a bit worse off position IMO)this person should ideally be a staff member who has worked at the school for some time, contracted and with some seniority behind them, a non-contracted teacher will be less likely to rock the boat. Even if they can't do anything directly, if you can get a stubborn English teacher on your side, they'll fight tooth and nail to get something done even if it means pushing the otherwise apathetic vice principal who would otherwise blow you off into doing something. Sadly, there's a huge chance that nothing good will happen. A lot of this has to do with school boards. In my experience, school boards are generally made up of manipulative, megalomaniacal, control freak parents of a couple kids with no kinds of education qualifications other than knowing how to make enough cash to run a tiny election campaign. That's a good enough short term plan; sadly it probably won't change much. As for the long term you should follow this lead and see where it takes you. Learn all you can about all that is wrong and ought to be changed. In the words of Joey Pulitzer (who he himself was far from being a hero but the words are good enough) who said in his retirement speech " always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty." |
