All Carnivores Must Die!!

Yesterday, one of my students made the title comment. I don't think she realized the magnitude of what it was she was saying. I think she understands that she is probably the only one in our tiny school of approximately 100 students and 30 or so staff that are vegetarian. But I don't think she understands that if all carnivores were to die, she would be the only one at school, and in her home. Maybe, after the 'bad day' she claimed to be having yesterday, that might have been okay with her.

She came to my class in a bad mood. But we had some testing to get done so we got started. She worked fairly willingly until we got to a part where I read a short story and she had to retell it to me. I wasn't checking her ability to retell the story but rather her ability to use speech sounds in sentences. Without thinking, I turned the page on a story about two kids who had gone fishing to a page where the mother of one of the kids was cooking up the fish for supper.

At this point, my student threw the book across the room. We both sat there in shock for a few moments before she began apologizing hysterically and it suddenly occurred to me why she had thrown the test book. This is when she launched into her vegetarian rant and the rest of our time was lost.

I have never had a student sit and openly cry before. It was strange. I have had younger students who almost cry when they don't get their way, but that's not what this was. It was different than that. I can't explain why exactly but I understood (partially) where she was coming from. When you are in high school and there is some trait that makes you different than other students (for her: being a vegetarian, for me: having a sibling with a physical handicap), it's hard not to be singled out as being different. People may appear to accept you but don't really know you because of the differentiating circumstance. And for this particular student, she made things worse for herself by being unwilling to accept other perspectives other than her own. And so she was singling herself out as well as being singled out by others.

It was a hard day for her, and a new teaching experience for me. Now I have some ideas of what to do if something like that should happen again.