Do I ever abuse anything?
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That was rhetorical, right?
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Perhaps I was abusing myself?
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would it surprise anyone to hear that as one of the two 6th grade science teachers on my campus one of the 5 classes i teach is a 9 week health unit in which i get a new roster of kids each 9 weeks?
if that doesn’t surprise you, would it surprise you to hear that there’s a chapter on growth and development that covers reproduction through aging and death in our health book?
how would you respond if i told you that my former principal (first 5 years in the building) wouldn’t even consider letting me cover that chapter for three years? and would it be at all surprising if you heard that she finally said i could do it but only if i had a parent opt in/opt out form? oh, and can anyone guess how many of the next two years she was my principal that she sat on that letter without giving me permission?
after my new principal immediately gave me permission with the letter would anyone care to guess what percentage of parents opted out? would you believe less than 5%?
after the first time i taught that chapter can anyone imagine how surprised, no, stunned i was to find out that only 2 of the 23 students had been given any kind of information by their parents about reproduction before that point? i’ve made a lot of questions to this point so you can give me the donald to this statement if you like–the most stunned moment i had in talking to my students was when one of the girls told me that when she started her first period a couple of weeks earlier her mother handed her a pad and told her to call her aunt to explain it to her.
do you think the reason so many parents gave permission was so they wouldn’t have to do it themselves?
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Remind me what state you live in?
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do you not recall that i am from texas?
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Is it possible that they did it because they don’t understand the subject themselves…kind of like the “new math”?
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Didn’t I get a note sent home from RatGirl’s school last year asking me how I taught her how to do long division, why did I do that, and to please stop? Wasn’t it accompanied by a five-page handout “explaining” how they teach long division now? Doesn’t it have something to do with groups and sets? Do I even know how to do that?
Wouldn’t her teacher be horrified that I taught her how and why to do simple integrals over the summer? 
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Won’t her teacher call you a fiend for teaching her simple integrals?
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Isn’t that no longer a problem? Aren’t we at least temporarily done with USAian teachers? Haven’t we already had a parent-teacher conference with her teachers to address her special skills and her challenges? Aren’t we active with the school’s government-mandated counseling program for expats and refugees? Isn’t there much less focus on teaching to standards here? And isn’t their core curriculum a lot more flexible? And isn’t she enjoying a level of freedom that she’s never had in her old school?
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How cool is that?
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How’s her Flemish coming along?
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Isn’t it a whole lot better than mine? Aren’t RatWoman and I both good at languages, and didn’t RatGirl get all those genes? But didn’t we have a pitched battle that we wouldn’t let her skate on the language requirements?
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would it mean that they had native abilities but no knowledge if they managed to produce multiple offspring along the way?
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Have you ever seen how they do long division in Germany?
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have i ever said my home state is in any way a normal type of place?
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Didn’t I just not want to dox/reveal your location without your permission 
?
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Split the country in half for 40 something years?
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That is a long divis… oh, don’t I see how clever you were on that one about halfway through my response?
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