Mr.Thompson

i was reading a post on fatmammycat today about shit teachers and she mentioned having gone to a boarding school which made me think of Mr. Thompson at New Horizons Academy.


NHA was one of the three schools under the umbrella of New Horizons Youth Ministries. There was a summer camp in Missanabe Ontario called, creatively, Missanabe Woods Academy. There was New Horizons Academy, a year-round "boarding school" in Marion, Indiana. And Esquila Carribe, hell on earth, in the Dominican Republic. That is a list, in a progressively intensive order, of their programs designed to help "high potential, under achieveing youth" rid themselves of their fuckery. Unfortunately, for most people who attended, it ended up doing more harm than good. But nobody died (except for a boy who was swpet away by a flash flood in a gorge in the d.r., but that was a freak accident) so parents weren't really too concerned.

It helped (them) that all your mail was read going in and out and you "received consequences" if your letters were deemed to be "emotionally manipulative". Also, for the first three months, the only contact with family was through letters. In the fourth month, your progress was assesed and if you were deemed well enough to receive phone calls, you could have a 20 minute conversation with your parents once a month. These were recorded and reviewed by your counsellor.



anyway. we had school in NHA with homeroom teachers who, at the end of the day, would fill out a point sheet that would be added to your daily point sheet, updated by your house parents. Mr. Jackson (my house father at the time) had recently instituted a new rule that anyone who scored a two or below (points were awarded on a scale of 0-5, 5 being the highest and rarely given out) at school in any area would have to run a certain number of times depending on the score and how many areas in which you were deficient. Once for a two, twice for a one, and three times for a zero. Multiplied by how many areas, which was up to four or five, i can't remember.



Running was no fun. It was a 3/4 of a mile loop with a near impossible time limit, generally 90 seconds, which, if you ran over (and you almost always did), you'd have to do it again with 10 more seconds added to the limit. This extra 10 seconds meant absolutely jack shit, cause you were so exhausted from the first run that you generally ran over the limit on the second one as well. What more often than not ended up happening is that you would run for the entire work time (about and hour and a half) or until your house father took pity on you and let you stop. i particularly hated running because i have stress induced asthma and no inhaler. so about halfway through the first run, my throat would start constricting, my lungs would burn, and my ribs would ache. and then on the second run, my bottom teeth would start with this buzzing/itching feeling and the blood would pound in my temples, giving me a god-awful headache. Needless to say, i tried my damn hardest to avoid running.

But Mr. Thompson hated me. For reasons unknown, he had decided that i was shit and it was his god-appointed duty to make my life hell. He would never give me anything above a two, no matter how hard i tried. At first i thought it was me, maybe i was unknowingly fucking up somewhwere, so i had some of the higher ranking girls in the house pay attention to what i was doing to help me figure out where i was going wrong. But no, he was just a douche bag. So one night, during our free time, i studied the handbook and memorized every way in which i could "go above and beyond" in my performance. The next day, that's all i thought about. i volunteered every time there was opportunity, responded first to every thing he said (responding: after every time a staff member says something your response needs to be prompt with either "yes" or "okay"), cleaned off the table after lunch, just fucking everything i could think of to get a good score and not have to run. At the end of the day, i was so sure that i'd gotten at least a four if not a five that i was damn near giddy at the prospect of Mr.Jackson seeing it and giving approval of my performance.

solid twos. all the way down. i had never been more livid in my life. even now, thinking about it, my heart starts pounding in my throat and i can feel myself getting flush. But here's the shittiest part of all of it. you're not allowed to be angry. staff members are the ones who "set your reality" and if you get mad, it means that you're not accepting their authority or "facing your reality", which was another area on your pointsheet.

the walk back to the house that afternoon was torture. the rage over knowing i would have to run when i didn't deserve it. the helplessness that there was nothing i could do to avoid it. and the larger feeling of hopelessness that i would never get out of that place. without better scores in school, there was no chance of moving up a level, and the judge had told me i couldn't leave until i had reached fourth.

i was so consumed with my thoughts that i hadn't realized what i was doing until we reached the house and i went to take off my coat. my fingers were sticky and when i looked down, bloody. i had, in my attempt to not explode, torn a strip of skin off my forearm.
i don't really remember the run that day. i don't know if i was able to make the time or not. i do remember, though, that a couple of the high rankers that night told mr. jackson what had really happened at school, and the next day nikki jackson went in with me to confront mr. thompson. his face was blank and he gave some non-commital answers about my performance.
after that i got threes in everything. i knew i should have been scored higher but not having to run was the best i could hope for with him. in a month or two, we got a new girl in our house, sarah, and god apparently gave mr.thompson a new assignment.
he fucked with her head until one of the girls in another house accused mr.thompson of sexual harassment and he became a boys' homeroom teacher for the rest of the time i was there.

i hadn't thought about all that in a long time. just thought i'd share.