I didn't actually mean to tell them anything much about my personal life.
But then I saw the way they continued to trash the classroom, and my pleas to them to not undo all of my hard work at putting the room together were futile. I told them it wasn't just about that, and how much it hurts me when students deliberately make messes and think that it's someone else's job to clean up after them. As though someone else's dignity is less important than their need to do whatever, whenever. The first time I ever cried when I was a student teacher-and surprisingly late into the first semester- was when I saw the blatant disrespect they showed to someone else's occupation, as though he or she deserved to be picking spitty Oreo halves out of the carpet because they didn't have a college degree. "Maintaining the school grounds" is very different from "throwing away spit wads," and a grown man should not have to be treated like the hired help by children a quarter of his age. It literally made me sick to my stomach, and it still does.
So I told them a little about my family.
I may be a prissy little white girl and I will never have to live through much of what they have to deal with, but I don't come from a place of privilege either. And no one's father should be treated like that.