Letter: Teachers deserve much praise

EDITOR,
Kudos to Scotts Valley High School for their recent Expo Night! The students who ran the event were incredible, and we should all be proud of the job that SVHS teachers have accomplished with these students. They were smart, kind, respectful and simply terrific, and so was the program.
Sadly, however, I was standing in the back of the auditorium near five girls, perhaps from the middle school, who were loud, disruptive and bullyish. I watched them bully a much smaller girl off and on for at least 30 minutes. This girl kept her back to the bullies while they demeaned her, entertained each other with their mean antics and clearly enjoyed their own mean spirits. No parent intervened, so clearly the mean girls think that this behavior is just fine. It was awful to watch, and I recalled all the mean girl bullies at my junior high and high school years ago who had made my daily life miserable.
You might ask why I didn’t intervene on behalf of the smaller girl, why I didn’t ask the girls to stop. Well, I’m embarrassed to say that I’m still afraid of large groups of mean teenaged girls, and I’m an adult. I wanted these girls’ parents to make them stop. I wanted their parents to insist that their daughters be kind. I stood there and thought of all the fabulous SVHS teachers and how much time they’ll have to spend changing these bullyish girls and consoling their victims.
Rose Qin, Scotts Valley