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Marriage, parenting, family drama — someone's gotta say what we're all thinking, and Joseph Tito is just unhinged enough to do it. Every week Joseph — gay dad of twin girls, bestselling author, and a menace with a microphone — reads your messiest letters and torches the villains with savage wit, brutal honesty, and just enough heart to remind you you're not alone in the chaos. From husbands who treat wives like free secretaries with dental benefits, to in-laws who think love has a rulebook, nothing is safe from the roast. Therapy meets stand-up meets that friend who's three glasses of wine deep and finally telling the truth. Send your mess to betweenthecoversmag.com. This is Joseph Tito — and I bitch so you don't have to.
There is a five year old in a classroom in this province who told his teacher he was going to rip her face off and eat it. And she said, do you want salt with that? That's it. That's the episode. Give that woman a raise and a Xanax.
Joseph Tito:Welcome to Bitch Fest.
Theme song:Welcome to the Bitch Fest. Sisterhood Supreme. Sip that tea, spill the shade, hear our sassy dreams. Yes. I'm a mic.
Theme song:This loud and unfiltered. Stay tuned, hon.
Joseph Tito:I'm Joseph Tito, gay dad, twin girls, King City, Ontario. Best selling author, which means I sold a lot of books to my mother's friends, and now I'm doing a podcast in a room over the garage. Today's letter is about school, which is perfect because I'm the parent every teacher hates. Not the loud one, the oblivious one. Stella and Mia come home, I say, how was your day?
Joseph Tito:They say, fine. And I go, great. And I move on with my life like I just got a receipt. Meanwhile, a teacher spent six hours doing something between air traffic control and a hostage negotiation and my contribution to the whole operation was signing a form three days late in the Sobeys parking lot. So a teacher wrote in anonymously, very anonymously.
Joseph Tito:Signed it, definitely not an educator, which is the least convincing sentence I've ever read and I once told a Costco employee I was just looking. She's not allowed to tell you what happens in your kid's classroom, legally, so she told me. And I'm allowed to tell you, because I have no credentials and nothing to lose. This episode of Bitch Fest is brought to you by Mathnasium of Newmarket. Newmarket.
Joseph Tito:Not Aurora, not Vaughan, not the one by your cousin. Newmarket. It's run by Maria Eliza, Italian, former teacher. She heard a letter like today's. She left.
Joseph Tito:Now kids come to her, one at a time, sitting down, doing math. On purpose. I've watched it. It's like watching a dog use a fork. She's incredible.
Joseph Tito:She's the only woman in York Region who can hear the words long division without pouring a drink. I cannot say the same. Dollars 200 off. It's in the BTC Magazine app. Free app.
Joseph Tito:Real money. Mathnasium. Of Newmarket. Tell her Joseph sent you. She'll pretend she doesn't know me.
Joseph Tito:That's our arrangement. Okay, back to the teacher who's not allowed to talk.
Theme song:Bitch fest on, honey spill that tea shoe, bop dish the dirt can party with me.
Joseph Tito:I cut it down girl, you wrote me a novel. Here's the heart of it. Dear bitch fest, most of you don't know what happens inside school walls and the people who could tell you are legally not allowed to. There's a five year old in a classroom who is neurodiverse. Almost every day he has a meltdown that stops everything.
Joseph Tito:He screams that he's going to kill you, get your family, cut you. Then he laughs. Because he knows that gets attention. He kicks shins, scratches, bites fingers, elbows, clothes, punches, spits. He's threatened to take scissors to hair.
Joseph Tito:So far it's aimed at the adults. So far. The other kids, the neurotypical ones, your kids, are watching this every day. They're told to ignore it and let the adults do their job. And their learning stops, because their needs are never as urgent as his.
Joseph Tito:One day he told his teacher he was going to rip her face off and eat it. A few days earlier, he'd melted down over a lunch that was too salty. So she looked him in the eye, in front of the whole class, and said, Do you want salt with that? He was disgusted. She asked him, Calm as anything, which part is disgusting?
Joseph Tito:Ripping my face off or the salt? He said the salt. Parents, the educators living through this cannot tell you, because privacy laws protect the child causing the harm. A two second incident is ten minutes of paperwork and a debrief that eats their evening and their sleep. When a teacher tells you something, understand it's only what she's legally allowed to say, and underneath it is a hellish inferno you will never know about.
Joseph Tito:And everyone who complains that teachers get the summers off needs to remember they spend those two months recovering from ten months of this every day. Ask your kids what they've seen. Join your parent council. And listen to what teachers are not saying when they do say something. It's code.
Joseph Tito:Anonymous. Definitely not an educator.
Theme song:Bitch vest, some honey spill that tea, shoe bop dish, the dirt can party with me.
Joseph Tito:Okay. First, I'm not roasting a five year old. I'm a lot of things. I'm not that. He's five.
Joseph Tito:He's not a villain. He's a fire alarm somebody wired into a child and then walked away from. And the writer knows that. Read it again. Every single hit in that letter lands on the adults.
Joseph Tito:The paperwork, the debrief, the sleep, the Summers-Off comment. This is not a letter about a kid. This is a letter about being the only adult in a room with 25 children and a situation, and then being told by the province, also, you can't talk about it. So here's the turn. This was never about him.
Joseph Tito:This is about a system that put one teacher, zero assistants, and 24 bystanders in a room, set it on fire, and made it illegal to yell fire. And then it gave her a language. That's the part that got me. Teachers speak in code, and we, the parents, nod like we understand it. He had a big day.
Joseph Tito:Girl, that's not a day. That's a police report. We're working on regulation. Somebody got bit. Your daughter was very patient today.
Joseph Tito:Your daughter watched a child threaten an adult with scissors and then did her phonics. He's very passionate. He's a lawsuit. And the teacher can't say any of that because privacy. And you know what?
Joseph Tito:Fine. I get why the law exists. Nobody wants some kid's worst day in a group chat of 40 mothers named Karen. But what the law forgot is that the other 24 kids in that room are also somebody's kid, and their privacy apparently ends at learned nothing today and can't tell you why. So I did what I do.
Joseph Tito:I went home and I actually asked, not how was your day. I asked Mia, did anything weird happen at school? And she said, and I'm not making this up, well, a boy threw a chair, but that's just Tuesday. That's just Tuesday. My daughter has a Tuesday.
Joseph Tito:She's normalized furniture, and I've been standing at the door every afternoon going, great. And then I did the math on what I actually know about my kid's school. I know the pizza day schedule. I know where the crossing guard stands. Hi, Terry.
Joseph Tito:I know which mom parks like she's fleeing a crime. I could not tell you the name of the educational assistant in the room. If there is one, there might not be one. Apparently, that's the whole problem. I've spent more time researching a 14 foot Christmas tree than the room my children sit in for six hours a day.
Joseph Tito:And here's the part I actually don't want to say. I have been Summers-Off Steve. You know Steve. Steve stands at a barbecue with a Corona and says, Must be nice, two months off. Steve thinks teaching is a nine to three job with a pension.
Joseph Tito:Steve has never once had a five year old tell him he's going to eat his face because if he had, Steve would need a mental health leave and a podcast about it. I've said it. Not at a barbecue. Worse, to a teacher. At a meet the teacher night.
Joseph Tito:As a joke. So what do you do all summer? She smiled. Like a hostage. And now I know what that smile was.
Joseph Tito:That smile was, I'm legally not allowed to tell you what a day in this room costs me, so I'm going to nod and go home and not sleep. Steve, I'm so sorry. I was you, in good shoes. So here's what you actually do, because be more involved is Brene Brown with a Costco card and I refuse. One, tonight, at dinner, don't say how was school?
Joseph Tito:Say this, Tell me the weirdest thing that happened in your class today. Weird. Not bad. Kids will tell you weird. Weird is where the chair is.
Joseph Tito:Next time the teacher says he had a big day, you say, Understood. Is there anything I should be asking my kid about at home? That's it. You didn't ask her to break the law, you told her you can read. Watch her face.
Joseph Tito:That's the whole conversation. Three. Parent counsel. Go once. Sit at the back like you're at your cousin's wedding, and when they open the floor, ask one question.
Joseph Tito:How many educational assistants are in this building, and how many were there three years ago? And then shut up and let the number sit in the room. Because here's why that works, and here's the part nobody wants. The teacher can't say the thing. The principal won't say the thing.
Joseph Tito:The board will say the thing in a 40 page PDF nobody opens. The only people in this whole arrangement who are allowed to say the thing out loud, in public, with names, are you, the parents. You're the only ones who aren't gagged. And you've been using that freedom to complain about pizza day. That teacher wrote to a podcast called Bitch Fest because it was the only door that wasn't locked.
Joseph Tito:Think about that. She's got a master's and a mortgage, and the safest place for her to tell the truth was a gay man with a microphone over a garage. That's not a funny line. That's the actual bitch.
Theme song:Bitch Fest, some honey spill that tea, shoe bop dish, the dirt can party with me.
Joseph Tito:Quick thing before I let you go, and then I'll get back to being awful. My memoir is out now. The Dad Diaries from Cormorant Books. It's how I had my girls. 38, my relationship over, living in my parents' basement in Richmond Hill, five embryo transfers and nobody could tell me whether my own children would be allowed into this country.
Joseph Tito:Light beach read. Signed copies at thedaddiaries.com, also Amazon and Indigo. And the magazine this whole show crawled out of, between the covers, is free. App Store, Google Play, search BTC Magazine. Download it so a middle aged man in King City can feel something.
Joseph Tito:So, definitely not an educator. Thank you. I hope you get to sleep through a night this week. I hope somebody in your building says I've got him and means it. And I hope the salt thing goes in a textbook because that is the single best piece of classroom management I've ever heard and you did it with a lunch bag.
Joseph Tito:And to the little guy, buddy, I hope somebody gets you what you need. Not because you're the villain, because you're five and the villain is a spreadsheet. Steve, put the corona down. Go to the meeting. Next week, the family group chat and the one relative who only types in question marks.
Joseph Tito:Until then, keep being unapologetically you, loud, chaotic, and standing at your front door at 03:15 saying great to a child who just watched a chair fly. This is Joseph Tito, and I bitch so you don't have