Along with 500 other burned out teachers in the B. County system, I am euphoric about the beginning of spring break! Our system has a late break, but when we return to school, we just coast to the end of the year in a few weeks.
Tonight, Liberto and I are going to stay in an ocean-view room at the Ocean Plaza Hotel on Tybee Island. A few years ago when Shawn was living here, he and a girlfriend spent the night at that hotel. The following morning, he called and invited us to join them at the beach for some fishing and hanging out. When we met them in their room, I vowed that Liberto and I would find the time to reserve a room of our own, and enjoy the smell and sound of the ocean wafting through the open balcony door, not to mention a sunrise beach walk. I used to love staying in beach-front hotels in Daytona during the years I did on-site AP gradings and never missed a sunrise. But I stopped going because I didn't like being away from the family for a week when on-line grading became an option.
This morning, Liberto will set up the raised beds for my fast-growing strawberries and we'll also go to the gym. We'll drive out to Tybee in mid-afternoon. Just think, tomorrow afternoon, I'll have time to go to a movie with him. I'm not even going to think about papers or lesson plans until next weekend.
I have a test in my Anatomy and Physiology class Monday night, so I'll even have time to study for that. Last week, we studied the brain, which I found just as fascinating this time around as I did when I learned about it in graduate school. I asked the professor if she had read Oliver Sachs' first mainstream book, Anthropologist on Mars, describing the case histories of patients with various brain oddities or injuries. She had, and told the class about it. I must re-read more of his books. The filter through which we perceive everything has enough variations even among normal, un-injured humans, to create our different perceptions of reality.
A little drama at school this week. First, the math teacher. I feel so sorry for him because his class of low-achieving repeaters couldn't care less, never pay attention, talk, interrupt, and do anything but the work. On Wednesday, I returned to my classroom about ten minutes early so I could unpack my hand-outs and sort a few papers. As I came in, he was screaming, "BE QUIET!!! SHUT UP, RIGHT NOW!" He continued, "TOMORROW I WILL HAVE THE PRINCIPAL SITTING IN THIS CLASS FOR THE WHOLE PERIOD! OR ONE OF THE AP's! OR ONE OF THE SECURITY GUARDS! I WANT THEM TO SEE WHAT GOES ON IN HERE!" Meanwhile, the saucy girl, K., from my Basic Reading class, started her usual loud, in-your-face, smart-ass back talk: "I ain't gonna blah blah blah you ain't gonna blah blah blah my Daddy gonna blah blah blah..." Mr. T., red in the face, turned to me and said rigidly, "Could you watch them for a minute?" I said sure, and he stormed out, slamming the door behind him. The room shook. I assumed he was on his way to get the principal or one of the school cops. Five minutes passed. I unpacked my paper, logged him out of the computer and logged myself on. Just as the bell rang, he returned, alone, still red and breathing heavily. As the kids filed out, I apologized to him for coming back to the room ten minutes early, thinking that maybe my opening the door and walking in had set the kids off. With no attention span, they lose their focus if they notice a speck on the wall or if a pencil drops. Mr. T. said, "I'm glad you came back early. You just saved my job. I was going to hit K. I was really going to hit K. I've never hit a female before, but I came close to it. Your being here gave me the chance to leave and cool off." The sad part is that K. or any other student can verbally abuse a teacher all day long, but the teacher would be the one in deep trouble if he or she lost it and called K. the name she deserves to be called. God forbid, if a teacher ever hit a student, even if the student struck first, the teacher would be fired that day, and the student would be back at her desk the next day, continuing to disrupt.
Mr. T. and I often ask each other in bewilderment why, why, WHY the school system allows hostile, disinterested, evil-minded, trouble-making students to stay on and on and on, even after numerous ISS's and OSS's. What state or federal law protects these students? Take B, for example, the student in my second block class. He's not as demonic as K., from Basic Reading, and can sometimes control himself for stretches of up to 45 minutes. He's even polite occasionally. Then he'll blurt out to the class "C----- S----- F----------!", which triggers the borderline bad students to shift to the Dark side and begin acting up too. B. throws things. He curses. He shouts vulgarities. He shouts racist remarks. He gets up, walks around, and playfully punches others. He never does any assignments. I've even put him to work filing things for me, anything to keep him busy since he apparently chooses not to do any academic work. Over the past three months, I've written him up probably 15 times. He came in bragging one day that Mr. W. had given him a warning. "Hah, hah, and I've had 20 write-ups between all the teachers, ha ha." That sends a message to the class that if B. can go to the extreme, and nothing happens, what lesser things can they do without consequence? I finally e-mailed Mr. W. and told him that B. is an extreme hazard in the classroom, and is the administration planning to do anything? Mr. W. responded that he is doing the paperwork to get B. expelled, but he has to be sure to have every piece of evidence in place or else B. will weasel out of it on a technicality. On Thursday, B. got up from his seat, walked over to another guy, T., and hit him in the balls, excuse my non-euphemistic language, for no reason. T's face crunched in pain. I pressed the buzzer on the wall and asked the secretary to send Mr. W. to the room right now. A few minutes passed. B. got up with a smile and said, "I'll just leave now" and headed down the hall. Mr. W. arrived five minutes later. I told him what happened, and asked again how the expulsion was coming along. He said he was meeting with B's father that afternoon and was sending the expulsion papers to the Board. However, he said, the Board would probably reject the expulsion. REJECT? I was speechless. Why would the School Board or the State or the Feds, whoever has the last word, support having a student like this remain in school? This will definitely be a point to research for my next book, along with the stories of classroom horror which I've experienced, observed, and heard of from other teachers. Mr. W. continued, "But tomorrow, I'm going to have B. stay with me, and I'm going to find him a spot around the school to stay for the rest of the school year, after spring break. He won't be coming to your class anymore." The next morning, B. came to my class as usual and asked for a pass to the Media Center, which I was all-too-happy to provide. Mr. W. had probably arranged for him to sit in there for the class period, I thought. Twenty minutes later, B. made his usual dramatic entrance into my room, saying proudly, "I got kicked out of the Media Center!" I discreetly emailed Mr. W., and asked him if he could pick up B. and find a new location for him. He never replied.
If I weren't so afraid B would injure someone, I'd get him some crochet hooks or knitting needles and tell him to crochet a blanket during class. He loves doing manual activities; it's academics he hates.
Another student, N., is the quietest, shyest, least trouble-making student I've ever met. He has been absent a lot lately, but so have other students. Many kids have family issues or illnesses that cause a lot of absences, so I thought N. did too, until Mr. B., another teacher, emailed that N. had been in his second block class all week, but that Mr. B. had seen him walk out of the school, get in his car, and drive away. He has also skipped Ms. K's class. N. was written up for all this skipping. The solution? The AP met with N. and told him he could leave every day after third block and go home. Now that's logical, to punish him for skipping by allowing him skip his fourth block class permanently.
One more case: A., a fifth-year senior with the concentration of a koi fish, who is second to B. in disrupting the same class. He has failing averages in my class and his others. His poor mother called for a conference with his teachers and the guidance counselor. She was such a pretty, classy, well-dressed, articulate woman, near tears, who said she doesn't know what to do. She is divorced, and A. rules the household. She can't get him to study, to stay in at night, to stop getting into fights, to stop getting arrested, to stop smoking pot. In fact, he gets physical with her, pushing her around. She wants him out of the house. She can't wait until he turns 18 in June so that she will no longer be responsible for whatever trouble he gets into. I asked her why she didn't change the locks on the house and put all his things on the curb. She replied, "Because he would break all the windows of the house to get back in."
Good Lord! If she can't control him, why should I be able to in the classroom??
When I retire, I'm going to get a grass roots group together and campaign the State Legislature for new laws with teeth that cleanse the school system of students that clearly don't want to be there. In theory, I hate the sound of this proposal. But I'm there, on the front lines, and see the ripple effect that bad students have on the good ones.
Time to forget about school and get to the gym with Liberto. Happy spring break!
No comments:
Post a Comment