A Special Child Introduced

I have been debating all year about posting entries about one of my students, because this child is so very distinct, it would make identification of her easy, and that's not my intent at all. I want it to all remain anonymous, and just be a commentary on the crazy things that people do these days with their children, and what kids are doing, since it is so very funny a lot of the time.


So I didn't write any of the numerous, insane things that happened. And trust me, there are plenty. I don't think I'll have another student like this one, no matter how long I remain teaching.


But as the year is over, and I am gearing up for a fresh crop of kiddos, I feel the need to share a few of the craziest stories about this student, as I just can't hold it in anymore. As countless people have said, as I mention the latest thing she did, "I really don't know how you stood it."


I don't either.


For ease in storytelling, I will give this student a name, which of course isn't the real one. We'll call her Sarah.


Now, Sarah was on another team at my school, but after about 1 month was moved to our team, as we were "a better environment for this particular student." This translates to the other team was full of new teachers and teachers who complain if they have any student that isn't perfect, and so they moved her to our team, since they couldn't handle her.


We had been warned about her; we had a whole special meeting about her. She was placed in my homeroom and in my class for language arts. The first day she arrived, she sat on my floor and told me she didn't want to do the work. This was a little surprising, as I do work with 12-year-olds, and generally it takes them awhile to be comfortable enough to say things like that.


So I said that I was sorry to hear that, but she needed to do it anyway. She promptly threw a fit, and laid down on the floor and kicked her feet, and started screaming.


This obviously shocked me. (and the other students).


No matter how they had talked about her being "special" in the meeting, and how we would have to work with her carefully, I wasn't prepared for a temper tantrum that would make a 2-year-old proud.


I attempted to get her off the floor, and eventually managed to get her in a desk, with her work in front of her. When I stopped by to check on her later, she was playing with a piece of plastic. I asked what it was, and she ignored me, so I asked her what she was doing. Then she told me what it was.


She said, "Oh, this? This is just a piece of plastic. But it's a special piece of plastic. It's part of a bomb that I am going to build to blow you up."


Let me tell you, I was floored.

After school that day, I went to my administrator's office for advice. Now, I do love my administrator, but she has better things to do than worry about this child, so I was basically just told to make do, deal with it, and ignore the threats.

I then went to several other people at my school, and I was told just to ignore it, she didn't mean it.

I was angry about it then, and I still am. Whether or not she meant it, she said it. It's not safe to have hear around other students when she is making threats like that. It's just not. If she were of low intelligence, maybe, but she has an extremely high IQ, past Giftedness even, and she could easily figure out how to make a bomb.

But I had to go back and just do my best. Throughout many other threats to me, my co-teacher, and the other teachers on my team, we were told just to have a little compassion for this student, who is going through so much.

What about me? What about the other students? I kept trying to get them to see that if something did happen, and she hurt other students, we would be in very deep trouble, since she was threatening them!

I kept a log of everything she did, so that if anything did happen, I had a list of things leading up to the event.

Eventually I had enough, and wrote a referral for a threat to me and one of the other students. Nothing really happened, just one day in ISS, but it made it so that she was aware it was not okay to make threats anymore, and she mostly stopped. But she still did things like throwing herself on the floor, screaming, telling the other kids they were stupid, yelling out during tests or when was reading out loud, etc.

I really do not know how I made it.

When Children Get Stubborn

Today I had my first official grappling with a student, over whether or not he would behave.

I did win, but it was almost a toss-up for awhile. He was amazingly stubborn! It's not unusual for kids to suddenly dig in their heels and say "No!" for no real reason, but considering it's only the first week, it's a little unexpected.

All I wanted him to do was write a paper. Just one page, as a diagnostic to show how well they write. As teachers, we're supposed to keep track of them improving, and create entire, gorgeous, and beautifully organized portfolios that we can whip out at a moment's notice, and prove the child has been given many opportunities to improve.

I need that bit of writing, just as a baseline. He could write about anything. His summer. His dog. His brother. He could make it up! I just wanted to see if he could use proper grammar, punctuation, maybe spell most words correctly.

But for some reason, he decided that he just didn't want to do it, so he just sat there. The students were given about 40 minutes, and he just sat there, after writing about 1/2 a paragraph.

I noticed his lack of words on the page, and told him that he would not be leaving my room until he had a full page, and if he was late for his next class, he would receive whatever consequence that teacher inflicted, since he had wasted his time in class.

I figured (since he still had a good 15 minutes left when I noticed he wasn't working) that he would rush to finish.

Nope.

I think he was planning to sneak out my door, because he had packed everything way before I was ready to dismiss. He sits closest to my door, and he was looking shifty and had his backpack on.

I guess he'd had teachers in the past not following through on consequences, but as every good teacher (and parent!) knows you have to follow through, or it's just a waste of time, energy, and frustration.

So as I got ready to dismiss and had all the other students turn in their work, I told him to go ahead and take his paper back out, and move to the computers, to finish up. He just stared at me, completely shocked. Then he picked up his backpack and slammed it down at the computers. (Normally, I'd address this, but you do have to pick your battles, and I am more concerned with making sure he understands that not working is not acceptable.)

He continued to sit, not writing for a few minutes.

As the next class came in, I made sure to let him know that if he continued to sit there, not writing, he would not be allowed to go to lunch on time, and would have to return to me after lunch, too, until he was finished.

The new class stared at him, which I think made him very uncomfortable, because he put his head down and started writing. Finally. Nothing like a little peer humiliation to motivate you.

He finally finished about 25 minutes after the next class started, and went to Geography, 25 minutes late. Apparently he also went in with attitude, because he was mad at me. So he gets in trouble in the next class for attitude.

So, in short, we'll just go ahead and christen this student Stubborn. I'm sure we'll be hearing about him again... considering it's only the first week, and we're already having battles.

Well, with the return of battles of wills, I feel like the school year has really started.

Ah, the joys of adolescence.

Surviving the First Day... Accomplished!

Well, we did it... or I did, at least. I made it through the first day. Hooray!

And I almost want to go back to school tomorrow!

Now, it was nothing like last year, with all the classes being unbalanced, and 47 in one class (with just 30 desks, so some kids had to sit on the floor).

Nor was it bad because of the schedules being messed up completely because of SMS. SMS is a computer program the county purchased to do all the clerical-type school tasks, like attendance, discipline (keeping track of referrals, detention, etc), gradebook, and scheduling. Instead of having to use different programs for each of these things, SMS was supposed to do it all. This way, you wouldn't have to enter the information multiple times.

Of course, with the millions that was spent on the program, it should work, right? They had tested it, used it in a few pilot schools, and everyone just sang it's praises...

It didn't work. At all.

If you used the gradebook portion, you would enter your grades, but it would lose them, or even change them completely. You could never trust the gradebook, so you had to keep multiple copies.

And the guidance counselors had attempted to use the automatic scheduler that the company had praised... and the class of 47 resulted.

But I digress.

It wasn't like it was last year today.

In face, I had tiny classes. My advanced class was large, but manageable. But one of my co-taught classes is so small it's unmanageable. In Language Arts, you need to have more than just a few students to get good discussions going. Just hearing from a few kids doesn't work as well.

PLUS this tiny class is co-taught! (It's for exceptional education kids (ESE), where they essentially have learning disabilities and need extra support to be successful, so there are two teachers in the room with them... the main teacher and an ESE teacher who just helps out in each class).

The number of kids in this class, you wonder? 6.

Yes, it will grow as they balance the classes. But still. 6!?

How did that get past the people making the schedules?

Oh, well. It is much better than 47, I will admit.

Another thing about last year was we had all of the thugs that were in 6th grade, with only a few minor exceptions. The other teams had some of them, but truly, we had almost all of them.

Today I was keeping my eye out for our new thugs, or kids to replace those type kids from last year. Granted, this was just the first day, and I do realize that. As we were waiting this morning to be dismissed to our first class, I couldn't even get them to talk at all (and I know that will change quickly). I know they'll loosen up and the misbehavior will start,

And I did spot some I know will cause problems. But overall, I am happy about the apparent quality of these kids.

I do think it is rather amazing how you can spot these kids right off. You know immediately the ones you'll have to keep an eye on. And then you talk to the other teachers on your team, and they marked the same ones...

Like the kid who had gum. TODAY. And she was wearing a tiny skirt, a tube top, and a tiny jacket. What mom would really let her out the door like that?

Or the kid who provided me with a sound effect the entire time I was talking.

Or even the little girl who rolled her eyes. At me. On the first day! Just because I mispronounced her name. I'm sorry, but her parents made up her name! How would I know how to pronounce her name, especially since it's not like they even followed the sounds you normally find in the English language!

And on that topic, this year I have the most amazingly crazy names. What's wrong with names like Mary, Elizabeth, Laura, Rachel, or those lovely names? I don't have a single one of those names! Not even one.

Oh, well. I guess parents want their kids to be more and more unique. Whatever.

Today, we had lots of things we were supposed to do (as teachers, like going over the dress code rules) with each period) and I did almost all of them... I did forget to walk my kids to lunch... but in my defense, our lunch period is at 2:11, and I had no chance to use the restroom, and I really needed to, so I wasn't really thinking properly.

So... after this first day, I am mostly excited about this year... it's still a little weird, since I don't know these kids, and I miss some of my darlings from last year, and a little tiring because it is stressful, but I see great things for this year.

Lots of great things. I hope.