TSSO

Well, I guess I'm journaling about my fun times at the elementary school.

I went in and they said "the child" was having a great day. I know that can turn on a dime, though. I had a feeling he was going to be trouble, and normally I would have prayed that off, but it happened so quickly. The teacher was in and out of the class talking with OTHER kids who were in trouble, and directed everyone to open their science books and discuss with others how heat is transferred. The child, "C" was looking at everything else. I told him to get his book out and he said no. I said, "First warning. Get your book out." He gets up and starts slamming his desk around and throwing stuff around. I'm fascinated, frankly, and tell him to stop-2nd warning for not complying with getting the book...he won't stop or comply, so I tell him to leave the room and take a walk. The teacher wants me to take his book, try to work on the assignment (ha) and maybe he could see the video at 2pm.

I follow him and we chat a bit. I ask him why he got angry over doing school work and that I had to mark him as one warning for disrespect of school property because he tossed his desk around. He gets mad and kicks a door. I tell him that's the second warning for disregard of property. (He gets 2 warnings for each part of behavior) I've already put in a call to the SpEd teacher. He grabs the clipboard pen-on-a-string and pulls it...just about pulling the clipboard with it, but I hold the clipboard because I'm afraid he'll get smacked in the face. Should have let him. He jumps over to me and grabs the clipboard and twists around with it in front of me. My finger is in the metal part. The SpEd teacher comes around seeing this scene and her first words are: "Honeeey, what's wrong?" He sticks out his lower lip and starts pouting. The teacher asks me about what happened. . .she says, "Did he 'tap' the door, or actually kick it?" My head is screaming, "It doesn't matter. He was disrespectful to school and me, and that is that." But, I tell her, "He kicked it." Which he did. So, she tells me, as he is turning lights off and on and sputtering obnoxiously, to go get someone in SpEd who is CPI trained (Crisis Prevention Intervention). No phones? So, I go. What do you think about this?

I found this online. I would have failed miserably on this because I don't remember any songs from "South Pacific."

Snow is streaming from the sky as a short yellow school bus pulls up to a red brick building that is well on the plus side of fifty years old. A young girl, approximately ten years old, exits the bus through an open window and runs down the pathway to the building. She hurls herself into the school and within a few feet finds her classroom. The ceiling of the class is gnarled with enormous steam pipes, anywhere from two to twelve inches in diameter. The pipes are already at work, grunting and hissing their way to heating the class. The girl grabs a pair of scissors and opens them at her throat. "I’ll kill myself now if you don’t sing a song from ‘South Pacific’." The kid’s eyes are wild and her greasy hair is matted to her forehead. I begin to hum a few bars of ‘Happy Talk’ as I calmly take the scissors from her hands. She quiets down almost immediately. I help her take off her thin coat and note that her feet do not have socks on them. Class has started on a Monday morning in an upstate New York public school.~~~Antoinette Magaletta McClure, teacher of emotionally disturbed kids and author of Pipe Dreams.

Thoughts?