First of all I wanted to send a special thanks to all my supporters out there! Whether you have donated for the calculator cause, or just have given me words of wisdom or been a cheerleader since I began this job, thank you. It means the world to me, and knowing that I have support really makes each day better and brighter.
One more week until I am West Virgina bound! A long weekend is what I need to recover. All within an eight hour day with my students, I want to laugh, cry, scream, and hide in a corner. Yet, just when I think I have seen it all, the students bring everything to a new level.
The disciplinarian has finally been hired, yet the grid of consequences still has not been approved by the board. So although I am calling student's parents on a daily basis, I personally cannot follow through with disciplinary actions such as after school detentions, lunch detentions, in-school suspensions, suspensions and even expulsion. I am finding this super frustrating because as a teacher there is only so much I can ignore before it hinders my teaching abilities and the learning capabilities of my students. I sense many of my students have attention issues. Not that they cannot pay attention, but that they crave attention. Students act out inappropriately because they know they can get my attention. I have been trying to ignore this behavior and continue teaching, but what amazes me is that the seeking for attention doesn't stop. It escalates to throwing things across the room, talking back and yelling at me when I ask for simple tasks to be completed, dancing around the room, rapping over my lessons...or...wait for it....lighting matches in the middle of class.
Oh yes! My class was on fire! Literally. Being a child who loved to light matches and candles, the smell was a familiar and comforting one. However in the middle of my classroom, I didn't find anything comforting about it. Although I knew it was the smell of a match I checked, double checked and even triple checked the appliances in the room and even the air freshener to make sure nothing was on fire.
I followed my nose to an area of desks right in front of mine. Out of all the students the smell came from a cluster of desks occupied by girls. Giving kids the benefit of the doubt I was hoping it was the guys that decided to light matches...it just seemed something guys would do. Instantaneously the girls said the smell was coming from across the room and it smelled like bad cologne. Sound fishy? Students began to get concerned and I called for security. The last thirty minutes of my class were spent frisking the students and quarantining them by gender. The verdict - one girl brought them to class. Two other girls lit them. Best of all - the girls threw the blown out matches in the trash can - which happened to have some used braids from a girl in the class. All I could think about was recently lit match + hair + trash car = school on fire.
But the lack of consequences in place, the student who brought the matches has one day of in school suspension. One girl who lit them received 2 days of in-school suspension. The third girl had no consequences because she has an IEP (individual education plan) therefore her circumstances are handled differently. Do I agree with the consequences? Not really. I wish they were more harsh because I don't think students learn from other student's mistakes. If the consequences were more harsh, maybe students would learn. It's going to take a student getting suspended or even expelled before they take their actions seriously. But if that's what it takes, maybe I should let their behavior fester.
All it takes is one person to change the world.
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