My Bad?

By
Taylor
Published: November 21, 2008Posted in: Page BTags:

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This morning in first period a student waved me into the hallway, like he wanted to speak to me. As soon as I rounded the door frame, his mother was bitching me out. At least three other adults stood by, including a cop and an administrator, while this woman jumped all over me in front of her kid, within earshot of my class.

I don’t even remember what I said. She absolutely should not have been allowed up to the third floor to call me out of my class to chew me out. If she wants to talk to me, she needs to schedule an appointment. Period.

I was upset, and left the class with my co-teacher for a few minutes. Had to get away for a minute. When I came back, I spoke to another teacher about this. I don’t think she’s an official leader of any sort, but she is a leader, nonetheless.

She told me the chain of command had been broken downstairs and that this woman should not have been allowed into the school, and that this woman gives all the teachers a hard time. Nobody likes to deal with her. The most important thing she said, the thing that helped me get it together was, “You’ve got good kids in there.” She said it several times. “You’ve got good kids in there.” True.

This mother was angry because her son had been given suspension over an incident that happened in my reading class the day before. This is a remedial reading class of 8th and 9th graders, and they are rowdy. Yesterday was my first day to work with them alone, without my co-teacher.

My co-teacher and I had agreed that he would stick around in the hallway for a few minutes until we were sure I had it under control. If anyone gave me a problem, they would go see him in the hallway. Once they were out in the hallway, the disciplinary action taken wasn’t my decision. I was busy teaching.

Although this student’s disobedience was by no means limited to this particular request, what ended up on the referral was that he was banging on the desk.

Here’s what happened. Many of the students were playing drum beats on their desks and couldn’t seem to settle down, so I said, “Go ahead and bang on the desk now, get it all out of your system, because when we start reading I don’t want to hear that anymore.”  This is something I’ve done many, many times and have never had a problem with it.

So they made a little rhythm, and one student even danced to the rhythm. Good. Get it out.

Then it was time to stop. I asked them to stop. Everyone else stopped. I asked this student a couple more times to stop and he still didn’t. I sent him to the hallway. The results of the hallway happenings were not my doing. They gave him out of school suspension. This seemed like a bit much to me, but I don’t know these kids yet.

The student negotiated down to in-school suspension with the assistant principal, but his mother still jumped down my back. By her way of telling it her son got in trouble for doing what I asked him to do. She repeatedly said that I should get in-school suspension. The administrator said he would give me in-school suspension ~sarcastically, although i think the sarcasm was lost on her~

Later that day, he was back in my class, and nearly constantly harassing me whenever I was in earshot. “When are you going to quit?” he said.

So, that was how my first week ended.

 

About the Author

I'm Taylor. This is my classroom. There used to be a "real" teacher behind this blog, but she nagged me all the time about not saying this and not saying that. ~all she ever did was type anyway, since my fingers are stuck together~ So I've taken over. Yes, I'm an imitation Barbie knock-off doll. What of it? Barbie's got nothing on me! Let me take you to school.