I just completed a forty five minute cycling class and my wife walks up to me and says by the look on your face I'd say you are about rip someone's head off. I look at her, smile and say I was just thinking. The word thinking is accurate but her comment about my facial expression wasn't accurate but also wasn't too far off.
From my view at the back of the room I monitor scholar behavior and maintain a daily behavior log. The log is nothing complicated but it plays an important role when it comes time to evaluate a scholars behavior so I take it serious. At the start of the year when we only had four scholars there wasn't much to write. I'd make a note or two in the comment section and occasionally a couple of notes on the back side of the form. During this time period we were pretty solid in doing academics and I was real excited. When The King arrived I began to notice that my behavior notes had increased and now I was taking up right at half of the back side of the form. Seeing this I decided that I needed to write smaller and I added lines to the back of the form to conserve space. Today for the first time I filled up the entire back side of the form. What changed today? I'll tell you shortly. Just before I leave for the day I hand the behavior log to Gnu. When she looked at it she said oh my God you filled up the entire back side. I shrugged my shoulders and said we didn't have a very good day. She responded I know. This should not come as a surprise but the more I write on the behavior log the less academics we do and today for the first time academics took a major hit.
At 10:00am, right in the middle of math, Mini-Jake LaMatta arrived. Yes, he is a new scholar and he is in the second grade. We are now at six scholars and shortly it will rise to seven and eventually eight. Going forth I will refer to MiniJake LaMatta as simply MiniJ. Like Jake LaMatta he has a look about him. I'll describe it as best I can. It's like a blank, emotionless stare. I recall my first encounter with him during a behavior problem. It was a minor issues and as I walked passed him I said to settle down and get some work done. When doing this I made eye contact with him and he just stared right at me. No emotions but the look in his eyes said I ain't afraid of you. I made eye contact with him for about five seconds and his eyes never left me and I'm pretty sure he didn't even blink. Two and a half hours after his arrival we are outside at recess. Within ten minutes of the start of recess MiniJ took his first swing at another student but missed. After another five minutes he was near EM and pushed him. Between the hours of 1:00pm and 3:00pm in the classroom he punched EM and Yo! and pushed The Collector. That's five aggressive outbursts in five hours. I going conservative on this next statistic and will say MiniJ is in his fourth different school and he is in the second grade. I wonder why.
From the first day of school Gnu's emphasis was on academics. It was not uncommon for her to voice her concern about how far she was behind in what she wanted to do for the week academically. With the arrival of The King and then MiniJ academics is really suffering and it's frustrating her. The other thing that frustrates her is why would the school system send two scholars with emotional and/or psychological issues into a classroom in such quick succession where the teacher has less than four weeks of experience. This is where I need to be careful because what Gnu is saying and feeling at this point in her career has set off my hot buttons. How hot am I? Read the first paragraph again.
There are, right now, Emotional Disability (ED) classrooms without teachers in my school system. There are students in the classroom but no teachers. How can this be possible? The person(s) responsible to be sure there is a pool of teachers available for those scholars that are at the most risk failed miserably in performing their duty. So now scholars are being moved to a new school. Scholars that require consistency in their daily school life are being moved. Parents have to now deal with their scholar going off to another school. Parents who have exhibited that same emotional issues as their scholar have to potential to get angry. Who do they take out their anger on? Potentially at the person closest to them, their scholar. The scholar now steps into a new classroom and has to make new friends and adjust to a new teacher and instructional assistant. That is not easy for them and when they encounter a change or a person they don't like they get angry. How angry and how often do the get angry? I'm now filling out both side of my behavioral report and the log that is maintain outside of our time out room is full. My classroom is not a good academic setting right now and I'm pissed. We are five weeks into the school year and the person(s) responsible for hiring teachers still doesn't have teachers for a number of classrooms. How and the hell is that possible. And now it gets better. Read the first paragraph again.
Dear compliance monitor, you are now a major irritant. What gives you the right to send a barrage of emails to a first year teacher on a Friday morning and demand, if not immediate action, quick action. Dear compliance monitor why are you sending a first year teacher email messages using acronyms? Listen carefully, she doesn't know what those acronyms mean and she doesn't know where on the school hard drive the form you want her to fill out is located. This is a first year teacher compliance monitor and when you are in our school why can't you walk that forty or fifty feet from your office to our classroom and say hey how is it going and it there anything I can help you with. Dear compliance monitor we are not talking rocket science here.
I feel better now for two reasons. First, I got that off my chest. Second, BaseG made himself available for Gnu at the start of the year. Five weeks into the school year he is still making himself available to help and has driven miles out of his way to do so. Thank you my friend.
With MiniJ in the classroom here is a score card update.
My Scholars
The Collector - fourth grade
Yo! - fourth grade
EM - third grade
Un-Uh-Uh - second grade
The King - third grade
MiniJ - second grade
New Scholar #1 - you'll meet him shortly
New Scholar #2 - you've met him. He is called Grrr! On hold for about a month for evaluation by experts.
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