Confined To Six Square Feet of Floor Space For 4,500 Miles

A few blog posts ago I mention that a trip to Italy was in the works.  Well I went and I'm now back.  My wife and I spent eight days in Italy and we had a great time.  I hesitate to say too much about the trip because this blog is primarily about my view from the back of a classroom and not a travel brochure but maybe I'll mention a few things about the trip at the end.

It's been a while since I posted the scorecard of who is who so I think I'll do that now as people I met on the trip to Italy expressed an interest in reading the blog.

My Scholars

The Collector - 4th grade
Yo! - 4th grade
EM - 3rd grade
Uh-Uh-Uh - 2nd grade
The King - 3rd grade
MiniJ- 2nd grade
No Fouls - 2nd grade

The Support Staff

IvyL - Behavior Therapist
Oreo - Behavior Specialist
Gnu - Teacher
Big B - Principal

It was fall break and the scholars did not have to attend school for eighteen days.  That is a real long stretch of time and while in Italy I wondered how the scholars would act on their first day back in school.  Between IvyL, Oreo and Gnu a lot of time is spent with the scholars working on their social skills as well as there anger management skills.  Given the amount of time spent working on these skills a measure as to how successful they've been could be determine once the scholars returned to the classroom.  So on Monday morning, our first day back in school, I was curious as to how the scholars would behave.  I'm happy to announce that the scholars were well behaved for the first forty minutes.  I'm sadden to announce that just past the forty minute mark MiniJ and No Fouls we're at each other and the first punch was thrown by NoFouls.  It was frustrating for me to watch the first punch get thrown because I know how great an effort IvyL, Oreo and Gnu put forth to improve the lives of these young scholars and they just don't get it.

The King has disappeared.  He missed a three week period prior to fall break and then the first full week after fall break.  So basically we have not heard from his parental unit for six weeks.  The last contact we had with his parental unit was that The King's grandfather passed away and they were heading out of state to attend the funeral.  Numerous attempts were made to contact the parental unit via the many cell phone numbers we had listed put none were answered.  It's a pretty frustrating time for everyone involved in The King's education.  He came to our school from a behavioral specialists organization that ran a charter school. When he arrived in our classroom we were informed that he had both emotional and psychological problems so he came with a mentor.  All totaled there were five adults working with The King in the classroom to do what was necessary to improve his social skills and get an education.  To have his parental unit to take him out of school and not tell anyone and then just disappear is disappointing.

If you recall, just before break I mentioned that EM's family lost their place of residence and were homeless. I'm happy and relieved to announce that he has a new residence and has returned to school.  I'm not sure how stable his housing situation is because his two brothers that were with him at our school are required to attend a different school.  That's disappointing because he was always talking about his big brothers and was real excited that they were all in the same school.  Now he's alone in our school again.

A while back I received an email message from a friend wondering if EM and his family was evicted because of EM's behavior and that he was causing damage to the homeowners property.  I'm certain that is not the case as EM was not the destructive type.  Sure he'd get angry but he is not a thrower of objects and did not attempt to cause damage like the other scholars.  What I believe happened is his parental unit got behind in the rent and was evicted.  It's a sad situation as the parental unit has five children with the youngest being about six months old and from what I can tell there is no male presence in the household.

One final comment on EM for now.  He's changed since his homeless period.  Now when he walks into the classroom in the morning he looks sad.  In the past he always had a smile on his face and he was talkative. Now he walks into the room and just sits at his desk.  Hopefully is family life will remain stable and he can get back to his old happy and smiling self.

Just a few comments on my first ever trip to Europe.  We were in Italy for eight days.

The Highlights

1. St. Peter's Square and the Basilica.  My wife told me that just standing in the middle of the square caused her to get a little teary eyed.  
2. Baruna which is a small island off Venice.  A beautiful fishing community with considerably less tourists.
3. The food.  Sitting down at a true Italian family dining situation was amazing.  The food kept coming and coming and so did the wine.
4. We met a couple women from Utah and we spent a lot of time together just wandering the side streets of the various cities we visited.  While seeing the big ticket tourist destinations was great walking on the quieter side streets to get a better feeling for the Italian lifestyle was more to my liking.
5. I was going to stop at four but this one just popped into my head.  We went on a gondola ride with our friends from Utah plus one other couple.  The other couple as I called them were an interesting pair.  He was from Scotland and she was from Cuba and they presently live in Canada.  Back to the gondola ride.  One of our friends from Utah is not real comfortable with water craft.  She insisted that she will not get on a boat let alone a gondola.  Well peer pressure won out and she stepped onto the gondola.  She sat leaning in toward the middle of the gondola with her eyes closed and a panicked look at first.  About ten minutes into the ride she was leaning out of the gondola trying to take pictures. I have a picture of her on the gondola and every time I look at it I think to myself, I'm not getting on a boat or gondola.  Ya, right!  

  The Low Points

1. We both agreed on this one, The Sistine Chapel.  The chapel is a big rectangular box with very high ceilings and is poorly lit.  The works by Michelangelo were so high up you couldn't look at the details. The Vatican security was on site and was constantly telling everyone to remain silent and to keep moving which I can understand as it was crowded.  Given the crowd and security trying to move you along there was no time to sit somewhere quietly and look at the art.  
2. The plane flight.  Either from Toronto, Canada to Rome or from Frankfort, Germany to Washington, D.C.  Nine hours confined to a floor space of six square feet was uncomfortable.  If I'm ever elected Czar of the United States I'm going to pass a law that states all executives that work for an airline are required to have an office work space that occupies just six square feet like they make their customers do who choose to fly on the airline.  The seat I occupied for nine hours was nearly inhumane all in the name of maximizing profits and bonuses.

That's it for now.  Again, I thank you for taking the time to read my blog.

A Wanna Be School Board Candidate Attacks My School Corporation.

In the Saturday edition of The Indianapolis Star there was a letter to the editor that was written by the next in line naysayer who is criticizing my school corporation and has no idea what the hell he is talking about. This naysayer is of particular interest to me because he is running for an open school board member position in my school corporation.

The letter to the editor was entitled "Hold (my school corporation) accountable for graduating more students."  Yes, I changed the title by deleting the actual name of my school corporation as that is private. As you've read this school board candidate is attacking graduation rates and doing so by blaming the school corporation for the low graduation rates.  That is pure nonsense and is nothing more than a politician's attempt at getting attention.  Unfortunately this school board candidate got my attention and I'm not a happy camper.

Every year my school corporation names a valedictorian and salutatorian.  Every year my school corporation has scholars that are recognized by the National Honors Society.  Every school year my school corporation has numerous scholars on the academic honor roll.  Every year numerous graduates of my school corporation go on to technical schools, community schools or four year universities.  To the best of my knowledge my school corporation has repeated this academic success story for the thirty or so years that I've lived in the metropolitan area of Indianapolis.  For me to pick up the newspaper and see a school board candidate claim that my school corporation needs to do more to get scholars to graduate is pure uninformed nonsense.

To help set this uninformed school board candidate straight I'm suggesting that he do a few things.  First, seek out the scholar and her/his parent(s) that graduated with honors and speak with them about what they did as scholar/parent team to achieve the success that they had at school.  Second, seek out the scholar and her/his parents(s) that did not graduate and speak with them about what they did as a scholar/parent team for the years prior to graduation.  After meeting the scholar/parent teams compare the notes you took and determine if my school corporation has a problem graduating scholars or a sizeable portion of the non-graduates have priorities other than academic success.  In anticipation of the school board candidate becoming defensive and stating that the scholars come from different families with different problems I say bull.  Scholars attend primarily their neighborhood school and I believe that the majority of the scholars at a particular school come from the same basic social economic background.

After speaking to the scholar/parent team this school board candidate now needs to seek out the teachers and speak to them.  As a word of advise for this school board candidate, Scholastic Reading  Inventory results, Acquity Testing results, IRead3 results and I.S.T.E.P results are classroom time wasters and cause millions of taxpayer dollars to be wasted.  If you want to know how a scholar is doing in school just ask her/his teacher.  What will a teacher say about an honors student?  Hard worker, loves to read, comes to school everyday, parent is active in the scholars educations and shows up at parent teacher conferences. What will the teacher say about the non-graduate?  Does little if any academics, rarely participates in class, a poor reader, parent shows very little involvement in the school unless the scholar is about to be suspended and has never attended a parent teacher conference.  Now that you've talked to the teacher do you really want to tell this teacher that the school corporation needs to do more to get more scholars to graduate.  I'd advise against bringing it up as the teacher may just laugh in your face.

So Mr. School Board Candidate you want to get elected to my school corporation board by making nonsensical statements about the school corporation doing more to get students to graduate.  That didn't set very well with me and probably every other teacher or parent in my school corporation that read your letter. As it stands right now Mr. School Board Candidate and an Instructor at Butler University you do not have my vote.  Sorry, not even close.

Here is an update on EM.  That last you heard from me was that his family is homeless.  As of this date his status hasn't changed.

Here is another scholar update.  The King has missed the last three weeks of school and we've lost contact with his parental unit.  As of right now we don't know where he is.

Such is the sad state of affairs for these two young scholars.

I'm presently on fall break and will be out of the classroom for two whole weeks.  Woohoo!  Believe me when I say this, I need a a break.

Giving Thanks and Praise To The Almighty...........Crisis Team

I'm not a big fan of Wednesday's this school year.  For some reason we have two specials on Wednesday and to make it worse they are back to back.  First starting at 10:10am is Art and then at 10:50am we walk across the hall to Music which lasts until 11:30am.  That's a pretty grueling stretch of time for me as I'm with the scholars for eighty minutes.  That's a wonderful stretch of time for Gnu because she is not with the scholars for eighty minutes.  In fact there are times when I wonder just what exactly does she do with eighty free minutes.

This past Wednesday was easily my worse day of the year.  My emotions ranged from frustrated to angry and to make matters worse IvyL crossed my path in my angry stage and sadly I vented my frustrations at her which just made me feel like crap.

At the start of the day Gnu informed me that EM had been retested to try and figure our why in the third grade he can't recognize and then read some of the simplest words.  These are words that we've been working on since the last school year and the progress has been minimal.  Well I now know why as his test results show that his IQ is just slightly higher than my age.  When Gnu mentioned this to me I asked her what will happen to him.  She said there was a conversation about placing him into the general population because he doesn't belong in an emotional disabilities classroom.  She went on to say that that plan was dropped because he wouldn't get the help he needed because there would be to many students in the room with him. As a result she said he will be staying in our room.  My response was you've got to be kidding me.  How is staying in our room going to help him?  He needs one on one help to get caught up.  While there are times when we can do that they are rare since the arrival of MiniJ and NoFouls.  In fact our room has been so chaotic for the past couple weeks that we're lucky if we can focus on academics for a thirty minute period without someone erupting.  As I sat there befuddled about EM's situation it dawns on me that we can have one of our inclusion teachers work with him in a small group setting for our reading block.  Gnu's response was that according to policy he is not qualified for that type of assistance.  Now sitting silently in the back of the room I'm thinking this is insane.  This poor scholar is trapped in an educational no man's land and the decision makers have decided to maintain the status quo.

If you think what just happened to EM is unbelievable keep reading.

9:14  NoFouls takes off his shoes and is running back and forth across the room and sliding on his socks. We haven't even started doing any academics and the day is not starting out well.

9:18  Yo! is fishing (a tactic that includes intentionally saying something to another scholar just to make them mad and Yo! works like a silent assassin when fishing).  He was asked to stop and promptly throws two objects across the room.

9:21  Yo! is intentionally agitating Uh-Uh-Uh who was using the time out room to do her morning work. When Uh-Uh-Uh told him to stay out of the room because she was working he stepped in front of her and walked in.  I directed him to leave the time out room and he walked out of the classroom.  He returned to the classroom at 9:46 and walked into the time out room.  He started pounding on the walls, door and window.  He began to hit the window with a hardback book.  He left the room again and is wandering the hallways.  He gets cornered on the second floor.  It's now 10:20 and he erupts.  Members of our crisis team are nearby and he is removed from the hallway and taken into an empty classroom.  He promptly starts climbing cabinets and wall shelving units.  For his personal safety the crisis times restrains him but not before he aggressively starts swinging his fists at them and kicking anything near him.  The Big B arrives and gets to see first hand is behavior.  That is not a good thing for Yo!  He was retrieved at approximately 11:00 by his parental unit.

10:27  No sure why but EM decides to crawl under the big table at the front of the room.  Maybe he senses danger.

10:30  MiniJ yells at NoFouls to get off his mother "efing" property.  The eruption between MiniJ and NoFouls is huge.  It starts with verbal aggression and quickly escalates to physical aggression.  The fist fight starts.  Punches are thrown.  NoFouls gets MiniJ in a choke hold.  Gnu grads one and I grab the other.  A decision is made to evacuate the room to avoid any serious injury.  She takes the scholars including NoFouls.  I stay with MiniJ who is not trashing the room.  Multiple chairs are knocked over or thrown. Multiple desks are flipped over.  I pick up the phone and call for assistance.  I get the backup crisis team as the primary crisis team is still dealing with Yo!.  I also get to see the Big B for a second time.  At 11:30 MiniJ's parental unit arrives to take him home.

From 9:18am through 11:30am was the most chaotic period of time I've seen in the three years that I've been doing this.  For the first time since I started doing this both crisis teams were operating at the same time and dealing with scholars from the same classroom.  Yo! will have his bad days and this was one of them but they are few and fairly spread out.  MiniJ and NoFouls are a whole different story.  They don't mix well and aggression between them will occur every day until they are separated.  When will that happen?  It probably won't and sadly we are just now at the end of the first quarter.  What to do?  What to do?  I know, succession planning.

The school has two crisis teams.  Each time is made up of three people.  As of today there are four women and two men on the crisis teams.  I fall into the men category and I'm on Team B.  All six of us have received training to deal with either scholars with emotional disabilities or scholars in the general population who are angry.  I love working with the the women on my team.  They are experienced teachers who for some reason decided to get involved with crisis activities.  Why I don't know as they are not special education teachers.  What I do know is that they are great in a crisis with an amazing ability to stay calm.  How calm? I've watched them avoid punches and kicks from an angry scholar while carrying on a normal conversation about daily school activities.  That is pretty impressive and that is why I give thanks and praise to the almighty crisis team members.        

One final comment.  On Monday of this past week at 9:05am EM walks in the room and says to me we got kicked out of our house last night.  What he said to me was confirmed by our social worker.  His family if not already homeless is on the verge of being homeless.  I'm praying that EM and his family are safe and I ask you to please do the same.