On Saturday mornings my part time editor, part time consultant, and full time spouse and I head over to Panera's for coffee and bagels with some of our friends. My standard coffee order is a hazelnut coffee in a mug. Sorry, but no I don't want my coffee in a paper or Styrofoam cup. My bagel of choice is a plain bagel with butter and peanut butter. For those of you that are interested, I don't toast my bagel. The topic of conversation at Panera's usually covers dysfunctional families, books, Wall Street Journal, and school. Just prior to leaving one of my friends asked me about my week at school. My response was "how much time to you have?"
When I walked into the classroom Gnu was already there. She was sitting at her huge desk with the solid gold trim working on the daily lesson plans. I sat down at my desk and started preparing my behavior log and attendance record for the day. As I was getting started Gnu walked by and said "I'm heading to the copier." "Ok." As she walked by I noticed that she was wearing black pants. I was going to say something about the pants but chose not to as she was passed me and saying something about someone's pants when you are behind them could be some sort of policy violation. Fast forward and it's now approximately 1:00pm and all the scholars are at the front table working with Gnu. Yo! speaks up. "Those pants you are wearing look like something you wear when you work at a restaurant." I am doing my best not to laugh out loud and wait for Gnu's response. "Oh my god, don't say anything about my pants because I was too busy to get my laundry done." For those of you that are not aware, don't ever think that scholars don't pay attention to what you do, say or wear when you are in a classroom. They don't miss anything. We are not going to jump forward to the next day. All of the scholars are working we me at my table in the back of the room. Gnu is finalizing a lesson plan and heads to the copier. When she is out of the room I ask the scholars if they would like to play a joke on Gnu. The response was quick, "yes." So I tell them when she walks back into the room I'll get her attention. When she stops I'll count down from three and when I say one you all say "you did your laundry." They are really excited now and can't wait for her to return to the classroom. Exhibiting no patience, they keep walking over to the classroom door to see if she is coming. "Please sit down so you don't ruin the joke" I say and everyone settles down. When Gnu walks in I get her attention and do my count down. When I get to one they all yell in unison "you did your laundry." That was pretty fun stuff and getting to do things like this to make school fun is why I do what I do. It also helps that Gnu has a sense of humor and can laugh along.
EM walks into the classroom and puts his behavior fold on my desk and heads up to the front of the room to talk to Gnu. "I have to start acting bad at school" is what he says to her. "What?" "Why do you need to do that" Gnu asks him. "Because if I act bad my mom can get more money and then she can get my dad out of Mexico," he says. Later that day Gnu speaks with EM's parental unit and she is requesting that Gnu send her all of the information on the bad things EM has done at school. With the phone conversation over Gnu asks me how many time EM has acted poorly in the classroom. I tell her "very little if any, why?" She then tells me that EM's parental unit is trying to collect supplemental social security and the only way she can do this is if she can demonstrate that her children act so bad that she has to stay home and not work. I look at her and say "you're kidding." I've been around long enough to see and hear some real strange things but having a parental unit tell her child to intentionally misbehave in school is a first for me. A couple days later EM walks into the room and sets his behavior folder on my desk and points at a picture. "That's my dad," he says to me. I take a look at the picture and recognize immediately that he looks just like his dad. He then picks up his behavior folder and head towards Gnu to show it to her. As he is walking away from me I'm wondering when is the last time the EM actually say his father. It's moments like this one that make me wonder why I keep doing what I am doing.
The day is nearly over and Gnu is recording the daily behavior on each scholars folder. NoFouls had a pretty bad day and Gnu places him on orange which is one color better than red which is the worse behavior color. As soon as NoFouls sees his color his anger rises rapidly and he grabs his coat, hat and backpack and is heading for the door. It's too early to leave for the bus so I block his exit from the room. When I do this he changes directions and charges into me trying to get to the door. I block him again and this time he yells at me to "get the F-Word out of my way." I continue blocking him and Gnu, realizing we are at risk for other scholars to get injured, moves everyone else into the corridor to stay safe. As she leaves I ask her to call the office and put a hold on NoFouls bus and then ask that she call for additional support. A short while later she returns to the room and as soon as she opens the door NoFouls makes another charge to escape. He can't get past me so he kicks me a couple times in the shin. Gnu is now calling is parental unit to inform her that if NoFouls doesn't settle down he'll miss the bus and she will have to pick him up. When the connection is made Gnu explains the situation and NoFouls parental unit she asks to speak to him. Gnu hands NoFouls the phone and I'm standing three or four feet from NoFouls when I hear, "shut the F-Word up." "You talk to much so just shut the F-Word up." NoFouls response was "yes ma'am." As this phone conversation was taking place the Big B entered the room. She spends a couple minutes talking to NoFouls and he finally settles down and the three of us escort him to the bus. As a reminder, NoFouls is in the second grade and he uses the F-Word a lot when he is angry. I wonder why that is?
There are days when we all can laugh as we did about Gnu's black pants. There are days when I think to myself that no young scholar, especially one that is as nice and pleasant as EM, should have such bad things happen so early in his life. Then there are days when I think of my P.P.P. acronym and think that some parental units are very good a procreating but are really lousy parents and sadly second graders pay the price for poor parenting.
That's it, I'm out. The state mandated ISTEP testing is rapidly approaching. I'll serve as a proctor again so I'll keep you posted on how well our third and fourth grade scholars do on the test. Thanks for continuing to read my blog.
Foot note: P.P.P. for those of you that forgot means piss poor parenting.
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