She Doesn't Deserve This

Basketball Update:  EM and his teammates are still undefeated at 3-0.  The last game was a blowout so EM got to play an entire quarter of the game.  It's been interesting to watch him.  Prior to getting selected to the basketball team he didn't speak very much to others scholars outside our classroom.  Now, when we are rotating to our specials classes and he sees a teammate in the hallway he'll call his teammate by name and say "hi."  It may not sound like a big deal to you, but this is a pretty special moment.  While academics is Gnu's main focus, improving the scholars social skills runs a close second, so watching EM advance socially is pretty exciting stuff.  Sadly, however, this was the only good news of the week. 

Prophet, a scholar from a Life Skills classroom, joined us a few weeks ago on a trial basis.  While in his assigned classroom, Prophet was much larger than the other scholars and was essentially bullying all the scholars in his room.  To provide a safe environment in the Life Skills classroom Gnu agreed to allow Prophet to attend classes in our room.  This was strictly a trial to see how well he'd fit in and not a permanent situation.  Well, with a few weeks of Prophet in our room, it's obvious to Gnu and I that this is not working as he is a huge distraction.  Prophet's IQ, I've been told is very low, and right now his academic abilities are limited to simple number and letter identification along with coloring.  Prophet's math skills are pretty much non-existent and his reading ability is limited to just a few words.  Gnu and I both agree that there is little we can do for him because the services he needs are well outside what we can offer.  Knowing this, Gnu started the process of having a case conference with Prophet's parental unit, the overhead staff that supports our classroom, plus the overhead staff that supports the Life Skills classroom.  Getting this conference schedule was an effort in frustration for Gnu as Prophet's parental unit seemed to have disappeared as this parental unit would not answer the phone or return messages left on the phone.  To add to the frustration, some of the overhead personnel that Gnu contacted about the conference completely failed to even respond to the email messages she sent to them.  Gnu's frustration is growing, I'm getting agitated and then while passing Prophet's teacher of record in the hallway this teacher asks for a minute of my time.  "Mr. Schultz," he says, "I don't know if I should tell you this, or tell Gnu, but you're here now so I'll tell you."  "Prophet's parental unit was shot and killed a couple days ago.  A few hours later, Prophet's teacher of record walked into our classroom and told Gnu the news.  Her reaction was similar to mine, silence with the head shaking in a way that said, Oh my God! why did this have to happen.

With all of the parties to the case conference aware of what just took place, the case conference was quickly scheduled.  All the invited school corporation personnel attended as well as Prophet's grandmother and an aunt that lives out of state.  Prophet's remaining parental unit was not even invited which should give you an idea of what a wonderful parental unit this is.  As Gnu relayed to me after the meeting, she was pretty frustrated with the proceedings.  Apparently the school corporation overhead personnel were mostly focused on maintaining the status quo.  Gnu, out of frustration, stated the following to this group of people, we can't keep doing the same thing as it is not working.  She went on to say that Prophet has been in our school corporation for at least three years and he is not getting the services he needs to address the issues that he has.  Considering that Gnu's superiors were in the room she made a real strong statement that may have ruffled a few feathers but what she said was dead on accurate and I'm proud of her.  The meeting ended and little was accomplished as who gets or wants custody of Prophet needs to be resolved before we can move forward.  The person given custody, probably the grandmother, will now be the parental unit of record for Prophet and the decision maker going forward.  Unfortunately, this will take a while as the government and court system will need to be involved and who knows how long it will take these entities to make a decision.  For the record, I'm thinking months.

It's 9:15am and all the scholars are sitting around my table at the back of the room.  Gnu is with us as we need to go over some rules as we are about to get a new scholar.  The first rule, introduce yourself to the new scholar and be nice as you can probably recall how you felt on the first day you walked into this classroom, Gnu told the scholars.  The second rule, and the one that is of most importance to Gnu and I is the location of a safe place if something bad should happen in the classroom.  With everyone listening to Gnu, she asks the scholars for the location of our safe place.  They all respond immediately, Oreo's office.  "Good," Gnu says, "and remember when you are told to leave the classroom, do it quickly and take any worksheets you are working on with you."

ShortTime is our new scholar.  He is in the fourth grade and according to his individual education plan (IEP) he has a track record of being very aggressive.  He also falls into the oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) category and neither Gnu nor I deal well with ODD scholars. 

Thursday morning, Gnu speaking to me, "ShortTime will be here today.  He will arrive late as his parental unit put him on the wrong bus and sent him to the wrong school."  Dear lowest life form and the pointy headed intellectuals that fill the heads of the lowest life forms with worthless drivel, stop beating up the teachers and start challenging the parental units who have managed to royally screw up their scholars lives.  ShortTime arrived a little after 10:00am and we caught a bit of a break as he only goes to school half days so he leaves at 12:00 noon.  At 11:40am I take him to lunch before he leaves for home.  At 11:55am we are at the exit door awaiting the arrival of the bus.  ShortTime and I are standing between the two exit doors at the west end of the building as the bus is late.  With nothing but time on his hands ShortTime decides to start climbing up the window ledges between the two doors.  Three different times I ask him to stop and true to his ODD issues he does the opposite and continues to climb.  While standing on the window ledge he tries to walk across the door handles on the exit door to the other side of the entryway.  While doing this ShortTime pushes the switch on the door that automatically opens the exit door.  Twice I tell him to stop.  As you can guess, he continues.  Finally the bus arrives and ShortTime gets on without incident.  While talking to the bus driver, as this is ShortTime's first day at school I can hear him speaking to the bus monitor.  I hear, quite clearly two words, B-Word and F-Word come from ShortTime's mouth.  I look at the bus driver and say to him, "you might want to make your first stop at his house so you don't have to put up with him."

It's Friday at 4:10pm.  The scholars have been gone for approximately twenty minutes.  All the chairs, except one, have been picked up so the custodians can clean the classroom.  Gnu is sitting at her table in the front of the room and I'm sitting in Grr!s chair, it's real quiet.  "What are we going to do?" she says.  "With Prophet staying for who knows how long and ShortTime arriving, I'll have to redo all my lesson plans."  I don't have a response.  For the first time in three and a half school years I don't know what to say to a teacher that asked me for an opinion.  My official title is Instructional Assistant but I preferred to be called obstacle remover.  Today I couldn't fulfill my role as an obstacle remover.  I stood up, place Grr!'s chair on his desk and headed for the door.

When Prophet arrived Gnu had an agreement with the overhead personnel of our school corporation that stated that no new scholars will be admitted into the classroom as long as Prophet was in the room.  Despite this agreement, ShortTime arrived, thanks to the overhead personnel.  There is a term to describe what the overhead personnel just did. I'm thinking of one particular word and I'm thinking some of you may be thinking of the same word.  I don't like what happened one bit and there is no damn way this should have happened to Gnu.  She doesn't deserve this.

Thanks for your continued reading.  I don't think the next few weeks will be a picnic in the classroom.  Keep Gnu in your prayers as this is going to be difficult.  I'm out.