Friday at 3:30pm. "Mr. Schultz, his grandmother is here, you can let him out," is what I'm told. I look into our time out room, make eye contact and say, "your grandmother is here, are you ready to go home?" He nods yes and I release the button that operates the magnet on the door to the time out room and he walks out. By the way, we recently had a magnetic door lock installed on our time out room. This door lock, I've been told, can withstand 1200 pounds of pressure, so all Gnu or I have to do to keep an angry scholar who is in the time out room from escaping is hold the button that engages the magnet.
Friday at 3:20pm. "Mr. Schultz, would you mind switching places as I have to get back to my classroom to get my scholars ready to go home?" "Sure," I say, "no problem" and I sit down outside our time out room and hold the button that engages the magnet on the door. Inside the time out room is a scholar who is seriously angry, pacing back in forth, and yelling as follows. I'll give you the censored version. "F-you you MFB." "I'm going to F you up you whore," "B, I going to kill you you MFB." I'll stop now even though this lasted for more than five minutes because I believe you get the gist of this one sided conversation.
Friday at approximately 3:00pm. There is some commotion outside our classroom door. Before I can reach the door, it is opened and incomes another teacher forcefully moving a scholar into the room and toward our time out room. Accompanying the teacher and the scholar is the BigB. The scholar refused to get on the bus to go home which has happened on several occasions is what Gnu and I are told. Because the scholar is so angry they bring the scholar back into the school until his grandmother can be contacted to come and get him.
Friday at 2:30pm. Our time out room is unlocked and the scholar is told it is time to go home. The scholar exits the room, gathers his jacket, hat, gloves, and backpack and exits the classroom with his mentor following.
Friday at approximately 2:00pm. His mentor speaking, "you need to stop walking around the classroom and bothering the other scholars. You need to return to your desk and finish this math worksheet." The scholar responds, "I'm not doing it!" His anger is escalating and all academics in the classroom comes to a halt. Again, the mentor says, "you need to sit at your desk and get your work done." The scholar pushes his carrel out of position and starts knocking books onto the floor. He then grabs a pencil and starts scribbling on anything in his path. Gnu is up and I'm now alert and observing as the mentor has the lead in this situation. The scholar continues his angry outburst by aimlessly walking around the classroom. As he moves towards the classroom door to leave I block his path. He grabs a small package of fruit that is on a cabinet and throws is at my desk and turns in another direction. I calmly say to Gnu and the mentor, "it's time to shut this behavior down." The scholar is now moving to the other side of the room. At about ten feet from our exterior window he forcefully throws his pencil at the window. The vinyl shades are down and as the pencil hits the shade, it sticks in the shade and stays stuck just like a knife would. Gnu is now moving in the scholars direction and I can tell she is about to shut this down. Just before she reaches him, he starts knocking books off of a book case. He then grabs a book and throws is like a Frisbee across the room. The book hits Gnu's personal printer that is on her desk and then bounces off the printer and hits a scholar in the back of the neck. Gnu and the mentor have control of the scholar and move him into the time out room and the mentor has her hand on the button to engages the magnet on the door and the scholar is contained so no one else can get hurt. Just as the situation gets under control, the overhead person walks into the room and sees the mess created by the scholar. When the overhead person asks me what happened I say the scholar became very angry and at one point threw a book and hit another scholar in the back of the neck. The overhead person heads to the injured scholar, talks to him for a short time and then escorts him out of the classroom to our first aid room to put an ice pack on the back of his neck. So you know, the injured scholar is fine.
Several days earlier. The overhead person speaking, "this scholar has made some improvements in his behavior and I'm recommending that this scholar be assigned permanently to you classroom."
Several days earlier. My part time editor, part time consultant, and full time spouse remained silent when I told her what I planned to do. I had a draft letter of resignation written and saved on my iPad. Before I could submit it, I was told that a mentor would be assigned to this scholar for the entire time he would be in our classroom. This mentor was responsible for this scholar's academics and his behavior up to and controlling his aimlessly wandering around the room disrupting all of Gnu's academic plans. Knowing what the plan was, and finding it acceptable, I'm still sitting where I have my view from the back of the room.
One last comment on this incident. This, from our school corporation, "we are making our schools safer with disciplinary policies that keep our kids in the classroom." So what disciplinary action was taken on the scholar who was in a rage, stuck a pencil into a window shade, and hit another scholar in the back of the neck with a book, he will remain in our classroom and as far as I know, nothing will happen. Enough with all of that as there continues to be some great things happening in our classroom.
A few weeks ago Gnu introduced a new book entitled, "Lon Po Po," that was written and illustrated by Ed Young. This book is a variation of the "Little Red Riding Hood" story that we read in our youth. The illustrations in the book are absolutely wonderful and often were the topic of conversation with the scholars. As I was reading "Lon Po Po" with Uh-Uh-Uh one day she asked me a question about a particular drawing of the wolf. "Mr. Schultz, why does this picture of the wolf have some many different colors? Every other picture of the wolf is in dark colors only." "Uh-Uh-Uh, that is a good question and I don't know the answer," I say. "Well," she says to me, "maybe you should ask the author." I think about that for a couple minutes and then say to her, "let's do an internet search and see if we can find the author's mailing address." After a couple minutes I find the author but there is no contact information. Uh-Uh-Uh and the other scholars were called to the front table by Gnu to continue discussing the book so I had time to continue my search. Although I never found the author's contact information, I did find the address for his publishing company that is located on Lexington Avenue, New York City. So with time on my hands I walk over to our supply cabinet, pull out a couple pages of three hole punched lined writing paper and using my No. 2 lead pencil write a letter to Ed Young, c/o his publishing company. With the letter completed I show it to Gnu and ask her is she would like to sign the letter. She responds, "you wrote it so you can sign it." So with my letter in hand, I head to the front office to find an envelope and a stamp. Prior to mailing the letter I decide it would be in my best interest to inform the BigB as to what I was doing. She responded, "that's a great idea, I love it," so I placed the letter in the outgoing mailbox and headed back to the classroom. As I'm walking back to the classroom I'm thinking to myself, this is a long shot.
I'm cutting though the front office one day and our administrative czar stops me and says, "Mr. Schultz, you have mail" and hands me a letter. When I look at the letter I immediately recognize that it is addressed to me in the same way I left my contact information on the letter I wrote to Ed Young. I then looked at the return address and all it shows is a certain street address that I will not share and the city is listed as Hastings on the Hudson, New York with a zip code that I will not share. I say quietly to myself, "holy shit, he wrote back." With the letter in my hand I walk past the BigB's office and show her the letter. "Oh my god," she says, "he wrote you back." I then head to the classroom to show the letter to Gnu and she says "he actually wrote back." I ask her is she wants to open the letter and she responds, "you open it." As I start to pull the letter out of the envelope I immediate know it was from Ed Young as his letter was written on stationary that had a picture of Lon Po Po on it. The letter started out, Dear Allan and ended with Your friend, Ed Young, 1/21/16. The scholars do not know that the letter arrived. They will be informed on Monday morning. I can't wait to show it to them. The letter is on the upper right hand side of the blog for your viewing.
On the lighter side, I have two more items and then it's quittin' time. Gnu and Uh-Uh-Uh are sitting at the front desk. "Miss Gnu, you need to stop picking at that cut on your finger." "I can't," Gnu responds. "The skin peeled loose and it's bothering me. I don't know why the skin came loose, I used super glue to hold it in place." Uh-Uh-Uh, "you put super glue on your finger?" Obviously I heard the conversation and wisely I chose to remain silent. Last one. All the scholars are at the front table with Gnu. "Knapper, why do you have a staple in your nose," Gnu asks. "I put it there," he responds. "You need to go over to the sink and remove that staple from your nose," Gnu states. As Knapper is walking towards the sink the other scholars are following. Knapper grabs a paper towel and starts digging in his nose. MiniJ is nearest to him and is observing. "Miss Gnu, Miss Gnu, Knapper has dug out four staples from his nose," MiniJ states. At least he didn't actually staple his nose, he just stuffed the staples up into his nose. For the umpteenth time, I don't make this stuff up.
That's it. Another blog in the books. It's Sunday at 3:52pm and my daughter and son-in-law will be arriving soon to share a meal so I'm out.
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