What The .....? Part Two

On Saturday, March 19th, I passed the two year mark writing this blog.  That fact has me sitting here shaking my head and wondering how the time manage to fly bye so fast.  Over the past two years I wrote 145 blog posts sharing with you my view from the back of a classroom.  So far, there has been just short of 7,000 page views that mainly came from the United States but there have been hundreds of page views from Europe, Russia, and Asia.  In all, this blog has been view by people in approximately 20 different countries.  I find this absolutely amazing and I want to take this opportunity to thank each one of you for continuing to follow along. 

Scholars have been coming and going, plus I know that I have a handful of brand new readers, so I'm going to update the scholar list and well as the list of individuals that support Gnu and I in the classroom.

Scholars                                                               The Adults
EM - 4th Grade                                                   Gnu - teacher extraordinaire
ShortTime - 4th Grade                                        Me - the guy with the view from the back of the room
Uh-Uh-Uh - 3rd Grade                                        BigB - the person in charge
MiniJ - 3rd Grade                                                Phd(*)Pete - behavior support
BigHouse - 3rd Grade                                         Hill'sGirl - behavior support
Prophet - 3rd Grade                                             Oreo - behavior support
Knapper - 3rd Grade                                            Knew2 - teacher of the other EH scholars
Grr! - 2nd Grade                                                  Duck - teacher and often my savior on the rough days
New Scholar - 2nd Grade, arrives shortly
Floss - former scholar now in the 6th Grade
Wide - former scholar now in the 5th Grade
Leftside - former scholar now in the 5th Grade
The Collector - former scholar now in the 5th Grade
CorP - former scholar now in the 6th Grade
Straw - former scholar now in the 6th Grade

I mentioned in the last blog post that I sent an email message to the TopCat overhead person of the SpEd department and that this person actually responded.  I mentioned this fact to a couple teachers at my school, that I have a lot of confidence in sharing things with, and they cringed a little.  Apparently, this TopCat over head person is a little higher in the school corporation that I thought so I felt a little nervous.  After fretting about it for the better part of a morning, I decide that Gnu was placed in an unsafe position by a group of educators at another school without including her in the conversation, so I continued my conversation with TopCat.  In my final text to TopCat, I again mentioned my concern about Gnu's safety and told him that putting her in this position made me very nervous.  I hit the send button a few days ago and have not received a response.  I said what I needed to say and I'm going to let this drop.  Do I think I accomplished anything?  Given that the SpEd overhead personnel appear to operate in their own silo, I'd say, "no." 

Ok, on to What The......? Part Two.  The results of the case conference for Big House, that Gnu was not involved with, eventually arrived on Gnu's desk a few days after the scholar arrived.  As she has always done, she shared the information with me so I would be aware of any safety precautions that I should take when working with this scholar.  There was one key point in the case conference notes that caught my attention as well as Gnu's.  The primary decision to move Big House to a new school was because this scholar attacked a teacher.  That bit of information did not sit well with either of us.  Gnu commented first.  "Do you know now many times I've been attacked by a scholar?  This scholar is in the third grade and given the scholar's size, I don't think this scholar could cause any harm but they make a decision to move this scholar to my classroom," she stated.  My turn.  "I've been in this classroom for almost four years, with three different teachers, and never was a scholar transferred to another school for attacking me or anyone else."  In my opinion this is what happened at the school that just transferred Big House to my school, they totally failed to do their job.  Working with scholars that have anger control issues is a tough job and comes with the potential for injury to other scholars as well as adults.  It is for this reason that there are two adults in every EH (emotionally handicapped) classroom.  It is for this reason that each school that has an EH classroom has a Crisis Team that can be called when all hell breaks loose.  At my school there are six adults, three men and the women, on our Crisis Team that are trained to deal with attacking scholars.  When called, the Crisis Team arrives quickly and the scholar erupting is placed in a safe location allowing the scholar to de-escalate.  When the scholar de-escalates, the Crisis Team leaves, the classroom is put back in order, and the erupting scholar gets back to academics.  Should the same scholar erupt again, the process repeats itself but this time the BigB steps in, calls the parental unit, and the scholar is sent home for the remainder of the day.  It is pretty apparent to me that the teacher, instructional assistant and Crisis Team at Big House's previous school totally failed to do their job and just dumped a scholar in Gnu's lap without even allowing her to be part of the conversation.  I think the next time I get the nerve to email TopCat this may be my agenda item.

Part two of What The ....? Part Two.  "So, why is Big House arriving at our school at the end of the academic day," I ask Gnu.  "The scholar is OCI," she responds.  You're not going to like this, but I forgot what she told me the acronym means.  It might be Outside Classroom Instruction or Off Campus Instruction but whatever it is, the scholar is getting his academics outside of the normal classroom setting.  "So why is the scholar OCI?" I ask.  "The scholar's behavior was so poor that someone (the case conference people that did not invite Gnu to the conference) decided that it was in the schools best interest that this scholar be taught when others are not around.  The scholar apparently also missed a lot of school so the previous school was using the academic hours taught in OCI to get the scholar caught up on the academic hours missed," Gnu told me.  I hope you followed all of that because here comes the What the...? part.  I look at Gnu and respond, "you're telling me Big House's previous school is using OCI academic hours to catch up for hours missed during the normal school day.  That doesn't make any sense.  If this previous school wanted to catch up on academic hours missed, why did they decide to have this scholar only go to school from approximately 3:45pm to approximately 6:30pm?  Why didn't they just have him go to school during normal school hours?  The scholar is not gaining academic hours, the scholar is actually losing academic hours."  Gnu's response was, "I know, it doesn't make any sense." 

At lot of crazy things happen in our classroom and there are often times I wonder if I should tell my part time editor, part time consultant, and full time spouse about my day.  This happened recently with the scholar that was permanently assigned to our classroom because his behavior had shown improvement.  It's 3:30pm and the end of the school day.  Prophet didn't have a particularly good day and his parental unit was called to pick him up and take him home.  When our administrative czar called our classroom to tell Gnu that Prophet's parental unit was here Gnu told Prophet it was time to go home.  At the time, he had one of our iPad's and when Gnu told him to turn it off because it was time to go home Prophet said "no."  Gnu reached for the iPad but Prophet moved it away from her but unfortunately for the scholar, he moved in it my direction, so I took it from him.  Prophet then look directly at me and said, "I'm going to kill you."  Anticipating that Prophet, as he has done numerous times, would try and run away from the classroom, Gnu tried to hold his hand so she could walk him to the front office to the scholars waiting parental unit.  As soon as Prophet exited the classroom he tried to run but Gnu held on to him and I arrived to help her.  As we are trying to control the Prophet, his parental unit calls his name and he relaxed.  We then start walking, with Prophet's parental unit, to the waiting car so the scholar can go home.  As we are walking, Prophet, who is in the lead looks back at us and I recognize immediately what is going to happen and say to everyone, "he is going to run."  Sure enough off the scholar goes but the scholar failed to recognize that two members of our Crisis Team saw him running and captured him.  With Prophet in containment, four adults escorted the scholar to the parental units car, place the scholar in the car and close the door.  When Gnu and I are back in the classroom I say to her, "did you hear Prophet say to me, "I'm going to kill you?"  Get ready for this one.  Gnu looks at me and says, "in an earlier conversation I had with him he told me that he knew that his parental unit had a gun and knew exactly where his parental unit hid it."  To tell her about my day or not, that is the question.  I cautiously told her and she didn't show much of a reaction.  So my part time editor, part time consultant, and full time spouse didn't really react much to the news that I was going to be killed.  I'm now wondering what your reaction was when I told you what Prophet said and that the scholar knew where a gun was located? 

The weather has been warming up, with occasional periods of rain, so the grass needs to be cut.  I'm going to fire up my 40" cut, zero turning radius riding lawn mower and cut the grass.  Thanks for continue to follow, for two years now, the musings of an old man who has view from the back of the classroom and enjoys writing about what he sees but is also looking for some body armor.