Monday morning, April 4th, and it's approximately 8:30am, when I asked Gnu if our new scholar will arrive today. "I'm not sure," she responds, "I heard from the overhead personnel and there may be an issue with either transportation or the scholar lives outside of our district." It's now 9:15am, all the scholars are in the room and I'm back from bus duty when the classroom door opens. "Hi everybody, I'm scholar No. 9, you can call me S&T and I'm in the second grade although I'm supposed to be in the third grade." So much for the overhead personnel knowing if this young scholar will arrive in our classroom on April 4th. Again I ask myself, what the hell do these overhead people do all day that they can't say for sure when a scholar will show up in a classroom. As I watch S&T walk past me I'm recalling his Individual Education Plan (IEP) that I read a few days ago and think to myself, this scholar was removed from his previous school and sent to my school because he attacked his teacher. Ridiculous! S&T is easily the smallest scholar in our room and I can't imagine anyone, who barely weights fifty pounds, attacking an adult in such a way that would cause expulsion from a school. It's mid-morning before Gnu and I get a minute to discuss our new scholar. "He's so tiny," is the first thing she said to me. Knowing that Gnu put S&T through a reading assessment I asked her about his reading ability. "He can't read, not even two letter words like at or no. I showed him a picture of a squirrel and asked him what it was and he said it was a frog. He also does not speak clearly. In fact, I had a real hard time understanding anything he said." Were jumping forward and it's now 11:40am and PhD(*)Pete arrives for our group session with all the scholars. These sessions usually start out with PhD(*)Pete asking everyone how they are feeling today. On this occasion, S&T was sitting to her immediate right so he got to go first. "I feel sad," he tells PhD(*)Pete. "Why are you sad?" she asks him. "Because they took me away from my mother," was S&T's response. Later in the day Gnu handed me the paperwork that arrived with S&T. The cover page contained generic information about the scholar. Page two was a letter from the Department of Child Services explaining guardianship. On the last page was a photo copy of the drivers license for the person that has guardianship of S&T. As I looked at the date of birth on the drivers license, I ran the math and determined that this person was forty-four years old. S&T is nine years old so that means the person with guardianship was approximately thirty-five when S&T was born. For the record, S&T's legal guardian (parental unit) is his grandmother. So, at the age of thirty-five you can be a grandmother. That leaves two generations over a thirty-five year time span and if you divide the thirty-five years by two that means S&T's mother was seventeen and a half when he was born and his mother came into existence from her mother when she was seventeen and a half. One last comment on S&T and I have to move on. He made it through the first week without any difficulty. He also made it through the first week without his parental unit ever making an appearance in our classroom or our school. Ignorance breeding ignorance and now Gnu has to educate a young scholar who looked at a picture of a squirrel and said it was a frog.
Tuesday morning and it's D-Day for Prophet and his continuing to stay in our classroom. Gnu expressed her confidence that Prophet will be leaving us and going to an educational or behavioral facility that actually has the ability to help him. We are in our reading block with the scholars spread out at different reading stations. I'm with EM, Knapper, and ShortTime. Grr!, MiniJ, and Uh-Uh-Uh are doing Sound Reading on the iPads and S&T is at the front table with Gnu. S&T speaking to Gnu, "I can't read, will you teach me to read?" Gnu looked back at me and I thought she was going to cry. "Of course I'll teach you to read," Gnu responded to S&T. It's now 3:00pm and Gnu is gathering her resources to attend the case conference with Prophet's parental unit. That means I get to spend the remaining thirty minutes of the day with the nine scholars in our classroom. As a reminder, I'm not a licensed teacher so I can't be alone in the classroom with the scholars. It's now 3:30pm and the telephone in the classrooms rings. Grr! was the closest one to the phone so he answered the phone perfectly, "room #, student speaking," The conversation was brief and Grr! hangs up the phone and looks at me and says, "Prophet needs to go to the front office." With Prophet out of the classroom the other scholars get ready and depart for the day. It's now 4:00pm, the classroom is straightened up, the case conference to determine Prophet's future is not over, so I depart for the day.
It's Wednesday morning and things are going very well in the classroom. As we near recess and lunch time I asked Gnu for the status of Prophet. She looks up at me and says he will be here today and the look on her face tells me all that I need to know, Prophet is not leaving us. As I looked at her two things came to mind, this is bullshit and she works to damn hard to have this happen to her. It's now 12:00 noon and I'm walking with ShortTime as he heads for his bus to go home for the day. Walking towards us, as he is arriving for the day, is Prophet. "Mr. Schultz, a student (Leftside, a scholar from last year) just ran out of the building," Prophet says to me. "How do you know that," I asked Prophet. "I saw him run out the door" and he pointed into the cafeteria. As I looked across the cafeteria I saw my instructional assistant counterpart from the other EH room walk past the cafeteria windows as he is outside the building. I tell ShortTime to get on his bus and I direct Prophet to our classroom and I'm heading outside into forty-five degree temperature wearing a short sleeved shirt. When I see my counterpart I yell at him to get his attention and say to him, "what way did he go?" He points to the south and the pursuit is on. We decided to split up to try and get ahead of Leftside. Unfortunately, I lost track of my counterpart and Leftside so I head back toward the school when I see the BigB in her car as she is now pursuing Leftside. She informs me the school police have joined the search and to head back to the classroom before I freeze to death. Twenty minutes later I was informed that the school police captured Leftside at a location that was almost a half mile from the school. Here is the frustrating part of the Leftside adventure. He will not be suspended because suspensions are a pipeline to prison. I think this pipeline to prison will be the subject of my next post. Anyway, I'm back in the classroom and the reminder of the day went smoothly. It's now approximately 5:30pm and it's Wine Drinking Wednesday and I'm with A.O. of Vino when I realize that I don't know what happened at the case conference for Prophet so I send a text message to Gnu to find out what happened.
It's decision time. This blog is getting rather lengthy and I have to decide if I should tell you now what happened at the case conference or wait until next week. Hmmm! What should I do? I already took some grief from a colleague of my part time editor, part time consultant and full time spouse for leaving the readers hanging for an entire week previously so I better continue but with the abridged version.
The purpose of the case conference was to convince Prophet's parental unit that the best option for him was a behavior health in-patient unit so he could get the help he needs to get his life back on track. The parental unit refused to do that. Why would a parental unit fail to get help for their scholar is beyond my comprehension. With this option shut down the consensus of those in attendance at the case conference came down to this, "we don't know what to do with him." So the bottom line is this, we are stuck with an incredibly disruptive scholar and probably for the remainder of the school year. That sucks and this next part is the icing on the cake. Part of the text message I received back from Gnu while sitting with A.O. of Vino on Wine Drinking Wednesday read like this. An overhead person from the life skills department of our school corporation's special education department is speaking to Gnu. I'm paraphrasing, "you will not be held at fault because you documented and took the necessary steps to try and get him out." Gnu speaking, "okay, tell that to the parents of the people he may hurt and sorry, I don't care if it's physical. The damage he does to their academic progress is just as bad as a broken arm." When I finished reading Gnu's text message I was pissed and A.O. of Vino can attest to that. At the same time I was proud of my partner, she fired back with both barrels at a superior in the overhead department who just made, in my opinion, a totally stupid statement.
That's it. Time to mix up a Bloody Mary, turn on the television, and watch the end of the Master's golf tournament. Thanks for sticking around to read the rantings of an old man with a view from the back of the room.
By the way, did you like my Beatles reference in the title?
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