Saturday evening is go out to dinner night so my part time editor, part time consultant, and full time spouse and I went out to a restaurant called Smokey Bone's. Normally, I get the three bones order of ribs but we had a coupon so I ordered the six bone order. As normal, when you eat ribs you order an adult beverage. My choice was a Sun King WeeMac. Truthfully, I had two WeeMac's. While we were eating my part time editor, part time consultant, and full time spouse asked me about the blog. I told her that I've been thinking about it all day and wasn't sure what I was going to write about. She looked over at me and said, "from what you told me this past week, you sure don't have anything happy to write about." She's right, I don't.
Last week I forgot to mention our school year beginning convocation so I'll start there. Every employee, in every school, in our school corporation, from the custodians down to the principals are invited (that's not right, told to go, in my opinion, is more accurate) to the convocation. This year's convocation was a little boring but then out came the professional speaker. During the speakers introduction the gathering was told that he went to our school corporation for elementary school, middle school, and high school. He then went on to college, played football in college, was drafted into the NFL, and now makes a living as a motivational speaker. He had a most interesting speech and I'll let you in on it a little later. Why not now? It will fit into the blog much better at the end.
Let's start with our previous scholars, who as you know, are now in a general education classroom. With the exception of Big House, who is doing well, the other three have taken steps backwards and I can easily see the frustration on Gnu's face. EM continues to struggle making it all of the way to his fifth grade classroom. Uh-Uh-Uh stepped back the most as she walked out of her classroom at least twice that I'm aware of. On one of the walkouts, I was asked to track her down. It took me, and others, almost twenty minutes to contain her. MiniJ sustained an injury at recess. Apparently, as all of the scholars at recess were lining up to re-enter the school, someone cut in line in front of MiniJ. MiniJ's response was to push this scholar out of line. The scholar responded with a round house right to MiniJ's eye and he is now walking around school with a black eye. In keeping with the mantra to shut down the suspension to prison pipeline the disciplinary action was minimal, if anything at all. It is apparent now, that fighting is no longer a suspendable offense, so what signal is being sent to the scholars at my school?
It's the end of the school day. The scholars are being dismissed in groups. First are the care riders so Grr! and Huey exit the room as they should. Right behind them is Tourette who yells, "I'm a car rider today," which is a lie and he runs out of the room. The walkers are dismissed so Knapper leaves the room. That leaves the bus riders so our remaining scholars walk with Gnu and me to the bus pick up point. As the scholars start to board the busses, I get Gnu's attention, wave at her to signal I'm returning to the classroom, and leave. Leaving the bus area was a mistake as you are about to see. I've returned the classroom to it's original order and was waiting for Gnu to return. As I'm waiting, a teachers steps into the classroom and says to me, "one of your scholars attacked Gnu." I'm out the classroom door quickly and I'm heading to the bus pick up area. I didn't get there as the scholar involved, Tourette, is cornered by several adults in the main office. In his typical fashion, the language coming out of his mouth was obscene. Sadly, at dismissal time, parental units are in the office for various reasons and I'm sure they got a earful of language better suited from drunks in a bar than the main office of our school. With the BigB2, LittleBB, and crisis teams members surrounding Tourette, I decided not to get involved and returned to the classroom. Shortly after I returned to the classroom, Gnu walks in and pulls out our parental unit contact list. Gnu speaking to me, "he's not a car rider today, he is supposed to get on the bus. We got him on the bus but he charged out of the bus and was running wildly around the gymnasium yelling he was going to walk home." Gnu finally makes contact with the parental unit, informs this person as to what is going on, and the parental unit informs Gnu that she will pick Tourette up. I leave the classroom, head back to the main office and let the BigB2 know that Tourette's parent unit is enroute to school to get him. I then walk back to the classroom thinking this incident is about over as Tourette lives pretty close to the school. Wrong again.
I'm about to leave for the day when Gnu walks into the classroom with Rope. For those of you that are keep score, Rope is a SpecEd teacher who was involved with the Tourette incident. As they entered the classroom, Rope walked over to me and showed me her hand. "Look what he did to me," she says. I look, her wrist is swollen and so is the index finger on her right hand. Rope was involved in the containment of Tourette and in the process got kicked at a few times and a foot hit her right hand. After a visit to the doctor Rope was informed that nothing was broken but as of today she is wearing an Ace wrist bandage and also has a splint on her index finger. According to the clinic doctor it will take six months before Rope has full use of her right hand. We are closing the suspension to prison pipeline. The discipline issued for this incident, Tourette cannot return to the classroom until he writes apology letters. The length of classroom time Tourette missed while writing apology letters, less than an hour. Rope will not gain full use of her right hand for six months.
Before I move onto the convocation speech I have some food for thought. My good friend A.O. of Vino, posed a question to me prior to a cycling class a couple days ago. "Allan, can you think back to your days in school and recall the most serious school violations that you witnessed?" I can't recall my exact words to A.O. of Vino, but it was something like this, "I don't recall anything happening when I was in school that would compare to what I've seen in school these days." So, give it some thought yourself. What is the worst school rules violations you witnessed and what were the consequences. For the record, I'm a product of a Catholic grade school education. If I told Sister Ambrose to "f-off" I'm pretty sure the majority of the readers of this blog would have a pretty good idea what happened to me first at school and later at home.
I'll be paraphrasing. "Good morning everyone, my name is X and I attended grade school, middle school, and high school in your school corporation. After graduating from high school I went on to college and played football and earned a degree. After college I was drafted by the NFL and now I travel all over the country as a motivational speaker. Today, I'm going to talk to you about my favorite teacher. This is a teacher that I stayed in contact with for many years, right up until her death a couple years ago. There are two things that I will share with you about this teacher. The first one is she spanked me three times for fighting. The second one is right after spanking me she talked to me. She told me that I am someone. I am a person who can do great things some day. She knocked me down and then she picked me right up."
There were somewhere in the vicinity of 5,000 people in attendance when this speaker said, "I was spanked." Somewhere amongst these 5,000 people were the overhead personnel that are shutting down the suspension pipeline to prison and they sat silent. Amazing! A speaker, a product of my school corporation, said he was spanked and he wasn't booed off the stage. Amazing! A speaker, a product of my school corporation, said he was spanked and he wasn't physically dragged from the stage. Amazing! When this speaker stop talking, numerous people in attendance gave him a standing ovation. The suspension pipeline to prison will continue to be shut down. Sadly, as this is happening, teachers are being flipped off, cussed at, and injury while doing something they love to do, teach. Is a pipeline being shut down or is there a new pipeline opening. Both, but the one that is most troubling is the pipeline that contains teachers that are abandoning their chosen profession because there is no way that a teacher should have to take the crap that they have to take in our school corporation or any school corporation.
We are two weeks into the school year. Since the start of the school year, a kindergarten teacher, on the first official day with scholars in her classroom, resigned. Because of this resignation, there are now twenty-six scholars in each of our two remaining kindergarten classes. That is an ugly situation for the two remaining kindergarten teachers. We also now have an open inclusion teacher position. Someone you know applied for that position. So far, the BigB2 has ignored this request. I'll keep you posted. Hopefully, the next blog post will contain happy stories. That's it for today, it's granddaughter time for me. Bye!
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