A little local politics to start the day. This is a quote from a candidate for the school board of my school corporation. "One of the most important things that a school board member can do is to sue and be sued on behalf of the district. I'm ready to immediately, right after I get elected, to march a lawsuit right over to the federal court." This candidate, who has attended numerous school board meetings and has been escorted out of the meetings by the police, has also accused the present school board members of "perpetuating slavery" and "child molestation." As a reminder I don't make this stuff up. Sadly, one of the major political parties, as well as a major statewide political action committee, has endorsed this candidate.
We had a child advocate in the classroom a few days ago. For those of you not familiar with the role of a child advocate, I'll enlighten you. This person has the responsibility to represent and protect the best interests of children who are victims of abuse or neglect. When visiting our classroom, this child advocate's role was to determine if S&T was getting the best possible education in the school, the classroom, and from the classroom teacher. Knowing that she was being observed, Gnu felt a little pressured to be on top of her game on this particular day knowing full well that at any moment one of our fine scholars could go into a major anger eruption and destroy all of the good that was going on. We were in our reading block when the child advocate arrived and this person sat on the perimeter of the room with pen and paper in hand. S&T was at the front table with Gnu working on letter sounds and reading from a story book during the first twenty minutes of our reading block. When Gnu's cell phone chimed the scholars knew that it is time to rotate to their next reading station. S&T is now on the move from Gnu's front station to our independent reading station. On his way there he picks up a laptop from one of the scholars who just finished the independent reading station and sits down at the same table his child advocate is occupying. Gnu makes the announcement for everyone to start our next reading station and S&T opens up his laptop, logs in, and goes to the reading site, find the story he is to listen to, clicks on the story, and listens as the narrator reads. A few minutes go by when I hear S&T speak. I glanced over in his direction and he is talking to the child advocate. I'm not sure what the conversation was about but as they talked, S&T turned his laptop a little so the child advocate could see the screen. When Gnu's cell phone chimed again, the scholars started another rotation. As the scholars were rotating, the child advocate walked over to Gnu. Although I couldn't hear the conversation, Gnu told me later how please the child advocate was with S&T's reading improvement and said that this classroom was a "wonderful learning environment."
A scholar can erupt for the strangest reasons. "I hate this f....ing school." Gnu speaking, "BayBee, I'm going to text your parental unit if you don't stop cussing." "I don't care. I hate this f....ing school, I hate this f....ing classroom, I hate all of you." BayBee is in an absolute rage and Gnu is short on patience. She walks to the back of the room as BayBee is sitting with me during our afternoon math block. She removes BayBee from my table and escorts him out of the classroom saying to him, "when you get yourself settled down you can return to the classroom." Now in the hallway immediately outside our classroom door I hear, "I hate this f....ing school," and now I'm up as we have a problem. Immediately across from our classroom is a restroom. There are young scholars outside the restroom and BayBee is dropping F bombs left and right. It's now my turn to direct BayBee and this time it is to our timeout room. I tell him to get himself under control and when he is ready he can come out and get back to work. "I hate you, I hate this school, I hate everybody" and he is saying all of this as he slowly walks in circles in the timeout room. About ten minutes goes by when the door to the timeout room opens slowly and BayBee peaks out and says to me, "I'm ready to come out now."
It took Gnu a while before she walked over to my table. "What was that all about," she says to me and now you will hear the beginning of the story. Huey, S&T, and BayBee are with me for their math block. Huey and BayBee are talking about some type of action figure that Huey has at home. BayBee wants Huey to bring this action figure to school so he can play with it as it is an action figure that he does not have. Huey tells BayBee that he will not bring it to school because it might get stolen or broken. BayBee continues to pester Huey about the action figure and Huey is getting a little frustrated with BayBee and says to him, "look Dude, I'm not going to bring it to school." To rescue Huey from this conversation I say to BayBee, "why don't you just ask your parental unit to buy you one." "That will take days, that will take weeks, that will take f.....ing years for my parental unit to do. I hate this f....ing school."
This coming Friday, November 11th, is Veteran's Day and I going to tell you a little story and then call it a day. A couple years ago my part time editor, part time consultant, and full time spouse and I were is Washington, D.C. We were standing near the Rolling Thunder souvenir stand as I had just purchased a stick pin to put on my baseball cap that reads Vietnam Veteran. I case someone is interested, the stick pin was a small shield of the 23rd (Americal) Infantry Division which is where I served while in Vietnam. As my part time editor, part time consultant, and full time spouse was helping me stick the pin on my hat a voice behind me said, "there is an American hero over there, go show him some love." When I turned around to see who this American hero was an African American gentleman walked up to me and said, "thank you for your service" and shook my hand. Standing directly behind this gentleman was a group of school kids from the state of Washington. One by one this group of students walked up to me and said, "thanks for your service" and shook my hand. As I was shaking hands I said to this group, "I had more people thank me for my service in the past ten minutes than I have in the past forty plus years and then I thanked them for making my day. Like I said at the beginning of this paragraph, it's been a couple of years since I've had this chance meeting, but I can tell you this in no uncertain terms, it's a day I will never forget.
For someone with morning issues I was surprised to see this person walking around the classroom with a sucker in her mouth. After I made a silent inquiry as to why this was happening I discover that suckers helps suppress morning issues. After the school day ended I was heading to the store with the objective of finding Dum Dum suckers. I found some at a CVS Pharmacy, aisle five, about halfway down the aisle on the left on the bottom shelf. Crap! The smallest quantity of Dum Dum suckers was a package of two hundred. Then I thought, it's a long way to around the first of June. Bye! Thanks for following along.
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