What he is really saying is I don't want to be in a classroom with THOSE students. A couple weeks ago I wrote a blog entitled, It's Going Down the Drain Slowly, that was about the supposed demise of the school corporation that employs me. The idea for this blog post came from a social media site and I decided to write about it. While at this social media site there was a second posting from an inclusion teacher that equally ruffled my feathers. For those of you that are not familiar with inclusion teachers I'll fill you in. These teachers support classroom teachers with students that are assigned an Individual Education Plan (IEP). These are students that struggle academically, are in a general education classroom, but fall under the category of special needs so the inclusion teacher works with these scholars. The inclusion teacher position is a pretty cushy job. This person has little academically responsibility for the scholars, is not required to come up with daily lesson plans, does not have to worry about homework, tests, or mandatory state wide testing scores, does not have to send home report cards and doesn't have to deal with any parental units. Now, on to the matter at hand. This inclusion teacher went on a tirade at this social media site because there was a special education classroom that was without a teacher. This inclusion teacher went as far as accusing the school corporation of breaking the law for not have a special education licensed teacher in the classroom. So what actually did happen? This inclusion teacher was asked to take the lead teacher role in this special education classroom until a permanent teacher could be hired and apparently this inclusion teacher was insulted for having to go into a classroom with THOSE scholars. Dear inclusion teacher, you are part of the problem and if you don't want to teach THOSE scholars then get out of the teaching profession.
We lost another scholar recently and we are now down to eight scholars. BayBee and his parental units relocated well outside our school corporation boundry a few days ago. This is another scholar that falls into the category of "don't let the door hit you in the butt on your way out." Actually, that is not a fair statement as BayBee wasn't all that bad. The bad was the parental unit who, during the short period of time in our school corporation, threatened to sue our school transportation department and well as my school and school corporation. On a lighter note, BayBee's new school sent a representative to our school to observe BayBee and gather behavior related statistics for this young scholar. This representative stayed in the classroom for around ninety minutes as Gnu went through our morning reading block. When Gnu's cell phone timer rang to indicate is was time to rotate to the next reading station the representative stood up to leave. As he was exiting he asked Gnu an interesting question. "Is this an EH (emotionally handicapped) classroom? "Yes," Gnu replied. The representative responded by saying, "it's not like the ones I'm used to seeing." Although I was not part of the conversation I almost said, "it's an EH classroom that is exceptionally well run and is led by and excellent teacher so keep that in mind when BayBee's parental units tells you he changed schools because his scholars previous school was making his scholar's behavior worse rather than better" but I chose to remain silent. I'm sure this new school will have a good understanding on how BayBee's parental unit thinks in a relatively short time period.
For the record, here are the remaining scholars.
S&T - third grade
Uh-Uh-Uh - fourth grade
Grr! - third grade
Knapper - fourth grade
MiniJ - fourth grade
Big House - fourth grade
Huey - second grade
Tourette - third grade
Gnu wasn't feeling well and she decided to reward the scholars with a second recess at the end of the school day for their good behavior. At 3:10 pm we headed outside to our playground and stayed their until 3:30pm, the end of our school day. It was at approximately 3:25pm when I saw Huey sprinting toward the gate of our playground and then out onto the school grounds. Gnu stood up to go retrieve him but I waved her off and headed across the school grounds. When I caught up with Huey he was trying to hide around the corner of the school building. When I walked up to him I told him in very simple terms, "if you run away from me I will call the police and they will chase you down so get back to the playground." He put his head down and slowly began the walk back. As we approached the playground Gnu was escorting the scholars back into school as it was time to go home. As I approached Gnu I noticed Knapper hiding behind one of the school support columns. As I walked past him I said, "come on, it's time to get your brother and head for home." I took a couple more steps toward the school entrance and then turned to see if he was following me. He wasn't so I walked back to him and said, come on, you're holding everyone up." "Leave me the f..... alone" was his response and just that quick the demons entered his head again. Gnu walked back towards me to see what the delay was so I told her the demons returned. She decided to let me stay outside with Knapper and she'd get everyone else going in the right direction to go home. I told her I'd text message FBG, our behavior specialist, for assistance and I was alone outside with Knapper. A very short time passed when FBG appeared. He walked over to Knapper and said it was time to go home. FBG got the same response I did and as FBG walked toward me he said to me, "he's gone." A couple minutes later Gnu returns with the LittleB and we are informed that Knapper's parental unit was called and she was coming to get him. About twenty minutes later Knapper's parental unit arrives, she was walking, and not in her car. Great I thought, how are you going to get your scholar home with him in this condition. Knapper's parental unit approached him very slowly and when she was a few feet from him she said to him, "come on, let's go home." Get away from me you stupid f....ing b-word he screamed at her." Knapper then pickup a hand full of loose gravel and threw it as his parental unit. At that point he crossed over the line and FBG and I now needed to shut this down before someone gets hurt. As I'm moving toward Knapper, he picks up another hand full of gravel and takes two steps toward me. I stop moving and I'm staring him down. As I stared at him I thought for just a second that he was going to start crying. I was wrong and he went into his best baseball throwing wind up and fired the gravel directly at me. Know what was coming I just turned my back, got hit, and then turned around and was heading directly at him. Knapper made an attempt to reload but forgot that FBG was behind him and just that quick FBG had a hold of him. The LittleB directed us to take Knapper back to our classroom and off we went as Knapper was struggling mightly to escape. While enroute I got kick in the shin at least four times, avoided a head butt and one biting attempt. Once in our classroom time out room Knapper kick and pounded on the door several times, pounded on the wire meshed window a couple times and then sat down. After about twenty-five minutes Knapper stood up, looked at everyone through the window and calmly asked if he could come out of the room. The electronic magnet that we use to secure the door was release, Knapper walked out, pick up his stuff and started to walk calmly out of the classroom door with his parental unit and just like that, whatever had entered his head quickly departed, and there were no further incidents. What thought had entered this your scholar's head to behave in this manner remains a mystery.
I mentioned previously that a child advocate spent time in our classroom observing Gnu and S&T. As the child advocate was leaving the room following her observation she commented to Gnu on how well S&T was progressing academically and behaviorally. I believe the words she used was that S&T was in a wonderful environment. A couple days ago Gnu received word that S&T's original parental unit is working with a social services agency to regain custody of him and have him relocate to Wisconsin to live with her. S&T has been in this classroom with Gnu for about a year and a half. When he arrived his academic ability was very limited. His reading was almost non-existent, he had trouble with letter formation, and his math abilities were limited to the simplest addition and subtraction. Since his arrival S&T has advanced to the point that he wants to read, that he now does his math with little or no help and his behavior has improved immensely and he may be about to leave to live with a parental unit that lost custody due to poor parenting. Damn! We sure live in a screwed up world.
Speaking of a screwed up world. I was certain that the world, as we know it, was going to end last Wednesday following our election process. I thought for sure I'd never get to write another blog post. Well, six days have passed and the sun keeps coming up so today's blog post is complete. Will I get to post another blog next Sunday or will the world as we know it start to crumble. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
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