Nine More Weeks

Monday, April 3rd

It's 8:40am and I'm heading to bus duty.  At a leadership meeting just before our spring break, the school leadership decided to change the drop off points for car riders and bus riders.  With this change in place I'm placing orange cones along one side of the gym to keep the scholars from walking across the gym floor.  While I can understand why that is important on snowy or rainy days, it seems like a waste of time on the nice days.  However, I'm not in charge so I play along.  With the orange cones in place, the school bell rings and spring break is over and we are back in the business of educating scholars.  The purple bus was first to let the scholars off the bus and that went smoothly.  Next up was our first yellow bus.  That went smoothly and I was about to walk over to the next yellow bus when I hear, "Hey, Mr. Perfect Hair," the bus driver yelled, "one of your scholars is refusing to get off my bus."  FBG, our morning bus captain, was standing right next to me so he took the lead and entered the bus.  It was about a minute or so later when FBG exited the bus with BigHouse directly in front of him.  With FBG escorting BigHouse into the school I followed immediately behind them in case BigHouse chose to turn run.  When BigHouse entered the school his backpack went flying one way and he walked in the other direction.  As soon as he neared a gym wall he started kicking it. FBG looked at me and said, "I'll stay with him," so I headed back outside to get the remaining scholars off their buses.

It's now a few minutes past 9:00am when BigHouse enters the classroom with FBG directly behind him.  BigHouse walks towards his desk, throws his backpack on the floor, walks past me, and enters our time out room.  Once inside the time out he slams the door, puts his breakfast on the window sill and starts pounding on the door with his fists and kicking the door with his foot.  The scholars are doing a real nice job of totally ignoring BigHouse and I do the same and pretend that he is not even in the classroom.  After a several minutes passed by, the time out room was quite and I'm getting a little nervous that BigHouse is in the room doing something stupid.   So I stand up and walk over to the time out room and look inside.  When I see BigHouse, he is in the middle of the time out room and soundly asleep on the floor.  Several times during the morning I checked on BigHouse.  Each time he was asleep but did change positions so I wasn't concerned that he was dead.  As we were approaching lunch and recess there was a stirring in the time out room and BigHouse exited and sat at his desk.

Gnu instructed the scholars to line up as it was lunch time.  Lining up went smoothly and they departed.  I put the classroom back in it's normal position, sharpened the pencils, and ate my lunch.  At 12:20pm BigHouse walked back into the classroom with Gnu right behind him.  My radar detector said something was wrong as they were back too early.  BigHouse walked directly passed me with the "look" and went over to Gnu's bookcase and climbed up on it.  Gnu immediately said, "get off my bookcase."  There was no response from BigHouse so Gnu repeated her request, "I said to get off my bookcase."  Again, nothing, so now I'm up and walking toward BigHouse.  "Miss Gnu asked you twice to get off her bookcase, now move."  BigHouse slide off the bookcase and promptly started slamming chairs into a table at the side of the room.  Knowing his anger was escalating again, I cautiously moved between him and the chairs.  That didn't sit well and he grabbed some pencils and started throwing them across the room.  With the scholars at risk of getting hit by flying pencils, Gnu and I recognized immediately that BigHouse needed to be moved to the time out room to keep the scholars safe.  I got to him first and he promptly dropped to the floor.  Gnu was going to try and get him on his feet but he took a swing at her and that was the moment he crossed over the line.  I stepped in between them, told Gnu to move away to avoid getting punched in the stomach and in a short time BigHouse was in the time out room.  I moved him to the back wall of the time out room and attempted to back out.  He came at me with his fist raised and I knew the punch was going to be directed at my upper body.  When the first swing came, I blocked it with my arm.  When the second swing came, I again blocked it with my arm and moved out of the time out room.  BigHouse was in a full blown rage, kicking and pounding on the door, pounding on the window, spewing forth a string of obscenities at me and give me the double flip off.  With the scholars out of harms way I asked Gnu what brought on the anger.  She informed me that BigHouse wanted to eat her lunch instead of the lunch he selected when he went through the cafeteria tray line.  When she refused to give him her lunch, he got angry and started screaming and pounding on the table in the cafeteria in front of a room full of scholars who were trying to eat their lunch.

As Gnu and I were discussing BigHouse's anger out burst she pulled out her cell phone and informed me that she was going to call BigHouse's parental unit.  "I'm not going to let him disrupt the classroom all afternoon, his parental unit can come and get him and take him home."  Unfortunately, BigHouse's parental unit was at work.  Gnu informed the parental unit that BigHouse was in the time out room and his parental unit informed Gnu that he should stay there until she could come and get him.  It was about 2:00pm when BigHouse tapped on the window and asked me if he could come out. I open the door slightly and asked him if he was going to behave.  He nodded yes and I stepped away from the door. 

BigHouse was out of the time out room for about fifteen minutes when the classroom telephone rang.  It was the front office and I was informed that BigHouse's parental unit was in the school to pick him up.  When BigHouse was told his parental unit was here, he picked up his backpack, put on his jacket, and headed toward the door but stopped.  He turned around, walked to the front of the classroom, stopped at Gnu's desk and calmly asked her for his homework.  With his homework in his hand BigHouse turned around and headed out the classroom door towards his parental unit that I'm certain is not very pleased with her young scholar.

Fast forward to Friday, August 7th.

This will be brief as I'm getting a little long winded.  Huey, once again, was off his medication.  When that happens, he is a whirlwind of activity, incapable of staying stationary and unable to stop talking.  I first recognized that one of his habits, when off his medication, happened when he was at the front table with Gnu.  Are there any guesses as to what Huey did?  It was during our afternoon math block and as Gnu worked with Huey she had pulled a scarf up over her face and nose.  That is all I needed to see as I knew that one of Huey's consistencies when he is off his medication is to poop in his pants.

Gnu and I started the week with a major anger outburst solely because a scholar didn't want to go to school.  We ended the week with a scholar pooping his pants because a sorry excuse for a parental unit failed to give her young scholar his medication.  There are nine weeks left in the school year.  Lord, please give us the strength to get through these nine weeks.

Check off another blog post.  The granddaughter is in the house.  It's a beautiful day.  The Weber grill is heating up.  I'm out of here.  Bye!