Shaddup Already!





















2005-04-10

Not looking forward to work

First of all, I want to thank crazy4muffin for linking me in her diary entry. My stats jumped. Okay, who's gonna mention me next? You know you want to. Come on! Everyone is doing it! Maybe hissandtell, poolagirl, dangerspouse. Pleeeeeeeze. Don't make me get the flying monkeys!

Alrighty then. Shameless ploy for mentions behind me, I shall now proceed on the topic at hand.

I am not looking forward to going to work tomorrow. See there is this little phenomenon that happens in a school. During the last quarter the children become raving, mad bouncy-balls. They have little tolerance for changes and when they think someone might have possibly thought about maybe saying something remotely negative, they fight.

The week before last there were several fights. One was right next door to me. The teacher in the portable next door was slapped a few times, in fact. The student did this deliberately because the resented the intrusion on her desire to express herself so physically. I did not see this girl, but from what I was told, she shall be scarred for life from the multiple, deep, fingernail scratches down her face.

This fight started behind my neighbor's portable. The security guy told the girl to go to the clinic, meanwhile a student walked into my neighbor's portable for class. Security guy comes by and tells my neighbor that her student is involved in a fight and can she please send the young lady out? Neighbor does this and the young lady is standing on the ramp that leads to the portable.

The girl who was supposed to go to the clinic comes running up and starts attacking the other girl. Neighbor steps forward to get them to break it up (without touching either of them--you just don't do that) and the aggressor slaps her a few times.

The crazy thing is the girl who was standing on the ramp showed no signs of injury. So, this is what I would say to the other girl, "Learn how to fight or take up knitting, hon."

Then there was another fight with a notorious boy. He is the son of the PTSA's president and she tries to throw her weight around to keep him out of trouble. All the while he is not taught to take responsibility for his actions. He was my student last year. His mom kept saying that B was her "difficult child." However, I just found out that B's older brother was expelled from the local high school for bringing drugs and a gun to school.

At any rate, the rumor I heard from B's fight was that there was a knife involved somehow. Someone was looking for a knife or someone had a knife. Who knows.

Then on Friday, one of my students sprayed cologne (stolen, no less) in another of my studetnts' eyes. Oy.

I just don't know what to think anymore. We have 2200 students, which is a lot, especially when we're so far over capacity it isn't funny. Over 50% of these students live in the ghetto. Great combination.

I was having a conversation with one of my loudest and most obnoxious students on Friday:


Loud/Obnoxious: Why do this school have such stooopid rules?

(I'm thinking that she is going to say something about one of the rules that would seem stupid to a kid, but to the adults it is definitely necessary.)

I mean, why can't we be fightin'?

That got me thinking, let's give the kids what they want. We'll give them one day where they can fight all they want and we won't intervene at all. It would be a hell of a way to pare down our population considering everyone would either be dead or convicted of murder. Yeah, great idea.

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