Just This Week at Work

I've been remiss in updating the blog. I feel like there's nothing "blog-worthy." Then I stop and reflect on the crazy week I've had. Teenagers do make life interesting.

Thursday morning a student got sent to the office for being disruptive in class. His assistant principal was at home with a sick six year-old son. I've dealt with the disruptive student before, neither of the other assistant principals was around at the moment, so I took the boy into my office. I tried being civil to him and reasoning with him. I went down to the classroom and got work for him to do and was just going to let him sit in my office for the rest of the period. About 3 minutes before the bell rang, I tried to have a "how are you going to avoid this situation in the future" conversation with the student. I then got to see the disrespectful, uncooperative student that I saw a few weeks ago. Because of his actions, I decided that he could sit in ISS the rest of the day. As I walked him out, he said, "This school is so queer." I turned him back around and we went back into my office. I radioed the SRO (school resource officer) to come to my office. I continued to try to have a conversation with him, but he wanted to look everywhere except at me and always wanted to have the last say with some smart remark. (BTW: queer means strange, the school is so strange . . . ) By this time another AP has joined me since he had also had a conversation with the young monster earlier. (All of this is happening about 9:45 am). The student kept looking out my door at passersby, so I got up and slammed it. In fact, I slammed it so hard that the ceiling tiles shook dust and debris all over my office; I'll think really hard before doing that again. It was a great attention getter. At this point, we radioed the SRO again. He came to my office. Guess what? He had told the little darling earlier in the week that if he disrupted a classroom again he'd get a ticket. So, I had the SRO write him a ticket, I called his grandfather to come get him, and suspended him for the rest of the day. Don't mess with me.

Friday morning, we received a tip that two girls were acting strangely (should I say queerly?) and one was overheard saying to the other, "You can't use all of them." I questioned girl #2. My co-worker got girl #1. When I talked to my student: "We received a report from someone who's concerned about you. Are you in possession of anything that you shouldn't have?" Imagine my surprise when she responded that she had a razor blade in her wallet. She had taken the blade from a friend contemplating suicide last week. After insuring that the friend was no longer in danger, I asked the girl if she minded showing me the contents of her large purse. I cleared off the end of my desk for her to deposit her items on. From this bottomless pit came a bag of multi-colored Sharpies ( I opened each one to verify that it was in fact a Sharpie), various pins, lip gloss, loose coins, loose beads (she makes necklaces), a smashed PB&J sandwich, a cheese stick, some peanut butter Ritz bits, and five multicolored condoms. I used to be surprised when girls pulled these from their purses; this is no longer the case since most purses that I search have at least one condom. My co-worker talked with girl #1. "We received a report that you were trying to get something from a friend in class this morning." The girl readily admitted that it was not drugs she was trying to get, but . . . wait for it . . . condoms. Well thank goodness, no drug-use, just protected sex.

Two freshmen had a bit of a food fight yesterday during lunch. Evidently boy A and friends have been picking on boy B. Boy B has taken all he can stand, so he retaliates by pouring ketchup all over boy A. (We have big dispensers of ketchup that you can dispense smaller amounts into small cups. I don't know how many cups were used.) Boy B begged me not to suspend them and not to call home. There was no way I was ever going to suspend them. Instead, they have to clean up the cafeteria after lunch for three days. Boy B is doing a good job. I've got to talk to boy A next week and give him a couple of extra days.

What else?

Oh, Tuesday night in our school's final regular season basketball game one player left early in the game with a compound fracture to a finger--allegedly the bone was sticking out of the finger; I'm sure it was, but I was not anywhere around the injury. Near the end of the game, a second player got an elbow to the temple. He ended up leaving on a stretcher. Parents and fans were a bit rude and disrespectful following the game. We were all at the school about 45 minutes after the game clearing things up and getting people to go home.

I finished my work week with supervision of the boys' soccer game. It was brisk out tonight, so I took the golf cart with a cover on it down to the field. Keeping the wind out was a help, but it continued to get cooler.

Now I'm looking forward to a low-key weekend. I have two jobs for Saturday: drop off some donations at the church thrift store and dinner with Dave for Valentine's. No plans for Sunday after church, and no school Monday!!!