that's assault, brotha!

no, not me. at least not today. one of the subs at our school was bitten this morning by one of the special ed kids. this little guy is a biter. he's bitten several staff members this year. today, he drew blood--through a sweatshirt. was he sent home? no. does he know it's wrong? they say he does. he's in a self-contained classroom with few kids and many adults. he's getting as much help as is possible.

i've been assaulted twice in five years. in both cases, the assailants in question need more help than is available in a regular classroom. due to the glory of mainstreaming and my "luck"(?) as a male in the school, they were my charges. first case, i'd figured out that the easiest way to calm him when he melted down was to wrap him up. he got a hand loose and frogged me right in the forearm. i had a knot for two days. i think he was sent home that day, but not suspended. in third grade, he was baker acted twice for being a danger to himself and others. he's been in a mental institution for a few years now. most recent one had an alphabet soup of diagnoses. his meltdown quickly deteriorated into shoe throwing, hitting himself, screaming, and scratching me after i removed him from the room. same week, he stomped on another staff member's foot and had a nuclear meltdown damn near every day. sent home? not a chance.

if i had to venture a guess, these are things that my mother never had to deal with as a young teacher starting out, nor were they tolerated by the administration. the defective policy of mainstreaming in all cases hadn't been dreamed up by policy wonks with no basis in the realities of the classroom. in a real classroom, the teacher spends more time and energy on the needs of those few than the rest of the class. sure, some of the neglected will learn in spite of the teacher. the middle majority suffers, while the teacher frets day and night about how to deal with that child and get back to teaching the rest of the class.

workplace safety is something that i never thought i'd have to worry about. i work with kids for God's sake! how far does it have to go before it starts getting better?

aggravated

i'm beginning to see that there are far worse problems in education than our supposed falling behind in the world market because of low test scores. i don't know if the prevalence of diagnosed problems in kids these days is merely the symptom or actually the problem. my kids this year are ADD to the nth degree. it grows tougher each year to maintain attention while teaching. i can't even take a breath in the middle of a sentence without their impulsive nature taking over and causing them to call out answers, questions, or random stories that have nothing to do with the subject at hand. i teach a classroom full of id with no superego to control it. one of the more problematic should be in an alternative placement. the reason he's not? an inflexible specialist who refused to place kids in said center. "it can be controlled with medication." aren't we then breeding a generation of pharmacologically-dependent children who can't cope with their issues without an rx? that ain't right. it doesn't fix the problem, it merely masks it, and when the dosage needs changing because the kids grow, their education as well as those of their classmates suffers.

perspective

pardon my french, but yesterday sucked. gray, cloudy skies. two meltdowns by my favorite 8 year-old. a perceived crisis explained to me ad nauseum about one of my students...a "crisis" in name only, i was let in on it 2 months ago by his mother. my heart breaks for the poor guy, i can relate to some of his troubles for sure, but i don't need to hear about it twice from other people in the school who never see him. oil change that took three and a half hours. blah blah blah. you get the point. it's over and done with, and as i recount it, i can feel my pulse and blood pressure rising...

this morning, much more sunshine. i'm feeling better. life put me in my place at school. one of my teammates' fathers is suffering with lung cancer. she's absolutely beside herself with grief and indecision. my minor issues yesterday don't mean shit. a moment of clarity yet again. yet another person in my life dealing with cancer. yet another plea for prayers, not only for her father, but for her peace of mind in doing what she needs to do. for her family, not for her students. to be selfish and cope with this difficult time in her life.