Wordy Wednesday: A Shot of Hope

For a long time now, I’ve been worried that I was never going to be back in the classroom.  After all that happened to me at CHS, I was feeling pretty burned; for all that the place was pretty laid-back and permissive, I still managed to get into trouble, so it stands to reason that it’s highly unlikely I’m going to find someplace where my enthusiasm, passion, and ethics won’t be a liability.

I met Jay for coffee this afternoon.  He’s a teacher at a different charter school (and a hell of a photographer; hit that link and go on over and click around.  Leave some feedback; he’s looking for some interaction), and the parent of one of my former students.  We’d been tangentially in touch since before I was dismissed from CHS; he and I clicked when we first met, he was very supportive of my efforts to kick his recalcitrant daughter in the ass, and we share a very similar perspective on politics, spirituality, and the underlying purpose (and ethics) of education.  Anyway, I left a comment on his blog about a particularly stunning portrait he’d posted of Sweet Pea, and a few emails later, we’d set up a coffee date.

I left that hour feeling much better about where I am professionally.  He told me a lot of things I really needed to hear (though, let’s be clear, I don’t think for a second that he said them because they were what I needed to hear; he’s not like that at all).  He confirmed for me a couple of things that I deeply suspected but really didn’t want to admit (I’m over that now, by the way; I’m done telling myself stories to try to make it hurt less).  He told me that not only should I go back to teaching, but that I very likely had to; we share a proclivity of spirit that compels us to work with young people, and he recognizes in me the same drive that moves him to do the work that he does.  He essentially told me that I wasn’t going to be happy doing anything else – that I could do other work, certainly, but that I would never be as fulfilled as I will be teaching.  I don’t think he’s wrong.

Jay also offered me a glimmer of hope that there may well be a place for me in a classroom.  I’m going to chase down a couple of contacts tomorrow (and send out a couple of resumes, as well) and see what becomes of it.  While I’m not going to force myself into a situation where I have to change who I am to fit in with the culture so much that I don’t recognize myself anymore, neither am I going to give up entirely on the idea of being a teacher.  The truth is that I miss the kids too much to abandon the work, and I love who I am while I’m doing it.

Onward.

Wordy Wednesday: The Conversation We Should be Having

Go get yourself comfortable; this could take a while.

By now, 5 days after the horror of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, we’re pretty well steeped in the hysterical rhetoric coming from both “sides” of the political spectrum; the “left” is screaming for rational gun control legislation and humane mental health services while the “right” is advocating arming teachers and eliminating “gun-free zones.”  The fighting is as predictable as it is pointless; background checks wouldn’t have prevented this tragedy, the guns used in the shooting were obtained legally, guns are not the problem, you can’t plan for the crazy people, there’s evil in the world and there’s nothing you can do about it, The Second Amendment….

Blah, blah, blah.

This is not the conversation we should be having.  We don’t have a gun problem; we have a humanity problem.

Are there reasonable things that we should be doing as concerns guns and weaponry that we’re not doing?  Of course there are.  I’m not going to go into them now, though; I’m betting you’re sick of hearing about them (I am) and anyone who knows me, even if they only know me here, knows that I have both feet firmly planted in the pro-gun control camp.

I don’t want to talk about guns or lobbies or the NRA.  I want to talk about culture.

A few months ago, my grandfather observed how difficult raising kids is “nowadays.”  I kind of called him on that; I said that raising kids is just as hard now as it was when he had kids, or when he was a kid himself, and that it might in fact be easier given all the modern conveniences and health care and safety equipment.  He shut me down, though, and this is how he did it; “When I was a kid, we didn’t have a telephone, but my mother would know that I’d done something wrong before I even made it home.  The whole neighborhood watched out for everyone else’s kids.  If I did something I wasn’t supposed to, my friends’ mother would take it out of me at the scene, then my mother would take it out of me when I got home.  When my kids were little, it was still like that.  No one looks out for anyone else anymore; they’re all too worried about lawsuits.”

While I’m not sure it’s the lawsuits that people are worried about, Grampa’s point has merit; we don’t look out for each other anymore.  We have drawn very clear and very rugged lines around our lives, such that it is the rare person who will step up to correct another person’s child, or even to offer to help someone else.

Case in point; the other day, I was in a department store.  Little kids love to hide in the clothes racks (I did, and I bet you did, too), and, look at that!   I found a small person in a clothes rack.  I looked up and didn’t see an accompanying adult, so I asked the kid where her grown up was and stayed with her until said grown-up appeared (which, I might add, was not immediately, and when the grown-up did arrive, she was not in the state of panic I would have expected of a parent of a small child in a department store around Christmastime, but I digress).  She scolded the child and ignored me completely, which left me feeling as though the help I offered by staying with the kid (or, not for nothing, discovering her whereabouts in the first place) was both unnecessary and unwelcome.

I have been “spoken to” many times in the course of my professional life for “caring too much” about my students; for being interested in them as human beings, for listening to them when they spoke about their lives or their frustrations or their goals, for offering advice and support and, yes, love.  It wasn’t my “job” to nurture them as people, it was my job to stuff “knowledge” into their heads, to provide opportunities for them to spit that knowledge back out, and to assess their competence in doing so.  I was told that it was the counselor’s job to take care of the kids’ emotional needs, but then listened as that same counselor said, out loud and in public, that he didn’t “do” crying kids.  A facebook friend observed that “Hell, I remember when everything shifted. Prior to my junior year in HS (that was 83-84?) the counselors went from just that, someone you could go to get help or just talk, into someone who helped with ONLY curriculum and college placement. Now they see a kid with a problem they call the idiots at CPS and all hope is lost for the poor child!“

I don’t think he’s wrong.

We don’t take care of each other, plain and simple.  We aren’t allowed to check in to make sure that things are okay at home; pediatricians were asking, not too long ago, for legal permission to inquire about guns in the home.  They were told ‘no.’  When a teacher sees something in a kid’s behavior that raises red flags, we’re told that we have to wait until there’s a clear and obvious crisis situation before we’re allowed to call someone else, who may or may not intervene.  We mind our own business and keep our heads down.

The message that sends is that there’s no one to go to if you need help.  If you’re in trouble, if you’re confused or frightened, if you’re bullied or harassed, if you’re feeling hopeless, there’s nowhere for you to go unless you’re threatening yourself or others; the situation needs to be escalated to crisis mode before there are any systems in place to help you, and by then it may be too late.  There’s nothing that can be done; you just have to suck it up and deal with it because you know what?  Life is hard.

I’m calling bullshit.

The problem we have isn’t with guns, though guns are certainly an exacerbating factor.  The problem we have is that we don’t know how to manage a basic level of common human decency.  We don’t know how to care about one another, and we don’t know how to accept that care without its being perceived as some sort of judgment about our fitness.  We’re so wrapped up in ourselves – our rights, our privileges, our perceived greatness -that we fail to recognize that our lives are inextricably wrapped up in others’ lives, too.  We listen to our politicians use violent rhetoric and watch them work tirelessly to further disadvantage those who are already behind.  Our entertainment glorifies violence and the loner; the rugged individual who keeps to himself and does whatever he has to do – up to and including hurting others – to ‘get the job done.’  We have, as a culture, completely swallowed the myth of isolation; that we are alone in the world, that the only things we get are the things we get for ourselves, and that everyone else should, at best, be viewed with suspicion.

I reject that mentality wholesale.  We can totally fix this gun problem and this mental health problem by just being decent to each other.  Let teachers care for their students.  Ask for help when you need it (and accept it when it’s offered).  Be willing to think and look critically at the habits and traditions you follow, the ways you solve problems, and the ways you talk to and treat other people.  Think cooperation before competition, and abandon the idea that someone else’s success means that there’s less for you.  Hold a door open, yield the right of way, look people in the eye and really listen.

Let’s try being decent and see what happens.

Things I Don’t Regret

The dust has settled, more or less, on the whole fiasco that has been my professional life these last two months.  I am coming – slowly, painfully, but certainly surely – to the conclusion that while I wouldn’t have chosen to leave CHS, it’s probably best that I did.

The information that I’m getting – piecemeal and from varied sources and almost never straight-up, but rather given in roundabout, listen-to-what-I’m-NOT-saying ways – is that I lost my job because of my relationship with Sweet Pea.  I’ve been thinking about all the things that people have said and reviewing all the things that happened, and I’ve come to the conclusion that, even knowing what the consequences were, I wouldn’t have done a single thing differently.

I was there for a kid who needed me – a kid who really, life-and-death needed me.  No one else was able, or willing, to take that kind of responsibility.  The “guidance counselor” stated at the beginning of the year, out loud and in front of witnesses, that he “doesn’t do crying kids.”  The administration put a 15 minute limit on how long we could care for distraught students; I was told that if we couldn’t get a kid back on his or her feet in 15 minutes, we were to send them home.  I’m so sorry, but I can’t be a part of an organization that claims to be focused on community – on caring for the individual and on fostering close and familial relationships – but then turns around and puts a stopwatch on a kid’s stress or anxiety.

The truth of the matter is that we didn’t have a support system in place for the kids who needed it (and Sweet Pea wasn’t the only one who needed it; not by a long shot).  Mr. Chili and I were talking the other day about how my behavior toward students might have to change in a different setting, and without even really thinking about it, I told him that as long as I trusted the people whose job it is to care for students in that way, I won’t feel like I need to do it.  I will still love my kids – I always do, whether they’re in high school or college – but I won’t feel the need to worry about them if I know someone else – someone competent – is taking care of their out-of-class needs.  I reminded Mr. Chili that I didn’t “adopt” any kids last year the way I did this year because I trusted the counselor we had then; I only started picking up kids when she left and the new guy showed up and gave the kids the very clear message that he wasn’t interested in listening to their troubles.

The truth of the matter is that I saved Sweet Pea’s life.  Literally.  The fact is that she needed me, and I was there.  If I had to lose my position because of that relationship, then so be it.  Given the choice, I’d pick the kid over the job every time.

Ten Things Tuesday

I don’t know if I’ll make it to ten things, but here are some of the things on my work-related summer to-do list:

1.  Planning.  I’ll be teaching at least three core courses (most likely, English I, III, and IV) and at least two electives.  I need to decide what those electives will be, then plan an overview of the year for each of them.

2.  Writing competencies.  The State has decided to use competencies to determine student achievement, and it’s pretty much fallen to me to write these for the English department for the school.  I’ve already begun the process – I’ve done a fair bit of research into what other schools are doing to measure mastery – but I still have to codify them into a useable rubric.

3.  Interviewing.  I’ve made it pretty clear that I want a different part time teacher next year.  The man who taught this year was well enough – he read books and graded the kids’ work – but he never even bothered to become a part of the community.  Not once in 180 days did this guy ever stay for lunch; he’d disappear as soon as his morning class was over, reappear for his afternoon class, then bolt out of here with only an occasional “see ya later.”  That doesn’t make him a bad teacher, but it does make him a bad fit for the community.  I’m not convinced, though, despite my making requests that he be observed and evaluated, that that actually happened, so it may well be that admin decides to offer him another part time gig.  I’ll argue against it, but I don’t know how well my arguments will be heard.

4.  Rearranging.  I’m not good at moving rooms around; once I get things to a point where they’re both functional and appealing to look at, I tend to leave everything well enough alone.  I’m not sure that I’m making the best use of the classroom space I have, though, so I’m going to bring a couple of outside eyes in to the room to see if I can move things around to make it work even better than it does.

5.  Laminating.  I have a ton of inspirational bits and pieces that I rotate on and off the walls of the room – cards, images I’ve scanned, that sort of thing – that are printed on plain paper.  When it gets humid, all that paper curls, so I need to spend some quality time with a laminator to protect them.

6.  Reading.  I’m reading for my own personal enjoyment again (I’ve taken the Outlander series back up, and am heartily enjoying spending time with old friends), but part of my planning process is choosing which books to read during the upcoming school year.

7.  Cleaning.  We inhabit a nearly 200-year-old mill building that seems to generate its own gunk.  I’m planning to spend at least a whole day after the kids leave taking all the furniture out of my room and vacuuming the shit out of the place.

8.  Re-cataloging.  I have a lot – A LOT – of personal property at this school.  I need to document everything that’s mine, and make sure that I have record of its being mine in the event of loss, damage, or separation.

9.  Organizing.  I have to go through all my files and make sure that a) everything is where I can find it and b) everything that can be scanned and cataloged has been.  I have a lot of great materials that I just don’t use because they’re not convenient to me when I need them.  I need to figure out how to remedy that.

10.  Networking.  I am concerned, because of things that have been happening around here, that there may be a need for me to keep certain options open.  I’m going to review my professional development, look into some more college courses (I’ve been flirting with the idea of a degree in social work), and talk to some of my contacts about the possibility of perhaps stretching a safety net underneath me.  I wish it weren’t so, but wishes aren’t horses, so beggars don’t ride.

Quick Hit: Vignette

I gave my juniors a bunch of short story prompts inspired by a compilation of “either/or” choices in a book one of the students brought to class this morning.  The one I chose was “would you rather always lose or never play?”

I’m giving it to you just as I wrote it; it hasn’t gone through any revision or workshopping.  I’ll take whatever feedback anyone feels compelled to give.

Stacey sat in the bleachers, watching her little brother’s baseball team lose… again.  They were oh-and-19 going into this game, and the future didn’t look good.  At least this time they managed to get on the scoreboard; the run the Ducks brought in on a laughable error by the other team’s outfielder brought the number of runs scored by the team for the entire season to exactly two.

Bottom of the 9th; two outs.  Jameson was at bat.  At 13, he was still an awkward kid, and despite his 6 years in Little League, he never quite got the hitting stance right.  He held the bat like a weapon, Stacey could see Jamie’s fingers turning white in the death-grip on the thing, and he bent his knees so much that his ass stuck out at an impossible angle.  He stared at the pitcher with what looked to Stacey like a mixture of wide-eyed fear and blazing fury, and she was sure that, at any moment, the kid might storm the mound and beat the pitcher to death.

The ball came screaming toward her little brother, and he did what he always did.  The bat came flying around his body, wielded more like a broadsword than a baseball bat, and missed the ball entirely.  Stacey heard the ball thump securely in the catcher’s mitt, watched the umpire signal strike three, and watched as her brother and his fellows came to the infield to line up to congratulate yet another vanquishing team.  Stacey gathered up her bag and her jacket and thought to herself that the kids didn’t even look all that dejected.  Losing, it seems, is something that they’ve gotten comfortable with.

How Far the Ripples Go

Very long story somewhat short: I’ve got this kid… or, rather, I should say I HAD this kid.  Let’s call him Mitchell.

Mitchell and I never really got along very well.  While I’m sure there are a number of reasons for this, the one I come to first is that he’s a pretty insecure young man, and I think that my forthrightness intimidated him.  Regardless, he ended up leaving my class on ideological grounds; his mother, it seems, is a fundamentalist Christian, and from what I understand, she didn’t appreciate my challenging her kid in the ways that I did.

The truth is that I have nothing personal against the boy, and never have, though I don’t go out of my way to chat with him as his behavior around me makes it pretty clear that I make him uncomfortable.  That’s why I was surprised, and pleasantly so, when Mitch asked me this afternoon if I had a few free minutes I could give him.  I invited him into my room and gave him my full attention.

He started out by asking me some vague questions about how I handle fear.  I spent a little while talking about how different fear – fear for physical safety, fear about personal conflict, fear of intimidation, fear from shock or surprise – have different effects.  I let him know that I, personally, have difficulty managing my physical response to fear; despite going into a conflict armed with confidence and knowledge that I have a strong foundation upon which to stand, I still shake and my palms still sweat and I often find myself in angry tears.  I told him these things as a way of humanizing myself to him because, as I say, I know that his impressions of me have not been entirely favorable.

It turns out that, despite what else he may think of me, Mitch understands that I’m someone safe to go to with difficult personal issues.  He confided that he is having some pretty serious problems with a family member (not his mother), and that the issues are sufficient that he felt it necessary to warn the school about what’s been going on.  He asked me for advice on how to comport himself through these experiences, and I told him that while I could not counsel him – that I’m neither a social worker nor an attorney – I did know that, as an adult (he’s 18) he has absolute freedom of association; he gets to choose whether or not to spend time with someone, and that his fears of being compelled by court order to associate with the person in question are unfounded.  I recommended that he seek the advice of law enforcement about the possibility of a restraining order and that, if he feels it would do him some good, he should talk to a counselor to sort out how he feels about the whole mess.  I offered that I grew up as an abused child, and I understand that there are a terrible lot of mixed emotions that come with that legacy.  I also offered up confidence to the boy that I had faith in his ability to find his way through it, and told him that I would always be a listening ear if he felt I could be useful to him.

It turned out that I had some things to take care of a the end of the day, so I was on my way out the door when Mitch emerged from his meeting with administration.  He was clearly upset, so I hung back to offer up one last shot of support.  I took him aside, so that we wouldn’t be in the middle of the hall, and asked him how he was doing (though it was patently obvious the boy was on the verge of tears).  As I was giving him my “you’re not alone; there are plenty of resources; you’re strong and smart and I believe in you” pep talk, his mother came around the corner and stopped dead in her tracks.  I know, though I’ve never been told outright, that she has very little use – and even less respect – for me, but at that moment, I didn’t care.  Her son recognized me as someone safe to confide in, and I was not about to disrespect that for fear of what his mother might think.  She stood there, a respectful distance away, listening to every encouraging thing I had to say to her son.

Though I’m truly sorry for what’s happening to Mitch, this could not have happened at a better time for me.  After everything that’s happened at school these last several weeks, having THIS kid come to ME to address something difficult and painful and personal is nothing short of divine confirmation that I am doing a good job.  He sees me being a support to other kids; he recognizes me as someone safe and caring and generous, and came to ME despite our previous rocky history.  That tells me that what I do – and the way that I do it – are working.  This boy’s choice to seek me out for this personal issue is a vindication of the very public, open, and honest way I love my students.  ALL of my students.

Thank you, Mitchell.

You Get Out What You Put In

Every afternoon, a teacher in our school leads an end-of-the-day activity with the entire community.  These vary widely – we’ve done everything from music and movie trivia to musical chairs to a flash game of Apples to Apples.  Nearly anything goes.

Tuesdays are my days, and I had settled into a movie-related theme months ago that the community seems to like.  As yesterday was the last Tuesday with this year’s seniors, though, I decided to do something a little different.

In the past, we’ve had what we call “sticky note days” at our school.  These are randomly chosen days where, throughout the day, students write positive things on Post-Its and stick them to one another.  I love sticky note days; the notes are always positive (and often surprising), they can be anonymous, and the small space forces the students to really condense the things they want to say.  In this spirit, I cut a bunch of copy paper into smaller squares and invited the group to write love notes to each other.

“We are influenced for good by a lot of people,” I told them, “but rarely do we take the time out to tell them how much they mean to us.  The seniors are leaving on Friday, and I wanted to give you all an opportunity to say something to them – and to anyone else you want – to let them know that they mean something to you.”

The bulk of the group took advantage of the opportunity, and I was surprised that I ended up having to get more paper.

This morning, as I was handing out love notes during the chaos of the start of day, I overheard one student complaining about the activity.  “It makes some people feel bad,” she said, “because not everyone gets notes.”

She’s right, of course; not everyone DID receive notes, her among them.  I think she’s missing something important in her disdainful assessment, though.  The students who didn’t get notes this time around were, by and large, the students who don’t go out of their way for others.  The kids who didn’t receive notes are the kids who criticize other students, look down on them, or decline to participate fully in the things we do together.  These are the kids who don’t eat lunch with anyone other than their tight group or who – like the girl who spoke her complaint – openly speak ill of other students, often within their hearing.

I understand that it’s not a one-for-one formula, but I have discovered that, generally, one gets out of a situation what one puts in.  If you want to be liked, you’ve got to open up a little and make yourself available.  You’ve got to practice some generosity, some patience, and some forbearance.  You’ve got to treat others kindly and foster the kind of goodwill toward them that you’d like returned to you.  I didn’t point this out to the girl – I’m already on eggshells with her as it is, and she’s not in a place where she can hear these things from me – but I’m hoping that she does some thinking about it.

image credit

Snow Day

Today is the first snow day of the 2011-2012 school year.   My charter school does online snow days.  This is both terribly cool and incredibly frustrating.

It’s cool in that we get credit for the school day; we made our case to the DOE when we first implemented the online school day program, and they determined that we met the requirements for a countable day.  That means that we don’t have to make up snow days in the spring the way traditional schools do (last year, we got out a week and a half before the rest of the state).  It also means that we suffer no interruption in the curriculum because of a missing day.  This is particularly helpful to us because we run a college-like, M/W/F – T/Th schedule, and a snow day on, say, a Thursday would mean that the T/Th kids would miss fully half their week.

It’s frustrating in that I don’t really LIKE teaching online.  I don’t feel confident in the platform, and since most of my classes are discussion-based, the online teaching model doesn’t really work for the way I run my courses.  I’m in a constant state of low-level anxiety in putting the classes together; since I don’t want to teach separate, stand-alone lessons for snow days (I want the snow day classes to be relevant to what we’re doing in the classroom), I can’t upload ready-made lessons ahead of time.  I also get stressed out when things don’t work the way they’re supposed to; if a kid complains that he can’t hear me, I have NO idea how to fix it.

Despite all that, though, it’s a good system and I’m glad we do it.  I just wish that I had more confidence in the platform, and that I could make it work more closely to the way I run my classes.

I Got to at Least One!

I don’t give final exams.  I hate them, not only because I don’t think that the bulk of a student’s grade should be dependent on one (high-stress, overly pressured) example of his or her performance, but mostly because I just don’t teach like that.  Really, it doesn’t matter to me if a kid can regurgitate a plot line or identify the main clause in a sentence; what’s really important is that the kid understands how to think.  I want my students to leave my class as more agile and critical thinkers than they were when they came to me, and that’s not something one can determine with a multiple choice final exam.

I do like the idea of a culminating project, though, and mine is designed around the portfolio model.  Kids gather up examples of their work and reflect on what they did over the course of the year.  My goal for this is twofold; I want them to review the work we’ve done over the course so they can revisit both their successes and their shortcomings, and I want them to have an opportunity to see the growth they’ve made since September.  Most of the time, I understand their advancements far better than they do, and asking them to reflect on their work gives them a chance to see what I see.

Not every kid gets that, though; most of them aren’t quite mature enough for that kind of self-aware, thinking-about-how-they-think work that I ask them to do in their final projects.  Every once in a while, though, a student is able to articulate something remarkably close to what I would say about him if someone asked me what his greatest leap was during the year.  Today, as I was reviewing project drafts to offer feedback, I opened this, from a junior who’s planning on graduating early:

Second Semester Reflection
    For the most part, I really enjoyed this last semester. Although there were many assignments that I found to be difficult and did not like too much, I learned a great deal from them, and learning is something that I enjoy doing. Being a naturally creative person, I enjoy having the ability to write what I want to write about, and although the assignments usually require students to focus the writing on a general subject, the creative control and freedom that students have been given this semester is tremendous compared to the high school that I came from; a school that follows state requirements and guidelines exactly as they are written, and that incorporates little to no creativity and freedom into the curriculum.
    

Personally I was not a very big fan of the first semester, since it was very structured and guided, however I realize now that it more or less served as preparation for the level of independence allowed in during the second semester, which I have enjoyed greatly. As a student who is graduating a year early from high school, independence is an extremely important skill to learn, and I believe that after completing the various assignments given throughout the second semester, I have become a much more independent person in school and out. Having come from a school that gave me a rubric and guideline for everything, it was nice to finally have some independence, however it was also very difficult.
    

Throughout the course of the second semester, I learned that independence is much more difficult than it seems. Although it was not easy, I was able to manage it by essentially learning how to critique my own work as if I were a teacher grading the work. Overall, being able to handle independence is one of the most important skills that a student can learn, and based on my experiences throughout the second semester, I can safely say that I have successfully learned how to be independent.

I’m not convinced that early graduation is a good idea in general, but I’m reasonably comfortable letting this one go early.  He’s got a very clear idea of what he wants to do (he’s going into a music production and management program), and while I know a lot of teachers who question whether a 17-year-old can really know what he wants at 17 years old, I knew I wanted to be an English teacher since I was in about 3rd grade, so I’m willing to cut the kid a little slack.  He very clearly has some decent communication skills, he’s working on that self-aware, critical thinking piece, and I think he’s going to be just fine.

Buy a Watch *EDITED*

I’ve got this kid.  Let’s call him Sam.

Sam’s one of those kids.  Sam has the ability to exude disapproval and annoyance from across the room.  Sam is bossy and loud and is completely unaware of boundaries.  Sam is of the opinion that the greatest tragedy in the whole of human history is that the world does not, in fact, revolve around him, and he takes every opportunity to try to change that.  He’s quick to judge others, with an almost vicious harshness, for the very same transgressions that others find particular to him, and he has no inkling of the irony.  He is hypocritical in the extreme and seems to take great delight in being the victim, even when no crime has occurred.

Sam also can’t tell time.

Sam has senior privileges and can come to and leave school according to his class schedule.  Sam has been late to our English class 9 times since the semester began.  We don’t meet every day, so nine times works out to be a significant portion of the class.  Also?  He’s can’t just come quietly into the class.  No; Sam’s got to make an entrance.  Sam’s got to be noticed.  Sam’s got to distract the kids who did show up on time and who are trying to get some work done at the beginning of class.  In fact, Sam proudly announced today that he had no excuse for being late; he just blew off his alarm clock.

Today was my straw day.  The same four kids, of which Sam is a sort of ceremonial figurehead, sauntered into my room anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes late for class, even after the talking-to I’ve been giving them for the last month or so about the importance of showing up to scheduled events on time.  Today, I dropped the hammer.  This little band of merry delinquents will be sharing a silent lunch with me tomorrow as detention, and they will do so again every day they choose to arrive for class on their own schedule.

Everyone but Sam took the news like men; Sam, of course, put up a stink.  “I get to leave after this period; I have senior privileges,” he told me, not a little petulantly.  My response was that senior privileges are just that, privileges, and can be revoked if they are abused.  Since Sam is late to class far more than he’s on time, I am revoking his privilege to leave tomorrow; he’ll be dining with me, instead, and perhaps, though it seems too much to ask, he’ll be ruminating on the importance of being prompt.

*Edited to include* Did I call it, or what?  It seems Sam is “too stressed out” to sit quietly for 40 minutes and serve a lunch detention.  He went to the counselor and raised a big enough stink that he was capitulated to.  I have officially given up on this kid; I’ll give him the 70 he needs to graduate and say “good riddance.”  Have fun stormin’ the castle, Kid, and don’t come back.