" Life as a Middle School Teacher: November 2005

Google

Thursday, November 03, 2005

This one student...

There is a boy that I have in one of my classes. We are going to call him George. I had some behavior trouble with this child early on, and we have since moved on from his temper tantrums in my class. He isn't the hardest worker, but when he is at school, he does try. However, he has some serious absence problems. He had 17 absences from the first 9 weeks, and then he was gone for an entire week last week. So I began to worry. When George came back after his week off, I asked him why he was gone. He informed me that he was working and he couldn't come to school. Now, this child is 11, so he has no business having a job. I didn't think that was the entire story though, so I told him we needed to talk to his mother. He doesn't have a phone at his house. Hmm, ok, well what is your address and I'll run up to your house during my prep and talk to her. Well, he says they aren't living at that house anymore.

I got a bit suspicious at that point. I asked him where he was living and he told me that it had been changing every night, but tonight they were staying with a friend of his mom. He said the vice principal had more information about why he had been absent so much and that I should talk to him. So I did. Apparently, George's mother was beaten badly by her boyfriend and they are trying to hide from him. So they go to a different place every three or four days so he can't find them.

I decided that I really needed to go visit this mother, so after school yesterday I took George home. The school's resource officer came with us, just as a precautionary measure. I talked to the mom for quite some time, and she seemed genuinely afraid of her ex-boyfriend. She is also willing to work with us on getting George to school on a regular basis, and possibly forcing him to quit his job to focus more on school. Which was awesome.

She agreed to come into the school and fill out paperwork to file a restraining order on her ex-boyfriend, and she said she would also fill out the paperwork to get assistance to help her with George. Now, the school's resource officer and I have agreed that if she doesn't make it into the school for her appointment, we are going to seriously consider pulling George into protective custody. Seems drastic, but it needs to be done.

At the end of the day yesterday, I was emotionally drained.

posted by lobo5747 @ 8:13 AM 9 comments

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

The Day After

I forget that Halloween doesn't end with October 31st. Today the students' backpacks looked about 30 pounds heavier. It never occured to me that the kids were carrying around all of their candy. I didn't allow my child to bring her candy to school because from my point of view, it's inappropriate. I assumed that the vast majority of parents were of a similar frame of mind.

Apprently none of those parents have students that actually go to the school I teach at. When I made a comment about the candy in one of my classes, every single one of my students pulled an engorged bag out of the backpacks. My jaw hit the floor with shock. I don't think I saw that much candy on the shelves at Target.

I sat there this morning wondering what was going on with my students because they were out of control. Until my nieve butt remembered that these kids consumed half their yearly allowance of sugar overnight. I told the kids that they were not to be eating candy in my classroom. Did they listen? Of course not. On the plus side, I have a ton of chocolate in my desk. That should make my week go by pretty fast.

posted by lobo5747 @ 7:49 PM 1 comments