Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Ka-Boom!

It's been a year so far.  And I'm the lucky one.  Mrs. Angora and Mrs. Eagle have absolutely horrid kids when it comes to behavior, and mine are, in comparison, pretty good.

Or so we thought.

Firecracker Boy is smart as a whip, but has issues with behavior.  He's new to The School, being one of the kids that was rezoned from another school into ours when The Powers That Be redrew all the lines.  The first nine weeks he was awesome - polite, hard-working, a great student.  It sort of surprised us, based on what his file said.  And then the second nine weeks shows up, he's now comfortable in his new school and has figured out his circumstances, and the "real" Firecracker Boy appears.  It was like two different kids.  Disrespect, disobedience, slapping other kids, threatening kids, you name it.  Dad has a meeting with us to ask us about moving him to 8th grade (as that's where he should be) because he feels that he's acting immature because he's around younger kids.  That didn't go anywhere, simply because of his behavior (and that group of 8th graders aren't all that swift either.)  What we didn't know at the time, because Dad didn't bother to share it, is that Dad calls the authorities on Firecracker Boy quite frequently when he gets out of control with his behavior.

So, a few weeks ago, I write Firecracker Boy a referral after I had him sent out of class, basically for disruption and disrespect, and he gets one day in In School Suspension.  I also noticed that on the bottom of his discipline slip, after it is worked and a copy is put in my mailbox, is the note that he has 100 points and the next infraction will earn him a trip to the alternative school.  So, he spends his day in In School Suspension, comes back, then is absent for two days, supposedly (according to his sister) because Dad caught him smoking weed, called the cops and he spent two days in a juvenile detention facility.  Okay, so he's back, and he takes his test and all is well and good.

Until 5th period when Mr. Math emails me to let me know that Firecracker Boy has just been escorted from his room by the Enforcer because he apparently threw a firecracker down a toilet in the boys' restroom, thereby busting the toilet and flooding the bathroom.

I guess he really didn't want to stay here much longer.

Needless to say, he's gone for a while, and even better, has a $500 repair attached to his name.

Brilliant.

One and a half days.

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Drama, Drama, Darama

It's that time of year.

No, not the holidays.  It's the time of year when the kids decide they are all Sick And Tired of Each Other and the Drama starts.  The nitpicking.  The name-calling.  The arguing.  It's like being on one hell of a long car ride with six kids who can't get along.

We have two types of drama - boy drama (rare, but I have it going on in my homeroom) and girl drama (every freaking where).

Now, I rarely see boy drama because boys just don't go into this sort of thing - usually.  This year, however, I have several boys who just can't stop talking and messing with each other.  It usually revolves around disparaging comments regarding athletic ability and the ability to keep girlfriends.  I have one kid, Whiner Boy, who is constantly wanting to go to guidance to talk with a counselor because someone said he was a lame football player.

Really.

I can't wait until this kid hits the real world and a boss yells at him for doing something stupid.  He'll be on the floor in a puddle of tears.

And then of course I had the two boys get in a tussle over their STEM project because Boy One accused Boy Two of being lazy and Boy Two accused Boy One of not doing his share of the work.  Next thing I knew, they were slapping each other.  (That earned them a two day stint in ISS, plus Mrs. Sparrow had to eat her words about how the kids would love doing STEM so much they'd behave like angels.)

That's just a taste of the boy drama in my homeroom.

As for the girl drama...there's too much to even go into here.  I do know that the Guidance Goddess and the Guidance Diva are so fed up with Girl Drama that if one more girl walks through the doors wanting to write a statement or complain about another girl talking trash, that they just might hurl a book at her and shove her out the door.  Or, better yet, let the two girls get into a tangle so they can both be suspended, hopefully until January.

One thing about Girl Drama...the girls aren't too bright about who they stir up trouble with.  Mrs. Eagle has one little, and I mean little, girl who's a complete pest and who wants to talk trash and stir up trouble wherever she goes.  I have a girl on my team, Amazon Girl who is, easily, about 5' 10" tall and very big-boned.  She's not fat, she's just big and solid - and bigger than most of the boys and nearly all the girls.  In any case the Pest has been bothering Amazon Girl for well over a month and Amazon Girl has been doing the right thing, going to guidance, writing statements, walking away, and generally ignoring the little brat that's 1/3 her size.  Finally, on Friday, the Pest walked up to Amazon Girl at a dance, started messing with her and then slapped her in the face.  Amazon Girl had had enough, grabbed the Pest by the hair and just beat the snot out of her.  The result?  Amazon got one day suspension, but the Pest, who had thrown the first punch and who had been bothering Amazon for a month, got three days.  (Good thing there was all that documentation that Amazon Girl had done in guidance about the bullying she was getting via the pest.)

It's never boring.

Five and a Half Days.

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Kissing Pigs

My home room kids sold 98 tubs of cookie dough.

As a reward, someone (a certain silly bookkeeper), got the idea that we should borrow one of Mrs. Angora's baby pigs and those of us who had classes that sold the most got to kiss the pig.

The kids loved the idea. Some of us, not so much. I actually didn't mind because there's not much that can go through a nice red layer of Avon lipstick.

In truth, I felt a bit sorry for the pig as he was obviously overwhelmed by the screaming kids. He was kind of cute, even if a bit smelly.

Kind of like a typical seventh grader, come to think of it.

What we do.....