Thursday, February 12, 2009

Fight Club

My fourth period class has some crazy kids. It is a pretty large class, comparatively speaking, and they are rambunctious and loud. One of the kids in there is a kid that I really get along well with, but she has her moments. She doesn't know how to relate to boys and tends to react strongly to anything they might say. If a boy says something that to another girl would be seen as a teasing comment, Melody takes it as something serious and verbally retaliates. And as is common with all of my kids, none of them know how to let something go. Each has to respond and if they don't they see themselves as "losing face" and "weak." Which means the responses escalate very quickly.

Today in 4th period, one of the kids who was suspended for two days came back and immediately started saying things to Melody. I was able to keep them focused for about 80 minutes of the 95 minute class, but towards the end when they were working on their notebooks, Melody and Brad started saying things. I don't know exactly who said what, but I saw where it was going and called the office for backup. Between the time I called and thirty seconds later when the principal came, the situation had escalated out of control and when the principal walked in, I had Melody pushed halfway across the classroom and one of the boys had Brad pushed up against the door. Both of them were yelling so loud on top of each other that when the vicePrincipal called later to see what had been said, I couldn't even tell him.

It was awesome.

If by awesome you mean Not So Much.

It's not fire-in-a-trashcan awesome, but still (reference to a teacher at my previous high school whose classes were so out of control that a student set fire to a trashcan INSIDE her classroom WHILE she was teaching - and she didn't notice).

I would like to rub in the fact that while I don't get out of school until June 22, I do have a week of NO SCHOOL next week. Ah glorious vacation......bliss.

5 comments:

Colleen said...

Fire-in-the-trashcan TWICE. It happened TWICE. The poor dear, some just are not cut out for teaching.

I am impressed that you stopped it before punches were thrown. And that the principal got up three flights of stairs so fast! Geez! Your school is super efficient...huh.

Enjoy your vacay. We need to plan better because I am off the next four days and we could have totally visited. Poo! Summer.

Melissa B. said...

Way to get in there and mix it up! Remind me to tell you sometime about the Great Journalism Class Riot. Seriously. Required 3 administrators and 7 teachers to break up...hey, fodder for another post!

John Deere Mom said...

OMG that sucks. Glad the help arrived in time to avoid a major catastrophe.
And a week off next week? WTH is that about? Do you get Spring Break too? Or is this it?

smithdl said...

Official badass!

Bethany said...

Yiii...guess that's why I teach preschool and kinder.. ;)