Looks like I am once again going to be crushed in the jaws of the "urban" model school system. This model includes leaders who mouth confidence in students, but demand teachers not actually teach, but instruct in how to pass tests that are the only measure of success. Leaders who know parent and student responsibility are key, yet demand more from teachers to fill the gap, knowing it is impossible. Leaders who allow students to flout rules and flaunt their disobedience without meaningful consequences, but demand that teachers exert control through "positive" means (do you think two kids getting into a near fight in the hall are going to stop and question whether their loud argument, witnessed and encouraged by a hundred kids in a hallway, is worth stopping so they might attend a dance?)
Yesterday my most troublesome student caused yet more trouble. He has been a problem since I started, and was my first parent phone call when he struck me several times while "playing" with a friend in the dismissal line. Of course, it wasn't his fault - the other boy grabbed his arms and swung him around so his hands, balled into fists, hit me three times. Lately, his defiance has caused him to be removed from my math class multiple times for intentional disruption (tapping, pounding on desks, popping his mouth, humming, spontaneous inappropriate laughter). Correcting him "by the book" - quietly, privately, respecting his ego - results in him yelling back that he isn't the only one, or he wasn't doing anything. He is in a class with a co-teacher and an aide, and they witness his defiance daily, and it bothers them. In my homeroom, morning and afternoon, he refuses to stay in his seat and stay quiet during announcements, daring me to say something so he can yell his rebuttal. On two different days, after I asked him to be quiet, he coincidentally spoke to a boy across the room (his excuse) calling him "fruity." He encouraged a different student to ask me if I had been in jail, then followed up with "so you never dropped the soap." Again, neither incident resulted in anything meaningful, which gave tacit permission to keep up the behavior.
He has been to the guidance counselor several times, with me in attendance more than once. We met with his dad on parent/teacher night, his mother has been to the school and been called multiple times. Yesterday, I positioned him in the dismissal line with instructions to stay behind a particular student. Within a couple of minutes, he was in the middle of the hall, yelling at a student in a passing line. I asked him to go back in line, and he ignored me and started to walk to the end of the line, where the loud kids congregate (and the one place I try NOT to have him). I extended an arm to reinforce my words - go back to your spot, and he tried to walk through my arm. Well trained in "urban" confrontation, he then loudly complained "I am going to tell my mother you choked me." I called his bluff and his mother, and we had a nice meeting (sarcasm) with his mother, my assistant principal and the head principal. They know this problem has been going on, but they are unwilling or unable to do anything. This boy has been given control of his situation to the point where not only does he not know the behaviors that are unacceptable, he also has no idea where to stop or what the ultimate consequences are. And the part that sucks more - neither do I. I don't know whether this kid will get fed up and assault me, whether he will fabricate a story (similar to yesterday) to save face, whether there is some underlying issue. And nobody is helping me. I feel on my own, but I also feel like I will be scapegoated in some way. And that is not a lovely way to end a week.
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