More about Hyde

Several people commented on my post about “Hyde,” my junior for whom the best metaphor (thus far) seems to be a hand grenade tossed into my class. I wanted to respond to those comments, but decided that it would be better to do so as its own post.

Resources and Assistance

Molly suggested, wisely, that some of Hyde’s other teachers might have insight that would be helpful. Since the first day he came to my class, I’ve been trying to find anything that works. Unfortunately, it seems like Hyde has burned every bridge and every shred of teacher and administrator patience. Everyone is still pushing him, encouraging him… but he refuses to take any responsibility for himself or his behavior.

Last year I had a student who threw his desk around the room, threw things, and injured himself while in class. It was bad, but then again, he was 12. You can look at a 12-year-old with this sort of behavior and think that there’s hope, that he’ll grow out of it or find the right combination of meds or something. When that kid is 17, like Hyde, you begin to wonder what’s going to become of him.

Are some kids not teachable? I don’t like to think so, but Hyde makes me question it.

Hyde’s Diagnosis

Teachin’ asked about Hyde’s diagnosis. This is a point of contention for me. This district will give teachers accomodations (although we have to go hunting for them – they’re in our computerized grading system, and not handed to us as a separate folder or file) but usually will not give us the diagnosis unless we schedule a full IEP/504 meeting. So, technically speaking, I don’t know what Hyde’s diagnosis is. I have been told that he has “an alphabet soup of problems,” and that ADHD is one of them. From my own limited expertise, I would emphatically agree that Hyde is suffering from an emotional or behavioral disorder. He certainly exhibits symptoms that I’ve seen in confirmed SED students.

Accomodations and Legal Concerns

Teachin’ also raised concern about my legal situation as Hyde’s teacher if I can’t meet his accomodations. I’ll admit, it was one of my first concerns. I’ve been in touch with counselors, my department chair, and his case worker, and have kept copies of every email. I am a member of the NEA, but I haven’t brought up this particular issue to my building reps yet. Thus far, I’ve been doing everything that is asked of me. Hyde isn’t suffering from my actions in class – but the rest of my class is suffering as a result of his actions.

Hyde’s Future

Hyde ended up in ISS after our altercation. I spoke with the Dean to try to find out what’s going on with him.

Apparently Hyde is now on meds; his case worker says that the meds “turn him into a zombie” – which isn’t at all good for him, but will help those around him, I guess. (This is a point when I really wish I understood what his diagnosis was, so that I could understand what – on a chemical level – he’s dealing with. I mean, I know it’s not essential information since I’m not his nurse or counselor, but I am trying to teach “the whole child” – and IMHO, more information is better.)

Additionally, he’s put in paperwork to be transfered to an alternative school where he’d be in very small classrooms with lots of guidance and support. I wish I could say that I think he’ll thrive in that environment, but at least I can say that he certainly isn’t thriving in THIS environment, so perhaps a change will help.

The Dean, who has known Hyde since he was in elementary school, is at his wit’s end trying to convince Hyde to take his behavior and performance seriously. Hyde’s mom, meanwhile, is convinced that he’s headed for prison and has told the Dean that she would support Hyde being sent to juvenile detention. It’s not just me, I guess.

When I met Hyde, I wanted to be his champion. I wanted to take him under my wing and give him, if not success, then at least a chance. That lasted about a week before he made it clear that he doesn’t want a chance – at least, not from me. I can only hope that there is someone, somewhere, who will be able to reach him… before it is much, much too late…

PTC – A Halloween Story?

Yesterday and today are Parent-Teacher Conferences. Yesterday we taught for a full day and then had conferences until 8 PM in the cafeteria. Things went well; I had about 25 families come in, almost all with their student. That’s better than I had some days in my more affluent schools, and definitely better in terms of having the kids present. I think that’s incredibly valuable – I don’t like the feeling of talking behind the kids’ backs, and I’m not sure how much good it does in most cases. With middle school students it wasn’t as big a deal to me, because they’re children – but high schoolers are old enough to be taking responsibility for their own success.

In order to explain why this subject even deserves a blog post, I need to rewind to last Friday. We had an in-service day, and several of us went to lunch together. While eating, we talked about conferences.

Our school has three “sessions” of PTCs at a go. There’s the evening session on Wednesday that lasts three hours. Then there’s a full-day session, from 8:30-4, on Thursday. Finally, there’s a third evening session from 5-8 on Thursday. The evening sessions take place in the cafeteria, where we’re lined up at tables in alphabetical order and families mill around like they’re registering for college classes on a pre-internet campus. The day session takes place in our individual classrooms.

The idea of having conferences in our classrooms is kind of nice. We don’t have an Open House/Back-to-School Night, so this is a parent’s first opportunity to see my classroom. (And I have a nice one, so I like to show it off.) Even better, in between conferences I can get work done. I’ve got a lovely list of to-do items today, including reorganizing my desk and putting together my file cabinet. I couldn’t do that if I was stuck in the cafeteria.

At lunch last Friday, though, it came out that there’s a flip side to the situation. My department head warned me that I might – or would – encounter the following situations while alone in my room:

• drunken parents
• irrationally angry parents
• dangerously violent parents
• parents deliberately coming during the day so that they’ll find it easier to try to bully the isolated teacher
• parents in their pajamas
• parents in… uhm… school-inappropriate attire
• parents looking for other teachers and deciding that I look like a likely receptacle for their off-base personal attacks of said teachers
• parents strung out on meth (see bullets 2 & 3)

I was advised to leave my door open, to open up the doors of the teacher work area so that there’s a straight path between my room and those on the other side of the wing, to have a plan for enlisting the help of either of the able-bodied men whose classrooms adjoin mine, and to have the admin/security’s number memorized. In what may have been a coincidence, we got a district-wide email the day before PTC reminding us that you have to punch 9 before dialing 911 on our classroom phones.

I’m… flabbergasted. And curious. I wonder if it will really happen? A couple of the teachers I ate with claimed to have had any number of the above walk into their classrooms over the years, but I don’t know how exaggerated it all is. I mean, yes – the Rural School District is “tougher” than most of the Urban SD, and much more so than most of the Suburban SD.

I’ve set up my conference area by the door. Visitors will sit in student desks, which means that they have to slide out of their seats sideways. I’ve got a moveable chair on the other side of the student desks, and I wore sensible shoes. I don’t think anything is going to happen today – all of my parents yesterday were super nice, even those whose kids were failing. But if something does, I don’t want to have to use my ninja skills on them.

Awful

My junior class makes me miss my seventh graders so much.

Probably I handled this entirely wrongly. I’m not sure I care.

Remember Noisy Boy? Well, he’s going to need a real name, I think, because I suspect we’re going to get to talk about him a lot. I’m told that there’s a softer side to him, so for now, let’s call him Hyde – maybe eventually I’ll meet Jekyll.

Hyde has issues. Let’s not forget that. Hypothetically, his behavior is not his fault. He’s supposed to have severe ADHD. He’s adopted, and I don’t know what the story is behind that. If I had to guess, based on his behavior, I’d say there’s some trauma there – some sort of “my parents didn’t want me, so who the hell cares who I am or how I act” feeling.

He’s angry, and he’s irritated, and he’s bored, and he could give a damn.

Yesterday we were reading Act II of “The Crucible.” A couple of talented student readers were reading the main roles, and doing a great job at it. It was interesting, understandable, and even – as junior English goes – enjoyable. Most of the kids were into it. Hyde, however, was refusing to look at a book, rocking his chair to the point where it almost fell over several times, and disrupting his cousin. I quietly told him to put his chair down and read along; he physically resisted me.

Later, he put his head down and went to sleep. I might would have ignored it – probably every teacher occasionally makes the decision that a sleeping kid is better than a disruptive one – but he was showing so much underwear that I couldn’t let it go. Without interrupting the reading, I woke him and told him he needed to pull up his pants. He told me (loudly) that there was nothing wrong with his pants, and put his head back down. At that point, I recognized that continuing the conversation would definitely disrupt class, so I waited.

After the reading was done, he immediately came to life and began bugging another student, taking her things and rooting through her bag. I pulled him aside and tried to talk to him about his attitude. He threw himself onto a desk, began twisting back and forth, rolling his eyes and making faces at me. He told me that the reading was boring and stupid, that he didn’t know or care what was going on, and that my entire class was boring and stupid.

I asked him what his goals were, what he wanted. He told me that I wasn’t allowed to talk to him, that he didn’t have to answer any of my questions. I told him that he should, because I was trying to respect him and talk to him like an adult. I asked the question again. He began saying “I dunno” over and over and over again, like a six year old having a tantrum. I finally told him that I was going to have to write him up if he couldn’t behave any better than this, and he told me that I didn’t have the right to write him up for not answering a question. I walked away and called security.

While waiting for security to show up, I tried to wrangle my class back under control. They’d had ten minutes to begin working on the assignment, and had taken that ten minutes to pack up, walk around the room, move desks around, and throw all the cushions off of the sofa. I stood in front of the door and told them that no one was leaving until I saw people in their desks working on the classwork.

The bell rang, and – knowing I meant business – the class remained seated. I said that anyone who had 5 or more of the questions answered could show me their work and go; two students did. Challenging Boy (Hyde’s cousin) tried to sneak past me and was sent back to his seat. As the halls filled, I let those with 4 questions done go, then 3 questions. Several kids, figuring I’d eventually let everyone go, just sat there. I stopped before the 2 question release and told them that no one was allowed to go without showing me at least one completed question. Backpacks flew open.

Hyde tried to storm out of the room. I blocked the door and told him he had to show me one answer. A few kids came by with an answered question and I let them go. Hyde came up with a one-word, incorrect answer scrawled on a sheet of paper. I told him it was wrong, and asked if he could tell me what the question was. (He hadn’t even opened the book.) He went over to his cousin’s desk and began loudly commenting on the stupidity of it all. Most of the class correctly answered the first question and was released. My next class was waiting in the hall to enter.

Meanwhile, security still hadn’t shown up.

Hyde went over to my printer and jerked out a sheet of paper. (I realized later that he nearly broke the paper tray in the process.) A moment later he came up to the door with an incomprehensible scrawl, covering the entire page in one-inch-high letters. I looked at him. “Hyde, I’m not accepting this. You’re a young adult and you can’t turn in work that looks like this. You need to do this correctly.”

At this point he began yelling at me.

“YOU’RE PISSING ME OFF,” he yelled.

“You’re not exactly making me very happy, either,” I responded.

“Well, that’s just great. You want a cookie?” he snarled. “What’s the big deal? I’m just going to throw it away the minute I leave this stupid room anyway.”

He crumpled up the sheet of paper, threw it across the room, and stomped back to my desk. He took another sheet of paper out of the printer, sat down, and rewrote his answer, this time making some approximation at correct assignment format. He shoved it under my face, and I took a moment to read it. It was close enough.

“I’ll accept that,” I said, “but for now, you need to take a seat.”

“Well that’s just great. I’m having fun now,” he said.

He threw himself into a seat. I ignored him and called security again. There’d been a miscommunication; they thought he just needed to go to the bathroom. (He’s on a hall freeze list.) Then they got confused when I said he was still in my room. They tried to tell me just to send him down the hall and they’d meet him; I refused, knowing he’d never show up.

Finally a security guard arrived, with apologies about the confusion. I explained the situation and handed him the hastily written referral slip that I’d been working on, off and on, for the past fifteen minutes. Hyde saw the guard and stood up, throwing his crumpled-up assignment across the room as he went. My classroom full of sophomores tried not to stare.

God, a third period like that makes me appreciate my fourth period so much. I wanted to cry, but they were smiling and joking, and I just smiled at them and was so happy that I had some nice kids to balance out the deeply troubled (and troubling) ones. They began writing spooky stories for our end-of-October formal writing assignment, and I played “Monster Mash” and “Thriller” and “I Put a Spell on You.”

I don’t know what to do with Hyde. I really don’t.

Juniors

I’m so very badly behind on all of this. I always have the best intentions about edublogging during the school year, but it seems like they always collapse. My mental energy just gets all used up!

My juniors are tough – real tough. There are some really good kids in there. But, see, at CHS we have academies – specialized in-school mini-schools where students with specific interests can tailor their classes. All the kids who think they might want to be teachers are in a teaching academy. All the kids who think they might want to go into medical fields are in a medical academy. All the kids who are interested in technology are in a tech academy. So all of the juniors and seniors who have any sort of plan, goal, or intrinsic motivation have already split off into more specialized English classes, leaving me with… well, my junior class. A handful of great kids who want to learn, buffered by a thick wall of kids who want to sleep, goof off, disrupt, drop out, and otherwise drive me crazy.

I had a bad day a few weeks ago. I’d been warned that one of my students was going to be a challenge, and he was. Things blew up when he confronted me and tried to fight with me, in the library, in front of the class. I had to send him out of the room without a referral slip or anything – and while I didn’t feel physically threatened or anything, my fight-or-flight reflexes were definitely jumping into high gear. I’d never been treated like that by a student. It really made me quite nostalgic for my shorter kids.

Then he came back a week later, and was a much better kid. May have had something to do with having a bad cold. But I’ll take it.

And then they transferred his cousin into that class. His cousin is the sort of kid I’d like to like. He’s the sort of kid I’d like to save. He’s (apparently) got the worst case of unmedicated ADHD I’ve ever seen. Remember the kid last year who made monkey noises and threw himself out of his chair all the time? Well, at least that was kind of cute. This kid CANNOT SHUT HIS MOUTH. During silent reading, he’s talking. During my lessons, he’s talking. He’s out of his seat, bugging other kids, taking things off peoples’ desks – including mine – running his mouth, making inappropriate drug references. It’s to the point where I begin to suspect that he’s long since passed the ADHD line and is now firmly in the category of “seeing what I can get away with because I have an IEP.” I hate to say it, but if you saw this kid, you’d say it, too.

So Noisy Boy is transferred into my junior class, which is over-full, and stuffed with disruptive, noisy kids. His accommodations include minimizing auditory distractions and giving him constant attention. I can’t do it. There is no place and no time in that particular class when I can cut down auditory distractions. I can’t give him constant attention, because I’m so busy trying to keep the rest of the class from mutiny.

And he’s cousins with Challenging Boy, and ever since he transferred into my class, it’s recess time at the family reunion.

Gah.

Okay, I have to go put on my big girl shoes and go to school now. I’m working with IT to get access to WordPress again – I think I’ve convinced them that it’s a valid form of professional development. They granted me access two days ago, but yesterday it was gone again. We’ll see. Hopefully I can start posting more regularly again, and get caught up on everything that has been going on in the first month of school.

Lunch Club

The two boys sat there and wasted time in class last week, time that was sufficient to finish the assignment. They already have failing grades due to missing work – three weeks into the school year. I told them that they’d better get it done as homework, that they’d better be ready to turn it in, or that they’d be spending lunch with me on Friday.

When they walked in to class today, I asked them. Sure enough, no homework – just abashed grins and dumb excuses.

“I guess I’ll be seeing you at lunch, huh, Mrs. Bees.”

“Yep.” I handed them lunch passes, already filled out. “You’ve got five minutes to get your lunch and bring it up here.”

There are ten minutes left in lunch when they come in, laughing and jostling each other. I ask what took them so long, and they acknowledge that they forgot to come up. (I’d call bull, but at least one is severely ADHD and probably has the capacity to be holding a reminder note and STILL forget about lunch detention five minutes after being assigned it.) They look genuinely sorry, and hand me a drink they brought me. I ask if they spit in it first, and they think that’s awful – and awfully funny. I trust them.

“You’ve got ten minutes, guys. You need to get to work.”

Nine minutes later, despite my every-minute warnings, they’ve accomplished the following:

• one book open
• a name on a sheet of paper
• eight minutes of stupid jokes

I’m cool as I tell them that I’m going to be talking to their parents. Boy 1 tells me – not seriously, thank goodness – that I’m putting him in a body bag. I advise him that it wasn’t my decision to waste an entire week, including the final chance during lunch, to do a four-problem assignment.

“I expect better of you guys,” I say as they stand to leave.

“Okay, Mrs. Bees.”

“No, seriously. I do. You know why?”

Eye-roll, grin, then in mocking voice, “Because you believe in us.”

“Actually,” I reply, “I wasn’t going to be quite that cheesy. I’m not going to say that I believe in you, because one thing I believe in is our infinite ability to screw up our own lives.”

“Oh my gosh,” they laugh.

“I’ve always got some teacher saying, ‘I believe in you,’” Boy 2 says, rolling his eyes. “I hate that.”

“I hate it when they say that,” agrees Boy 1. 

“I hate it that you know it’s cheesy,” adds Boy 2, to me, laughing. 

I go on. “What I was going to say, is that I know you can do better than this. You have to.”

“Dude,” says one of the boys as they head for the door. “I hate that you know that.”

Me? I hate that you don’t even try… and that you’re building the kind of habit that is going to absolutely hogtie you in college or the workplace or your day-to-day life. But I love that you laugh and bring me a drink to apologize for forgetting to come in. You’re good kids, but you’ve got a ways to go before you’ll be good men.

Gee, Thanks

We have a new nurse at our school – not new to nursing, but new to our building. I really hit it off with the last gal, but this one… well, we just haven’t really clicked. Most of this is due to the fact that she keeps very much to herself (no fun health updates, etc.) and I haven’t spent much time in the nurse’s office.

My only real complaint with Nurse is that she doesn’t send sick kids home. Probably there’s some reason behind that, but all I know is that before, a puking kid didn’t get returned to my classroom.

A case in point:

Today, one of my kids – and granted, a chronic sicky – went to the restroom and vomited. ”Ralph” returned, looking visibly ill; I sent him to the nurse. Fifteen minutes he returned to get his things. From “visibly ill” he’d progressed to “actually green” punctuated with loud groans of pain. I asked him if his parents were coming to get him.

“No,” Ralph said. “She says I have to at least get through fifth period, and then if the medicine isn’t helping she’ll let me call home.”

Well, great. I’m sure Ralph’s fifth period teacher wants him in there breathing puke-germs all over her and her other students. It’s not bad enough that he leaned all over my desk and breathed on me, but now we want to take out as many teachers as possible?

Some of these kids – Ralph included – are fledgling hypochondriacs, no doubt. But he was not faking this discomfort, and I doubt very much he was faking the puke. And I’m sorry, but the last thing in the world I want is anyone throwing up in my classroom. That’s bad enough on its own, but when you’re in a room full of kids – all of whom are potentially sympathetic vomiters – you’re just asking for Awful.

Send ‘em home, Nurse!

Inspired by Fiction?

One of my seventh grade boys (who gets to be called Colt here, because I keep mentally describing him as “coltish”) has landed himself in deep poo.

He’s a nice boy with some problems. Unmedicated ADHD. Too smart for his own good, which leads to boredom in the classroom. Wants to be tough. Has (unfortunately for his wannabe toughness) auburn curls.

During first period, VP-7 came into my room and took Colt away. I didn’t think too much of it; Colt is one of those boys who gets pulled out of class. Later, it turns out that Colt never went back to any of his classes that day. Curious, his other teachers and I went to VP-7’s office for information.

Two days later, we finally got most of the story out of the administration (who were constrained by the ongoing investigation and privacy).

Colt brought a knife to school – bad enough, considering we have a zero-tolerance policy. That’s expulsion right there under most circumstances. Worse, he pulled it on a younger kid and pretended (or “pretended” – how would we know?) to threaten him. The kid reported Colt, and the rest was pretty clear-cut.

What bothers me is that I kind of think I know what Colt was thinking (inasmuch as a thirteen-year-old boy is ever thinking anything). See, we’re reading The Outsiders. He’s not in my reading class, but he would come in to my writing class and, given five minutes of spare time, grab one of my classroom copies and start reading it voraciously. If you don’t remember how the book goes, the relevant information is that it is full of tough, quasi-heroic young boys who carry switchblades.

Smart, bored boy gets hooked on a book filled with characters he’d love to resemble. He can’t teleport himself back to the 1960s, but he can walk with a swagger and a knife in his pocket.

Assuming it’s even the case, what’s the lesson? Don’t teach this book? I have to admit, I had my doubts about its appropriateness, but for the first time all year I think the kids are actually loving a book. What teacher in their right mind would take that away?

Meanwhile, Colt is suspended, almost certainly expelled, and quite possibly up on juvenile criminal charges. It’s a heart-breaker. We’d been trying really hard to help this kid… but I guess sometimes there’s no holding them back from the brink.

Bad Idea of the Day

Today’s bad idea comes courtesy of an eighth grade girl who thought it would be great to open up a campus tavern at her lunch table. She acquired half a bottle of booze from her parents’ liquor cabinet and snuck it to school, then somehow managed to sneak it into the lunchroom despite the fact that we have a backpack-free campus. (Having snuck my fair share of sodas into basketball games, I’m guessing coat sleeve.) She then proceeded to open the bottle under the table and pour generous shots for all of her friends.

A student at an adjoining table realized what was going on and, rather than ask for her fair share of straight Everclear (or whatever lovely beverage the Daily Special was) informed one of the lunch duty teachers.

All of the kids who accepted contraband libations have been suspended. The bartender is in a lot of trouble; not only did she steal from her parents and bring alcohol to school, but she distributed it to a LOT of minors. At the very least, with our zero-tolerance policies, she’s looking at expulsion. She’ll be lucky not to come up with juvie charges.

My question: how in the world do a bunch of eighth grade girls drink any sort of alcohol straight and not just become immediately conspicuous? Most adults will pull a face, and many will holler or gag. I can only imagine what amount of sheer will power must have been exercised for those girls to keep their cool.