My Troubles

Two weeks ago a second grader was suspended for bringing a knife to school. Today, she and another girl are whispering in the back of the room. The class’s Junior Master of the Universe and his chief courtier tell me the girls are lesbians because he has seen them touching each other’s private parts.

“Do you really know what the word lesbian means?” I ask them. They know.

One of the girls is holding onto the back of a chair and pushing it around the room. It never leaves the floor but it does bump into a number of other students, who do not appreciate it. A fight breaks out. I make the girl stand near the front door away from everyone. She runs out. I call on the class phone to report that a student is out of the room, but, as usual, no one answers – no doubt putting out larger fires elsewhere.

I am teaching my next class. The principal comes in waving a piece of paper. “What happened?” she is referring to the chair incident. The girl apparently ran to the nurse and told her someone hit her with a chair in my classroom. She says this loud enough so the entire class hears. I quickly relate my version. A paper is thrust into my hand. “Fill out this accident report and bring it to my office.”

I finish the report during lunch and take it to her. She tells me my classroom discipline is not strong enough. I have written reports on the angry-boy-who-wants-to-die three times. I ask if during staff development time the more experienced teachers could share their expertise. “We are not here to teach you Education 101!” she says. I tell her I have tried motivations, like the school’s scholar dollar program, but the students lost interest.

Scholar dollar was a reward program for good work or behavior. Teachers were given a certain number of scholar dollars to pass out to deserving students – 30 scholar dollars got you a pencil, 100 got you pizza for lunch. In the beginning it worked like a charm. But the whole thing slowly became perverted.

First, some teachers were extremely generous and others stingy, leading to cries among students that it wasn’t fair. Second, it was impossible to get a new supply, so teachers started to run them off on the copy machine. Once the children realized that, they started to counterfeit their own. The scholar dollars’ value cheapened dramatically. End of program.

The principal gives me two weeks to “shape up or ship out”. I lock myself in the bathroom with a friendly, more experienced teacher while I cry. My friend reminds me of the warnings in the child abuse workshop – that writing a lot of negative reports makes the administration look bad and I should be careful.

Although a “U” can be contested with the union, teachers fear things will be made worse if they complain. From then on I never write a report that I pass on, unless someone asks me to document an incident so he or she can remove a student from class.

Дата добавления: 2014-11-16