The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Good: the past two days at a Livonia elementary school – wonderful kids. It’s not that nobody ever talks out of turn, but they respond in a good way when spoken to about it.
I was in the Media Center, and then in a couple of 5th grade classes.

I have a friend named Carolyn whose mother used to tell her, “I’m going to love you no matter what you act like, but I want you to have the kind of actions so that other people will love you too.” Well, I think those 5th grade students have parents who think that way. However, the second graders I endured today in Redford – not so much.

Bad: half the second graders ignored me regularly. Some were loud, some skipped out of class, several were kicked out but the office sent them back later. Most said they didn’t care if their parents were called. Getting ANYthing done was very difficult.

Ugly: me. I got very angry and I yelled at quite a few of them (I apologized to one girl). If spanking were allowed, I would have been willing to do it. I considered not going back for the second half of the day. Instead, I went back, but I figured that if we didn’t get much done – oh, well. I got to the point where I really didn’t care much anymore. A couple of staff members dropped by to calm them down and threaten them some, but it didn’t last long. At the end of the day, two of the boys with the worst behavior (although there was great competition for that rank) were very upset with me because they have behavior forms that I was supposed to fill out 4 times a day and they got very low scores. Have to admit I don’t feel one bit bad about that. I was very glad to see that day end, and no, I won’t go back to that school. I already had written them off my list for the older grades due to back experiences, but I thought maybe the 7 year olds wouldn’t be so bad. I feel very sorry for the 50% of the kids who have to put up with all that CRAP every day. Honestly, I could vote for a system where all the compliant kids get put in one class and all the rough kids in another. They’d probably need somebody as big as Hagrid or Shaq to teach them.
Or maybe send them all to military school? But then again – I’m still feeling pretty ugly about today.

I forgot to mention last week that the Montessori school has a big guy named Mr. D who deals with the hyperactive/non-compliant boys. I saw him going down the hall with his arms around the necks of two of them – in a half-jovial way – saying, “I oughtta ring your neck….” – and the look on the boys’ faces – they were loving Mr. D and his attention.