Day #43

Some days I wish I'd a stood in bed.

2nd period I have the door locked and I'm teaching away when there's a loud crack and two of the biggest and burliest sixth graders storm in. One of them kicked my door so hard the bolt broke. I look up to see Gregorious and Henry VIII scowling and heading toward To The Point.

To The Point is the third biggest sixth grader. His fists are as big as my head. He's not the worst behaved student I've taught, but he's inching toward the top ten. He's mouthy, defiant, rude, perpetually rabble-rousing. I don't know what he said about Gregorious and Henry VIII's moms, but they were out for blood.

I got there in time. I wrapped up Gregorious with a twisted arm and hooked Henry around the neck, and wrestled them to and out my door. I put one against the wall, dropped the other to the floor and stood on him. I couldn't get to my call box to ask for help because I was busy keeping them from tearing To The Point a new corn hole, so I tried waving at the hall camera to get somebody's attention. Meanwhile, To The Point was jawing and talking smack from the room while I'm trying to keep him from getting beat down. I was sorely tempted to let them loose to bang the shit out of him, but held my ground and got my cell phone out to call the office. It rang ten times and no one answered, and Henry got out from under my foot and Gregorious twisted out and suddenly I was in a fight myself standing in my own class room door fending off blows as kids were trying to get through me and at each other. At this point Ms. T next door got on her horn and called up the school police, who took their jolly time getting there. When they arrived I had once again wrapped up the assailants and half-carried, half-drug them out into the hall again.

All three boys ended up going to the office. I wrote them up for assault, inciting a disturbance, verbal threats, attacking a faculty member, fighting, profanity, using a preposition at the end of a sentence, and not 15 minutes later these boys were out of the office and outside my door again asking if they could borrow a pencil. WTF? How can they let them in the hallway again after such behavior? Did they not see what happened on the camera? Jesus.

At the end of the day I had to drive a girl down North Ave because a gang was waiting to stomp her at the bus stop.

Somewhere in between all this shit I taught direct and indirect objects. My job is a trip.