Day -27

Broke up three fights today--well, four, if one counts seeing a gang of girls outside the restroom standing guard and me pushing through them to knock the door open and scream "whatever it is you are doing in there stop!" and having two bedraggled and bloodied girls step forward and into the hall. I stopped that fight verbally--the others I physically got between the combatants and pulled them or pushed them apart. The biggest one was betwixt Gregorious and Dares Us, who continued punching each other with me in the middle. I pulled up Gregorious and said "you see the rosary Dares Us is wearing?" I asked. "Yup," he said. "You know what that means?" I asked. "Gang?" "Yup," I said. I spent the rest of the day chasing 8th graders wearing rosaries out of my room and out of the cafeteria. All of them were looking for Gregorious. We called his mom to pick him up at school because he isn't safe walking home now.

A visitor from headquarters came in the building today. He witnessed me breaking up a fight and doing hall patrol on my lunch break. He said "where is the leadership? this is ridiculous." I told him there were 10 teachers out today, and 13 yesterday, and that he should regard that as evidence of the state of morale in the building. "She's just riding out her last few months," he sneered, referring to the lame duck Big Cheese. Of course she's been "riding it out" since long before our school got zero-based.