believing things will work out

Taking a break from the stories of school to try to straighten myself out.

Right now, I want to run away. I want to get in my car and drive. I want to buy a plane ticket and go... somewhere. This is not rational.

A week from now, I will be back at work. I am excited about the new school year, about regaining a sense of purpose, a routine, having somewhere to go and something to do every day. However, right now, this is clouded by my terror of the coming year.

Last year, I was nervous, sure, as a first year teacher. But I didn't really know what to be scared of. This year, I know. All of those experiences and all of the exhaustion and effort that went into last year create a fear in me that I can't do it all again. I got through the year, and I survived, but do I have another one in me? I can't fall back on being an unknowing first year teacher anymore. I'm supposed to know what I'm doing at this point.

I'm working hard on not letting this weight that I feel about going back to school color all other areas of my life. I've been thinking a lot about self-sabotage lately, and I've come to a place where I realize I'm doing that, but how do I get myself to stop? I read something earlier today that if you believe a relationship (or anything, really) will fail, it will, because you will find ways to prove to yourself that you were right. I've caught myself doing this; thinking how bad is this going to hurt, how am I going to pick up the pieces, I don't want to go through the heartbreak. I didn't realize that I was so walled in until 1.) the cracks in my armor were exposed at work (you can't help it as a teacher); and 2.) I started getting close to someone.

The article suggested believing the opposite - that it will succeed, because that is just as possible. I'm trying to convince myself of that, both in work and in my personal life. I want to believe it so badly, I want to get out of this cycle of protecting myself so hard that I doom things in the beginning because I'm afraid. It doesn't get me anywhere; I just end up miserable.

I've tried to communicate this, but I'm so bad at expressing myself not on paper that it just made me sound crazy and dramatic, which I HATE. So I'm letting it out here, and from now on going to operate on the belief that I will be successful and it will work out, both at work and personally. I am capable of this. And it will be worth it.

two sisters against the world

I'm going to deviate from my usual shocking/crazy storytelling for this one. I hope it will still be an entertaining story, but instead of telling you about some psycho kid or just crazy wild incident (don't worry, there are plenty more of those to come), I'm going to tell a tamer, yet sadder story that still fits into the theme of being totally out of my element.

About halfway through the year, Mrs. Campbell and I each acquired a new student on the same day. They were sisters, but not twins. I think they were about 11 months apart. Or maybe 13. Either way, Sandra (in my class) was in 3rd grade for the second time, and Jamie (Mrs. Campbell's homeroom) was a first time 3rd grader. Both girls were sweet, both participated in class, both were good students, although Sandra had a harder time with the academics. Sandra in particular, maybe because she was in my homeroom, became very attached to me pretty quickly. She always wanted to help me do "teacher stuff," and she always wanted to hug me and talk to me outside of class.

This did not mean that the girls were without their issues. Jamie, whom I had first thing in the morning, would often fall asleep in class to the point she could barely be woken up and then would drift off again almost immediately. Sandra's non-academic problems were that she was quick to fight, and although she made friends easily, she was almost always involved in girl drama and had a few enemies too. None of these qualities were really out of the ordinary for many of my students.

As a teacher, you bond with some students more than others. It just happens that way; looking back on last year, there are students I think I should've connected with more, but it just didn't happen or didn't come naturally for whatever reason. You can't expect to form special connections with everyone, in anything that you do. But I bring this up to say that I did connect with Jamie and Sandra, particularly Sandra. Maybe I felt like she needed me. She was one that actually allowed me to talk problems out with her and then would try to work on whatever the issue was. Jamie, on the other hand, would completely shut down when she was having a bad day.

The sisters were often late for school. One morning sometime in the spring, I was standing in my classroom doorway, as I usually did during the morning announcements as the students were still coming in, and Sandra rounded the corner at the top of the stairs and came marching down the hallway toward me, nearly out of breath.

She walked right up to me and said, "Ms. T, I have to talk to you."

I pulled her aside and said, "Ok, what's going on?"

She took a deep gulp of air. "This morning, my mom's friend punched me and my sister in our hearts." She pointed to the center of her chest.

"Slow down," I said. "Is your mom's friend staying with you?"

She nodded.

I'll be honest. I had no idea what to do. I know that, obviously, as a teacher, I am legally bound to report any suspected abuse to the appropriate authorities. But in the real world, sometimes it's hard to determine what the situation actually is - what the truth is. But I guess in these cases, that's not my job. A child discloses something to me; it needs to be properly investigated. Better safe than sorry.

So basically, I knew I had to report this, but I had never been told how to go about doing that. At this exact moment, the counselor walked by.

"Mrs. Adams," I said. "Can you come here for a minute?"

I asked Sandra to tell Mrs. Adams what she had told me. We were then able to get Jamie as her class was lining up in the hallway, and she told the same story Sandra had.

"So this lady's been staying at your house?" Mrs. Adams asked the girls. "Has she done things like this before?"

Both girls nodded.

"Why haven't you told your mom about this?" she asked.

The girls looked at each other. "We don't see our mom because she goes to work," Jamie said.

"Hmm," said Mrs. Adams. Now, I know this is at least partially untrue because both girls would often talk about their mother. Mama said this, Mama said that. Mama said we're going here or there after school today. But maybe she had gotten a new job, I don't know.

Mrs. Adams then escorted the girls downstairs to see the nurse, to talk to them further, and to call their mom.

During my planning time a couple of hours later, I learned that the mom had been contacted and said this was the first she'd heard that this was going on. Both girls had visited the nurse twice complaining of chest pain and seemed shaken up, causing the nurse to at least tell Mrs. Adams she was going to file a report herself. I asked Mrs. Adams if we both needed to report the incident, and she said it was up to me but that since I was the one Sandra chose to tell, it wouldn't be a bad idea. So I filed two separate reports, one on each girl.

This occurred on a Tuesday. That Thursday, both girls were absent from school. It wasn't uncommon for one of them to miss school, but for both of them to miss at the same time was unusual. I worried about them all day. I thought nothing good could be happening. Of course I wanted what was best for them, even if that meant them being removed from their mother. Anyone with a brain and half a soul knows that's the best solution sometimes. But it's a really hard thing to swallow when you're actually watching something like this happen, when you know the people involved. I never meant the girls' mom in person, and from my phone conversations with her, it seemed like her intentions were in the right place. But who knows? It's just hard to say, ok, the best thing is for these kids to be taken from their home and be put who knows where when you know that's not what they would choose for themselves.

Anyway, they weren't removed from their home. I don't know what happened when the situation was investigated. The girls were back at school the next day. Sandra seemed unusually quiet and subdued. When I asked her if everything was ok, she shook her head.

"Do you want to talk about it?" I asked.

She shook her head no.

I don't know if the girls put two and two together that we reported what they had told us to the authorities, and I hope that if they did, it doesn't discourage them from seeking help from adults when something is wrong. My relationship with the sisters didn't really change between then and the end of the year, but I did always try to keep a close eye on them after that and I still think about them often. It kind of seems like two sisters against the world.

the chubby pumpkin incident

I meant to write these more frequently than this, but you know...life. Or summer vacation, whatever. Anyway...

I would now like to share a seasonal tale which involves bullying, a runaway, a seemingly innocuous pencil and the first of several times I had to give a "statement." 

It was October, maybe a week or two before Halloween. One sunny Thursday, I had a surprise new student join my homeroom class. I say surprise not because I got a new student; that happens all the time at my school. He was a surprise because he came to me from another 3rd grade teacher's room, unbeknownst to any of us. The other 3rd grade team had done all the necessary steps to legally have him removed, mainly for excessive aggression, but they did not intend for him to be pawned off onto Mrs. Campbell and me. 

Anyway, so the principal (we'll call her Mrs. Sullen) walked him to class midmorning. She pulled me aside to tell me this was his "second chance" (don't get me started on the misuse of that notion at my school) and that I should ignore the small stuff and send him straight to her with any real problems. Ok, fine. The student - let's call him Hayden - was fine for the rest of the day. 

I should probably also mention that I did not have enough desks for all of my students with the addition of Hayden (something that was actually counted against me in an evaluation; even though I was told THERE WERE NO MORE DESKS). I bring this up to help you visualize the room: Four tables of four or five desks and the aforementioned kidney bean table in the back right corner in front of the bookshelf. I had no choice but to sit Hayden at that table, and, given his history, I thought it better for him to be physically separated from the others. 

By lunchtime that day, I could tell Hayden, who in all fairness had entered my class the day before with every intention of making good on his fresh start, was getting restless. We got back to the classroom after lunch, and as I was getting the kids settled down, a few of them were bickering. I don't remember exactly what Stephen, a slightly pudgy and usually fairly quiet student said, but it the provocation and craving for attention after a day and a half of toeing the line were too much for Hayden. 

"Shut up, you chubby pumpkin!" he yelled across the room. It was almost Halloween, after all. 

The rest of the class stopped in their tracks and either gasped or erupted into giggles. 

Now, I had been instructed by the principal to ignore small infractions. However, this put me in an impossible situation. I couldn't simply ignore the outburst and move on when the entire class had heard and seen Hayden bully another student. They would think, "if he gets to do that, maybe I can do that too." 

So, I followed the grade level discipline plan and sent him out of the room with a reflection sheet. The man who was subbing for the assistant principal happened to be walking down the hall and said, "I'll take him." Fine by me. 

Some time later, Hayden returned, reflection sheet filled out, and class resumed without incident.

Until it was time to pack up and switch classes. 

This is where it gets weird. Hayden had borrowed a pencil from me earlier in the day, so I asked for it back. He insisted it wasn't my pencil (although it looked identical to the pencils I supplied). I maintained that it was, and told him he would not be dismissed until he returned it. Keep in mind that I was about 8 weeks into a year of trying to determine when I was and was not being lied to. I was trying to stick to my guns. 

Finally, he thrusted the pencil into my hand and stormed out of the room in the direction of the line forming to go to Mrs. Campbell's room for science. But he didn't stop at the line. 

He rounded the corner at the end of the hall and made a sharp right turn, where his only option was to go down the stairs toward the main office. I assumed he was on his way to Mrs. Sullen, with her whole "he can come straight to me with any issues" plan. I calmly went back into my classroom, pushed the emergency call button and informed the secretary that Hayden had just left my room and was headed in the direction of the office. She said ok, and I went about the rest of my afternoon.

About 15 or 20 minutes into the next block, the counselor, Mrs. Adams, appeared in my doorway and said that Mrs. Sullen wanted to see me. She informed me that Hayden had temporarily disappeared until the security officer found him in the first grade bathroom downstairs. Upon being found, Hayden had run out the front door of the school before eventually being convinced to go to the office. I gave my spelling test to Mrs. Adams for her to administer and went to the office, dreading the conversation I was about to have.

It seemed that every time last year I had to go give some kind of account of something that happened, it was something that completely blindsided me. It was always something I never thought would be an issue until there I was, being called to the office like the student who was in trouble. This caused me a great deal of anxiety, as I would have to think about how I was going to defend something I never thought was even worth discussing. It's hard to explain, but somehow I was always walking to the office with an accelerated heartbeat and sweaty palms. 

I had no idea what had set Hayden off to this degree. I assumed he was mad at having to submit to my authority, and the afternoon of getting in trouble and visiting with the assistant principal had pushed him over the edge. 

Nope. He was mad about the pencil.

When I arrived at the office, he was sitting on his knees in the reception area, rocking back and forth, fuming as elementary boys do (see previous post for full description). I was called into Mrs. Sullen's actual office, where she of course asked me what happened. I relayed the events of the afternoon that involved Hayden. She immediately gave me a disapproving look when I told how I had sent him out of class for bullying another student.

"But I told you to ignore the small things," she interrupted. "What does that even mean? When you guys say 'bullying,' what does that mean?" 

So I told her he had called another student a chubby pumpkin and continued to tell her how he had made his escape after arguing with me about the pencil. I told her I had no idea why he had gotten so upset, not the first or last time I felt like a complete idiot, like I was playing dumb in front of her, but I wasn't playing. I really didn't know, which was more frustrating than anything. Again, blindsided.

That's when she told me he was angry because the assistant principal had given him that pencil when he was filling out his form, a detail he had neglected to tell me. Then she asked me to call Hayden into her office while she called his mom. 

So I poked my head out, and said, "Hayden, will you come in here and talk to us?" 

He stared at me pointedly, and growled, "MM-MM."

I kind of shrugged and went back into the office. I guess the security officer convinced him to come in, because a minute or so later, he crawled into Mrs. Sullen's office on his knees. Meanwhile, Mrs. Sullen had his mom on speaker phone and was debriefing her of the situation. She then asked Hayden to talk to his mom, and he did. As they began their conversation, Mrs. Sullen whispered something to me, which caused Hayden to explode all over again.

"Don't interrupt me!" he screamed, and ran out of the office and out of the front door again, security guard and secretary hot on his tail.

Mrs. Sullen turned her attention back to the phone, where Hayden's mom was now yelling at her.

"You told him to tell me what happened, and then you just interrupted him!" she said. 

"Ma'am, I wasn't talking to him!" Mrs. Sullen said, clearly exasperated. 

But Hayden's mom had already hung up.

At this point, Mrs. Sullen handed me a notebook and a pen and told me to write my account of what had happened. When I was finished, she said, I could go back to class. She left the office, I assume, to join the search party for Hayden. 

I wrote my version of events and returned to my room. I didn't really hear any more of it, just through the grapevine the next week I learned that Hayden's mom had enrolled him in an alternative school. 

He did return to us in January for about six weeks until he was finally officially removed. During that time, he threatened to punch me in the throat and (on a separate occasion) picked up another student off of a bench on the playground and punched her for no reason, among other exciting antics we got to be a part of. 

If that story was all over the place, confusing, and hard to follow, even absurd, that's because it was. That was exactly how it happened.