More Summer School Fun!

First of all, I told you so.  I.  Told.  You.  So. 

In my post on Tuesday, I predicted that I would have kids who were absent on that first day of the new session and who would expect to be easily caught up on what they missed.  I had two of them on Wednesday–one girl who simply enrolled a day after class started (representing a week’s worth of missed work), but she strangely got called out of class today and never came back–I guess she and/or her parents changed their mind about taking the class after all.  But then there was this other guy. 

I first noticed him when I took roll and he said that I hadn’t called his name, which I hadn’t done because he hadn’t been there the first day for me to put him on my list.  A few minutes later, when I gave the class their seating chart, he said he wanted a different seat, one by a wall outlet, because he “had to plug in my ankle bracelet and charge it.”  Yes, he had a tracking device from the police on him. 

Later in the day, as people were working, I heard some stifled laughter and looked up.  This kid had moved his desk over to an empty corner of the room and had taken out a charging kit from his backpack, which he’d connected to his ankle bracelet and plugged into the wall.  This was clearly going to be a big distraction for the class, and it was made even worse when he saw me looking and drew everyone else’s attention to the situation by announcing that he had to do this now or he’d be arrested. 

I went over to him and told him quietly that he had to put it away and move back.  He refused, and I repeated the direction telling him that he had to do it or go to the office.  I wasn’t going to have a conversation about it there and then.  He continued to refuse, so I emailed the office and asked for a hall monitor. 

When the hall monitor came to get him, a girl in the class who had been giving me a bad attitude earlier started making rude remarks again.  Just a few minutes before, she had asked to go the bathroom, and I had deferred her request until I was finished returning graded papers and explaining the next assignment.  At the time, her muttered response was, “God, I hate this f—–g class!”  I asked her to repeat what she’d said out loud, and she did, leaving out the obscenity this time, but adding, “I’m about to get irritated with you!” 

When she again started complaining as the hall monitor was getting the other student, I asked if she wanted to go with them.  She said, “If they’ll let me go to the bathroom!”  The hall monitor tried to clam her down, but her obnoxious attitude continued, so he took her with him.  I saw this coming; the day before, she had responded to another student cracking his knuckles by shouting, “Oh my f—–g God!” 

These were actually the second and third students sent out of class yesterday.  The first came when I was giving that seating chart.  A very large young man who should be a senior now (this is a sophomore class) responded to his new seat by drawing out the f-word under his breath (as I’ve often noted and as you may now be noticing, American teens have an epidemic of addiction to swearing–thank you South Park).  I asked him to repeat what he’d said out loud, to my face, and he muttered something as he walked away that I couldn’t hear, but that made several kids near him laugh. 

I went up to tell him again to say what he had to say out loud, not whispering behind my back.  He got an increasingly hostile attitude, so I told him to control himself or go to the office.  He said, “You want me to go outside?  You want to come outside with me?”  I told him to go the office.  As he stormed out, he called me “m—–f—–” and said he’d “whup your a–.”  He just left campus, and was withdrawn from school this morning.

As for the other two, the hall monitor came back and told me that the office has contacted the boy’s father and parole officer and that he was supposed to bring in a note from his new p.o. with contact information this morning explaining that he needed to charge his ankle bracelet in class (he’d just gotten the ankle bracelet the day before).  This seemed ridiculous to me; I don’t know anything about these tracking devices, but surely they don’t need to be charged at this certain time every day!  I told him after school yesterday that I’d be expecting that note and when he came in this morning and I asked to see it, sure enough, he said, “Oh, I don’t have it–I don’t even have my charger today.”  I didn’t have any problems with him today. 

Perhaps if he’d come to school on Tuesday instead of whatever he’d been doing, he wouldn’t have gotten the ankle bracelet. 

And it really bothers me that this kid is named after a Book of Mormon prophet.

Also after school yesterday, I emailed the rude girl’s mom and explained everything.  She emailed back a short message of support, and today this girl literally didn’t make a single sound the entire day, until the last five minutes when I let people unwind as they cleaned up and got ready to go, and she talked quietly with a friend.  I’d like to send out a great big thank you to strong, supportive parents.  You make a world of positive difference in classrooms. 

As for summer school, eleven days to go…