#14 – Assboy, continued

THEY SENT HIM BACK.

I had done my best to gather my composure and get back to teaching.  Right as we were finally hitting our stride after attendance, getting folders, warm-ups, announcements, etc, I see the kids’ eyes go wide and turn around to see Assboy, strutting back into my classroom, with a grin that really needed to be slapped off of his smug face.

“What are you doing here?”

“I saw Assistant Principal Twin Felonies* and we talked and he told me to come back to class.”

“Well, you are not staying here.  Go back to the office.”

“I was just at the office.  They told me to come back here.”

“I’m telling you now to go to the office and stay there this time.  Don’t come back today.” (walks to the wall, hits the call button, snarky secretary answers with a ring of laughter in her voice)

“Can I help you, Miss Choir Director?”

“Yes, you can.  In case I wasn’t clear enough a few minutes ago, I am sending Assboy to the office to STAY for the rest of the block, per our right to emergency remove a student from our classroom.  Please do not send him back to my classroom again today.”

“Asst. Principal Twin Felonies has already spoken to him and felt he was fine to come back to class.”

“Asst. Principal Twin Felonies hasn’t spokent to ME about this and I do NOT feel it is fine for him to come back to class.  PLEASE mark this as an EMERGENCY REMOVAL, per our contractual agreement.”

By the time I got up to the office after shutting down my classroom at the end of the day, both principals were gone from the building.

I learned that Asst. Principal Twin Felonies felt that a 1 hour detention for ‘”inappropriate behavior in class” was a reasonable response to a student assaulting a teacher (unless we don’t all agree that what that was was assault?).

I learned later that Principal Hugs-A-Lot felt that I was unreasonable for refusing to allow Assboy to return to my classroom and was irate that I had read my contractual agreement and expected the administration to honor their side of the bargain; he did concede that no beautiful music was going to be made between the two of us and withdrew Assboy from my class, after the drop date, but didn’t require him to take the F that students were supposed to take when they are administratively removed from a class for disciplinary reasons.  Also, I later learned that Principal Hugs-A-Lot had a meeting with Assboy’s parents where they discussed this incident, but I was not made aware of the meeting, let alone allowed to attend and tell my side of the story.  In addition to this being entirely unprofessional and in violation of our contractual agreement, I wasn’t even allowed to have a member of our teachers’ union in the meeting to advocate on my behalf, another violation of our contractual agreement.

During this meeting, Assboy’s simpering mother repeatedly was allowed to say that I had solicited this behavior from her son and that had I been more professional and reasonable, this situation wouldn’t have come to pass at all.

Had I been more professional.

Had I been less professional, I would have struck out in self-defense.  Honestly, he was a lot bigger than me and I didn’t want him to pin me again and do something else when I was pinned to the wall facing him.  He could have done something much worse.  I also could have elbowed him straight in his groin.  But shock does strange things to a girl.

Had I been less professional, I would have cussed the kid up one side and down the other for having the nerve to lay a body part on me.

Had I been less professional, I would have left my 80 high school students to go Lord of the Flies on each other when this went down and dragged him to the office by his ear myself and demanded the police be called RIGHT. THEN. AND. THERE.

I saw colleagues at School #1 do all of the above when threatened by a student – and THEY weren’t even actually assaulted.

Had I been less professional, I wouldn’t have tried to teach that day, but given the kids a day off and locked myself in my office and called my lawyer or my mentor from undergrad or my dad to come and get me.

Had I been less naive, I would have gone home, written my resignation letter effective immediately and never returned to that dungeon again.  I honestly told myself that night that I had just hit bottom early in my career and it could only get better from here.

How wrong I was.

*Assistant Principal Twin Felonies resigned his position either during year 2 or year 3 of my tenure at School #1, when the district’s attempt to cover up the fact that he had been engaged in a long-term sexual relationship with a pair of twin girls from our student body failed.  Once the news got out, it wasn’t handled as a criminal matter because the girls were 18 by the time this went public.  I recently checked ODE’s website – no record of disciplinary action and his licenses were never suspended, but allowed to expire once he went on to a different, lucrative career, without a blemish on his record.  Seems fair, right?