Whew!

The week is over.  And I survived, barely.  I told 3rd period that because of them I was going to spend the break in a small room with padding, wearing a nice jacket with wrap around sleeves.  Wednesday I had a student crawl out the window and yesterday I almost had a fight in my classroom after school.

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Wed, 3rd period.  We're working on the graphing worksheet I gave them when some kids, who were sluffing, came by my room.  Patrick got up out of his seat and just headed out the door, I intercepted him and reminded him that if he left the room it would count as a sluff.  Then I go out into the hall to harass these kids for not being in class.  I shoo them off to class (yeah, like that's where they're going to go), head back into the classroom and immediately notice that Patrick is missing.  Assuming he's hiding under a desk or in some other crevice, I start looking around when someone tells me he jumped out the window.  Yeah, right. (I am on the first floor).  I look out the window and lo and behold, there are foot prints heading away from it.  So I walk out into the hall and there he is, strutting down the hall heading back to class.  In his seat I look at him and ask "You jumped out the window?"  No, of course he didn't.  Those are someone else's footprints.  I go over and grab a shoe off his foot, take it over to the window and say "Hmmm, same tread print, looks like the same size show.  It was you."

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The next day (Thu) right after 4th period, a kid that has hardly ever talked to me comes into my room and starts a conversation.  As we're talking I notice a whold group of kids coming in and surrounding a student of mine that has stayed after to finish her assignment.  I see her looking down at her paper, obviously trying to ignore the group, working on the assignment listening to her iPod.  Yeah, something's up.  I inform the group that they are cordially invited to get out of my room, close the door behind them and look at my student.  She's shaking, like someone trying to hold back intense fear and anger.  I'm not going into details, it's the basic teenage crap, except to say that another girl was trying to get her to throw the first punch, and I'm proud to say she didn't take the bait.  "I don't want to get expelled" was the first thing she said when she calmed down.  Contacted the counselor, contacted the Vice Principal, student's mom came in and gave her an extra day of vacation and the instigators got reamed by the VP this morning.  Seems he's had trouble with them before.  Hopefully it all blows over by the time we come back, or maybe the VP made it clear whose butt was going to be in a sling if it happened again.

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Oh, and a Subaru with new snow tires rocks!  It didn't even slip a bit coming up my driveway with 4+" of snow on the ground.