A Tale of Two (+ one) Schools.

One of my 7^th grade students, wanting to show off his newfound juggling skills, out of the blue asks “Mr. Rossi, do you have any balls?”  Choking in the laughter I walked over to my cupboard and got 3 tennis balls for him, meanwhile several other students burst out laughing.

The Vice-Principal at another school told my V.P. at my school a story of a student who came in to him in tears complaining about how he was being bullied.  The boy said that another boy was saying mean things about him.  The V.P. asked what he had said and how many times it had happened. The boy was too upset to repeat what was said, but he did convey that it had happened only once.  The V.P. finally coaxed what had been said out of the student, who told him “He, he, told me that my birth certificate was an apology letter from the condom company.”  Now I do have sympathy for the upset boy, but you have to admit that’s a funny insult.

On the “And they let this person have children?” side, a mother at yet another school, after screaming at their V.P. for picking on her daughter, had a meeting with Principal and a teacher friend of mine.  She claimed that this teacher and the V.P. were meeting after school to conjure up ways to bully her daughter.   After looking the teacher straight in the face and telling her “You are not to talk to my daughter at all.  You are not to ask her any questions and if you have anything to say to her you’ll say it through me.”, the Principal asked her what the teacher was doing to bully her daughter.  She counted three things off on her fingers:

1. She keeps bugging her to turn in her work,
2. She keeps telling her that if she isn’t to class on time she’ll get detention, and
3. She keeps taking her cell phone away.

The Principal literally laughed out loud and, between chuckles, asked the woman “So, I’m supposed to tell Miss *** not to do her job?”

A good principal is worth their weight in gold.