I'll shoot all ya'all in 401

I had a pretty normal day today, but there were a few things that just leave me unsettled...

The unusual parts came from outside of my classroom. As a teacher it seems that sometimes your classroom becomes your entire world. Then, when your doors open there is something entirely different outside of them; a school, regular education teachers and students, administrators, and more. There's my principal who refuses to admit that she is anything but super-woman, and that she really just needs some help someties to keep things together. And don't forget the self-righteous grade-level partner who thinks that she is the "savior and profit send from God himself to bring salvation to all people" (her actual words, I SWEAR!). Last but certainly not the least of my concerns, there's the students from other classrooms, who begrudgingly threaten and curse room 401 (no coincidence that this happens to be my classroom).

I can't say that I blame other students in the school for disliking my class. For most of the year my students have acted as a posse sent to terrorize the rest of the school; both students and faculty. They destroy others' projects in the hallways, knock on their classroom doors, curse at them in the hallways, trip them in the auditorium, and generally create an environment that is not conducive to anything productive. So, I get why the regular ed. kids don't generally like them. I even understand why I get the 'look-of-death' from other classroom teachers when I walk through the halls. I mean, I wish that other teachers and students could understand a little better that my classroom and my students have a very specific set of needs that our school and administration just are not ready to help effectively, but thats not to say that I don't understand their frustrations with 401. I just want them to know that as bad as it seems in 401, we really are making great strides, but I don't think that this will happen anytime soon, so until then I guess I will just have to deal with it.

Anyway, the entire point of this rant is to stress my frustration level with the fact that a 6th grade student, Remi, threatened Tyler today, saying that he was going to "shoot" her. When my other students retalliated with threats of juming him and what not, Remi announced; "you better watch out, I'm gonna come down there and shoot all ya'all in 401." I was there when this took place. I heard and saw it.

Remi was in the hall because the office said that they would not take any students today. He had been causing so many problems in the classroom that the teacher couldn't get anything done with him in there, so she sent him out. One of the security guards is on maternity leave, and the other is too old to walk the 4 ancient flights of stairs to get up them, let alone wrestle Remi all the way down them. The crisis teacher was unavailable because he he was dealing with a crisis with 2 students from the 1st-3rd grade behavior disorder class, and the school is 4 aides short of being in compliance, so there was no one to pull to supervise him.

I of course wrote up the incident immediately, but couldn't send it to the principal immediately because my classroom aide was MIA (like usual) and all of my students were too scared to deliver the note, claiming "whenever I talk to her I get in trouble, and I don't need anymore trouble." Lucky for me it was near the end of the day, so when school got out I delivered the note to the principal. This itself was a feat, but even worse was trying to get her to read it. I don't think that she did or will, and she wouldn't discuss the situation with me, or even listen to hear what it was about. She just said to me; "Remi? What does Remi have to do with your class. He should be no where near you or your students, since when was this an issue?"

"Since today, and it is very important that we deal with this right away...." I replied as she walked away and shoved the note in her pocket, without ever hearing about what happened.