Badge of Honor

So today was the first time a big kid tried to punch me (and it wa svery much like a two year old trowing a temper tantrum). It is now a badge of honor. I didn't flinch. I simply backed away and let a male PE teacher intervene....the child who attempted to hit me (because I told him that punching another student was not acceptable) then took off running and proceeded to chase the student he had just punched. That is until the head PE teacher sacked him like a football player.

The student is what we call "emotionally disturbed," which in the private world of psychologists just means "crazy." It's amazing what constitutes ED. If you hear voices in your head and are technically schizophrenic, you are labeled as ED...so yeah, it just means crazy.

The funny thing is that before I started teaching, I took all of the labels very seriously and was trained to use person first language...so instead of saying a "crazy person," I would say "a person with craziness," thus placing the person (patient) first ahead of the label. I took this all very seriously, and I still do when I need to be appropriate. I didn't realize what "ED" really meant until my first year of teaching.

Usually I liken the first month or two of teaching to the diagnosis stage of teaching. Much like a doctor, I receive students with a myriad of conditions including emotional hypersensitivity and perfectionism to borderline mental retardation and psychopathy (yes, really). Unless those students are identified as "special needs" the first month or two is spent assessing and diagnosing and then giving the appropriate accommodations, whether it's remediation or enrichment. I have never had special education students, so I spend my first months diagnosing all of them.

In my very first month of teaching I had a student who, from the outset, did not appear to be normal. His physical attributes indicated to me that there could have been a biological condition which caused the lids of his eyes to form inappropriately. He did not know what his name looked like and his voice was not a natural child's voice. Being new to the school I was not aware that this little boy was the youngest of 5 children.

One day I sat down with the school counselor to discuss the student. She informed me of this little boy's troubled background, including a father who was in prison and a biological father who had committed suicide. His older brother was 4 years older, and according to the counselor, who is a psychologist, was just plain crazy. The counselor's frankness took me back and also made me laugh. I never thought a counselor would use those terms, but in all honesty, now I know "crazy" is a ubiquitous term in the psychological world.

Today after the boy who tried to punch me was sacked by the PE teacher one of the assistants asked me what was wrong with the boy. I just looked at her and said, "Well, he's crazy. This is what crazy people do." She just nodded and said, "yeah, I guess so." At least he doesn't smear poop on the walls in the bathroom like my ED student from last year. He also stabbed another student in the butt...but poop smearing was his favorite pastime. Sad part is that that's a sign of molestation. Poor guy. I'm still not sure how many people are born crazy, and how many people become crazy through the events of their own lives. But I do know that in both of these boys' cases, they will be on the news one day, and not for good reasons. And in both cases, when we tried to send them to a hospital for treatment, the parents refused, and the kids were allowed to stay in school.

Don't get me wrong. I love what I do...but these are the parts that give me my stripes--my war stories. Proudly I march on. :)