I am stumped.

I have an additional job now, doing homebound tutoring after school. I pulled up to the colorful blue and pink house without a front door and walked up and introduced myself to the girl on the steps. She invited me in. The stench was sooo bad that I almost left within the first ten minutes. It smelled like mildew + animal urine + something unidentified. Baaad poverty.

The school had asked me if I could take the job on Friday. I started today, and they gave me no paperwork, nada. Turns out the 10th grader I am tutoring cannot read or write. I mean, he cannot read or write. At all. As in, cannot spell c-a-t.

He was born with no brain function in the right hemisphere. As a result, the left-hemisphere is going crazy, firing off neurons rapid-fire, causing lots of petite mal seizures and then “medium” mal seizures nightly. As an added bonus, Kiddo got lead poisoning by the time he was four.

It turns out that he was sent to my program last year. He has been in regular classes where teachers call him “lazy”. He is on six different medications–five of which have the label “may cause drowsiness or dizziness“. Kiddo sleeps a lot in class. The reason he was sent to my program last year was because he cursed out one of the teachers who called him lazy.

It would be nice if people would communicate with each other about things like this.

Thank goodness his mom has saved all of the papers. They are a Spanish-speaking family, and have been pretty darn frustrated with the system. I wonder why?? I read his IEP (Individualized Education Plan) goals today, and they said things like, “Student will revise paragraphs, editing for clarity of expression, blah blah blah”. That is total bullshit, obviously. I still can’t get over the district not giving me a clue what I was walking into.

I had a great time after I got used to the smell. The family was really glad to see me, since the last teacher simply never showed up. It is their first experience with homebound. They seemed happy to vent some of their frustrations. Kiddo can mulitiply some numbers and remember most of the steps to two-digit multiplication. This is encouraging. He is a damn good artist, which is awesome.

Meanwhile, Kiddo cannot write the letter “b”. I have a challenge in front of me. I’ll do the best that I can, but he is sixteen, and you know, if he is still at this point, I’m not sure if I can make much of a difference. He seems severely dyslexic. I’ll try though. A good thing that could happen is that I will now get invited to his ARDs, where I can recommend that he be in a self-contained environment, which is what he wants. He doesn’t like being around all of the other kids. He is small and still sleeps with his mom. He keeps telling me that he wants to go back to my program, since the teachers there are nice. Whoa.

Anyway, it’s a good gig.

I am bitch, hear me roar.

Not really. But I did stand up effectively for a kiddo in a Manifestation Determination Hearing. This is the school district’s version of a rap song. Try saying “manifestation determination” in an rhythmic angry voice. Anyway, for those of you who don’t know what it really is, it is a meeting where the school tells the parents that their child is being expelled for behavior that was not caused by the child’s disability. This is always decided upon in advance, unless the child’s parents have an attorney, and then the student usually doesn’t get expelled, or there is at least a tape recorder running the entire time.

I went to one of these meetings for a prior student who was about to get send back to our program for the fourth time this year. He is mentally retarded, and is a sweet boy who is easily led by others, and also easily caught misbehaving. He becomes frustrated with the labyrinth of school mores and incomprehensible work. I just can’t stand to see him spend his school years in a cubicle.

One of the referrals he had gotten was for refusing to “do his work” during in-school suspension. The principal looked puzzled when I asked her if perhaps the work was too challenging. She told me that they copied the school handbook all day when they were in ISS. I said that if either she or I were to copy something in Greek all day long, that we would probably not like it very much either. Honestly, I cannot imagine why an adult would tolerate this, can you?

The reason for the in-school suspension was an abundance of tardies after lunch and a referral from the math teacher who did not like his arguing about the tardies. Turns out kiddo never got his school ID, and didn’t know how to get one for himself. With no ID, the school lunch line becomes very difficult to navigate. According to my son, even with an ID, kids usually don’t have time to eat. Sooo, kiddo would go to class and be chewed out by the math teacher for being late. Kiddo would become defensive. Still, despite this frustrating situation, he never cursed out a staff member. I’m surprised, because I would have.

At the meeting, they were getting ready to check the little box that said that his behavior was not a result of his disability when I remembered the “private discussion” modification. The math teacher, who had been brought down to reassure me that he was following the modifications, had said that he confronted the kid in front of the class. Bingo. The mods weren’t followed, so the IEP wasn’t in place. I wanted to leap out of my chair and scream, “Whoo hoo!” Instead, I settled for thanking the principal for listening to my concerns.

Kiddo is getting a new math teacher and an ID. I hope I don’t see him unless it is in the grocery store, because he doesn’t deserve a worse life than he already has.

I am so glad it is Spring Break. I am still destressing from yesterday, and it may take a bit to complete the process. It went like this:

One of the three of us who teach the alternative high school has been in the hospital for seven working days. Since substitutes generally don’t work out very well at our school, the principal instructed one of the aides to cover that classroom.

Nothing has been done by the kids in that they have been talking, not turning in work, whatever, for all of this time. No conflicts though, and that has been good. On Friday, the Demon Aide From Hell (DAFH) decided to show the kids a movie. She did this without consulting the other teacher or me, and set us up to be the bad guys if we opposed it. We went along, but I asked her if she would show the movie earlier in the day, since I was having a guest speaker for group. She didn’t. That meant I was going to have to pull reluctant kiddos out for group while the movie was still going.

Anyway….the movie started, and my kiddos joined hers in the much larger room. I went in there and began to ask her if she would rather that I hang out with her in the movie room or if she would like to send any pranksters to my room if necessary. Before I could even get finished with what I was saying, she said, “I want whoever is responsible for these here kids in this room with them.” This was said so loudly and rudely that I asked her to step into a side room so that I could finish what I was saying without the kids listening in.

She put her hands on her hips and said, “Oh no, I’m not playin’ that. I’m not one of your little students. You can just stand right here and talk to me.”

I told her that I would not discuss anything in front of the students and left the room.

She followed me back to my room, where five students were sitting, and started screaming at me. I’m sure every word she said could be heard by the now unsupervised group in the other room. I told her again that I would not have this sort of hair-brained craziness discussion happening in the presence of my students. She continued to yell. I picked up the phone and told the person who answered in the office to send someone down to get her out of my face.

About two minutes later, the principal showed up. DAFH was still yelling and hollerin’ up a storm. ie: “You may think that just because you have some Ph.D. or whatever, you can just treat me however you like…naw, I ain’t playin’ that shit, woman.” She was so threatening that I didn’t even have time to feel flattered that she thought I had a Ph.D. The principal cleared out the room pronto, and tried to mediate. That turned out to be a joke, as DAFH kept yelling and saying rude things, in spite of my requests to be spoken to in a respectful manner. Then, she turned on her heel, saying, “I don’t have time for this. I don’t go getting the little things get to me. I just don’t have time for this.” Then she left and returned to the classroom.

The principal said that she would talk to both of us later. She talked to me for a while after DAFH left, though, and said we should get together for a drink sometime, so I don’t think I am in trouble.

I do feel really dumb though. In group, I always tell kids to walk away from conflicts, and they always laugh or question how. That group of kids got to see me walk away from a conflict, be followed, and have to request assistance. I suppose I’ll turn it into a teaching opportunity in group, because, believe me, I will have to deal with it. The kids I work with don’t get the whole walking away thing, and I’m afraid that I lost face with the students, even while modeling the behavior I advocate.

DAFH continued to be rude the remainder of the day, which included myself and another staff member asking for pockets to be turned out in order to find a stolen electronic translator. She was blatently uncooperative with that investigation. Another student, who is emotionally disturbed, screamed at me when I asked him why he was climbing the fence while at the bathroom. His words mimicked the words DAFH had said to me. It was eerie and very sad. He ended up suspended for three days, even though he didn’t follow me out the door still screaming…I have another person in mind who should be suspended! I found her behavior to be frankly abusive. I have never encountered anything this extreme in the workplace, ever.

I spoke to a couple of other teachers, who, as it turns out, have both had the same experience. They have both already told my principal that they will quit or move to another campus next year if she is not fired or moved. She already hates everyone on campus except for one person–the guy who has been in the hospital. No one wants her help in their room, which is a problem, since we are a K-12 campus with quite a few needs.

Anyway, stressful day there. What would you have done? I keep going over in my head how I could have handled the situation better, and get nowhere. One thing that she said to the principal was, “I am mean all the time, joking or serious. I was joking with her.” I can’t read minds, and I don’t like mean straight-faced joking in front of kids, or any other time, actually. I call it being passive-aggressive.

Advice?

I am so exhausted, so glad it’s Friday. Today was a stressful day for everyone, especially since we had two teachers out. I got in a tiff with one of the aides–she was acting all bossy and ugly, so I just shrugged my shoulders and walked away. That made her even madder. Later, I told her that I knew she was stressed out, blah blah, but I’m still not happy about it.

I have a new student who gave everyone the evil eye for two solid days. Seriously. She is a very unhappy child. However, her attitude reminds me somewhat of mine when I was her age. The eyeliner is the same too. It so happens that she knows Sky, and we have developed a rapport. She laughs and smiles around me. We talk quite a bit. As far as I know, I am the only adult there she speaks to.

This afternoon, she told me how she got the bruise on the side of her face. She is being stalked and abused by a 28-year-old man. She is really afraid of him, and hasn’t told anyone. I suspect one reason that she has not told her dad is that the guy might will get locked up and perhaps he would tell tales on her about her drug use or something else that she doesn’t want her dad to know about.

After she told me this, I explained that I would have to tell her dad, because it is his duty to protect her, and that I needed to make sure that she is safe. My principal asked me if I had given her a disclosure before we talked, and I had to tell her no, because since she has not been to any of my groups, she doesn’t know the confidentiality rules. I am not in the habit of prefacing my conversations with statements like, “Of course, if you tell me anything about you or others being in danger, I am required to notify your parents.” That would sorta shut down a lot of conversations. Anyway, it is not like I am a licensed professional counselor.

I hung out after school today so I could talk to her dad, who always picks her up an hour late. I was talking to someone, and didn’t see her leave the building to catch her ride. By the time I saw her, she was almost to the car. I yelled, but she didn’t stop. So, I started racing to the car, and then after it. Her dad saw me chasing the car, which must have been comical, and stopped and got out. So I got to talk to him. It was interesting–a redneck dad and his goth daughter. Mom isn’t in the picture.

I know she must feel betrayed, and I feel awful about that. I also wonder why a father isn’t noticing bruises on his daughter’s face. He was absolutely thrown for a loop.

I hope she doesn’t shut down again. I think she’s a cool kid. I also really hope that she is safe this weekend. I know I did the right thing, but it really sucked.