From crazies to kids

That night I did something I never do on a Friday. I planned for the next week. And instead of focusing on which phoneme I could work on, I thought about which kid I could work on.

Adam was in the top tier of misbehavior. He hated school. He never smiled, and he had no friends. He was easily set off, and he could tear apart the classroom with swiftness. Two weeks ago I had to call his mom three times until she showed up at the classroom door with a hand on her hip. I had sent him to CHOICE three times already, and after each time he left the classroom, he came back worse. At the end of the day, I sent him to time out for yelling at a classmate. Adam wasn't doing his work so he decided to bother Abigail. Abigail told him to shut up, and he told her he was going to slap her across the face.

When he was pouting in time out, until I saw him stand up and tear my class calendar in half, and then he swung the trashcan across the carpet--old pencil shavings covered the white tiles. He was standing there crying as she walked in. A fierce glare bore down on Adam, but he kept his head. She said, “I’ll talk to him.” When I explained why Adam was upset, she asked me why Adam wanted to slap Abigail.
     "There must be a reason Mr. Slaughter."
     “Well, he was bothering her and she told him to shut up.”
Her eyebrows rose; she grabbed Adam's arm and walked him into the hallway.
      "Alright, Mr. Slaughter, he won't do it again."

It happened that the security guard was in the hallway when she was speaking with Adam. That afternoon she told me what was said. "She looked the boy straight in the eye and said, 'if anyone ever tells you to shut up, you pop 'em, alright?' That just ain't right, Mr. Slaughter."

Adam always wanted to be first. He didn’t care about how his writing sounded or how his pictures looked because effort took too much time; he just wanted to finish it, whatever it was. Every day we did writing, and every day I gave him a stapled stack of three sheets that had about five lines on each page. Every day he wrote the damn same story: “I went to the playground. It was fun. I went to the pool. It was fun. I went home. It was fun…” He wrote in huge letters so only a few words could fit per line. At first, I was sure he wanted to finish so he could have time to goof off, but he usually didn’t goof off when he was done; he just spaced out. When he finished, he looked around for a few seconds, and then he put his head down on the desk. Sometimes he played imaginary battles between two pencils.

Then someone had to say, “Wow Adam, are you done already?” He smiled a sheepish grin and shrugged his shoulders.

 He was like a bottle rocket on the carpet. When I could get him to sit on the carpet, he would rock back and forth with his hand raised whenever I asked a question. If I called on someone else, he would yell out the answer as soon as I motioned to the other student. As I thought about him that night, I put the pieces together and realized he was just wanted to be first, not make my life miserable.

I shouldn't have changed my mind about the psychiatrist. But I did. The appointment was Monday morning, and I could have easily shifted my workday to fit it in because it was a teacher workday. After finishing a full week, I was cocky about my mental stability, and I decided I could just push off the psychiatrist to come home earlier. I thought journaling was all I needed at least until I could quit. I also thought it would only be few more days until my extended winter vacation. If my wife had the baby on Thursday (a week before her due date), then I might have four days left of teaching. Ever.