Today I got feedback from a referral I submitted on January 25th.
Before I lambast this, you should know I am grateful that there was any reaction whatsoever. 
FYI his name was at the top of the referral but I didn't include it in the pic.  I knew his name from asking around. Well, without further ado:

So the recourse was to take the student to the office and ask him if he did do this.  When of course he denies it, the protocol is to "share your doubts" at his honesty.  Then, let him go.  But NEXT time he rolls through the hall disrupting classes and screaming out "Faggot," well then we'll probably discipline him.  If we don't have doubts to share.

p.s. There are two latino boys in wheelchairs at this school, and the other one was inside MY classroom at the time.

So today was TAKS testing, and if you are from my generation or earlier you may know this as TAAS.  Anyway it's a simple exam that takes about 2 hours, which the students are given 6 hours to complete.  There are two proctors in each room.  My fellow proctor was an elderly african american male sergeant for the ROTC class.

At the beginning of this long boring day, we had to take up all the cell phones.  At the beginning they could put them in their backpacks and leave them in the front of the room.  If they came in late they had to give them directly to the proctor.  At any rate, we said about 5 times: "So NO ONE has their cell phone right?  Is there anyone who still as a cell phone?"

Unless you haven't read the rest of these posts, you probably know what happened.  People still had tests out, but one girl (who is technically on my roll for a Spanish class but never comes, she's african american, we'll call her Charna) whips out her phone and starts texting.  Immediately the other proctor goes over to her.

At this point it is a major testing irregularity and we could be reported, and the kids would have to retake this abysmal exam.  But the sergeant politely asks for her phone and says he will keep it 'til all the tests are up.  The following dialogue ensued in the silent classroom:

Student: "No."
Sergeant: "... If you don't, we'll cancel your test and have security take you away."
Student: "I don't give a sh*t."

So I called the office and up comes security.  They take the student out into the hall.  FYI our doors have to be open during testing so officials can come in and make sure everything abides by the rules without disturbing the students.  They proceed to talk right outside the door, which of course all the students can hear:

Officer (in a friendly, almost joking voice): "Now, Charna, I know it's been a long day and I'm sorry for that.  But surely you know better.  Can you go back inside?"
Charna: "Man this bullsh*t."
Officer:  "Well can't you at least try?"
Charna: "I wanna use my phone."
Sergeant (to officer): "I told her about what the rules say about having a phone out."
Charna (to sergeant): "Man cancel my test!  I don't give a f*ck, ______"

In the blank goes the N word.
The "testing" students heard every word.

Why a police officer felt like she had to placate this idiot girl is beyond me.  It was like the officer was begging for the girl to just ignore all the silly teacher behavior and rules.

At least they took her out of the classroom.  Any other day I'm sure she'd be sent back in.

So the air conditioning and heating system in the school is a bit fickle when it comes to working.  During the winter, sometimes, we turn on the heat (sometimes we don't.  That's a separate problem though). But in order for the rest of the school to be above freezing, somehow the third floor classrooms must be blasted with white-hot furnace clouds of torridity.  It's kind of a joke between the 3rd floor teachers ("Oh you've come up to the pent-house eh, do enjoy the sauna!") and we deal by opening the windows.  


One day (March 6th of 2009.  I can tell you exactly because this event is in the aforementioned skull and crossbones book) I was walking around the room helping students with their assignment.  As a student on the other side of the room (let's call him Saul) got up to retrieve what I thought was a tissue, I turned my back to help another student with her work.


Suddenly I hear the students behind me collectively gasp and start chattering.   I turned around to see Saul standing by the open window.  I rushed over there and looked down.  


When he had gotten up the first time, it was to retrieve not a tissue, but
a) the huge container of hand sanitizer I bought with my own money for the students to use
b) a Spanish textbook, and
c) a stack of roughly 100 graded papers from off of my desk


and for no reason, had thrown each item out of the window.  The papers that I had stayed up late to grade floated on the breeze in every direction.  


Let's be clear.  I had not yelled at Saul.  I had not punished him at all, had not even talked to him beyond greeting him at the door that day.  And he took my stuff.  And threw it.  Out of the third floor window.


I marched him to the main office, asking if they had a referral I could write for him (since I had run out). The vice principal happened to be in the office and saw how flustered I was.  She walked up and said, "I'm sorry, that is utter madness, I'll call a parent conference and get him out of your class for the year."


Hahahaha!  Surely by now you know that is not what happened.  Although she WAS in the office, the vice principal impatiently waited for me to finish my woeful story, then huffed, "Well!  Did you go down and get the text book?  Because we need those."  The student was in my class every day after that despite the livid paperwork I filled out.  He was never even assigned detention.


That is all.

The Worse Day Ever for me was April 14 of 2009.  I had let the kids relax 5 minutes before the end of class since they had worked hard, and I was away from my desk handling a situation in the hallway (kids skipping, in case you were curious).

When the bell rang and my students went to their next period, I noticed my phone was missing from my desk.  I have many moments like this but a few minutes of frantic searching usually returns good results.  This time no dice.  I would find out later that one of my students, while I was disciplining students in the hall, stole my phone.  (Retrospective fact:  This thief was a white male and came from a rich family.)

During the last period of the day, I started having trouble with a student who is usually quiet.  I asked him to remove his headphones (they are supposed to pay $15 if they have an ipod out in class but I usually just take it up and give it back at the end) and he said ok.  About 5 minutes later he still had them so I asked for the ipod.  He immediately cussed me out, really pulling out the big guns as far as profanity is concerned.  I was shocked, but not angry, I started toward my desk to call the office to have this kid removed.  But wait!  My phone was stolen earlier and there's no classroom phone.  So I ask this little punk to come with me to the office, at which point he immediately runs down the stairs and out the door.

So I have to leave the class and WALK 3 flights of stairs to the main office to tell them to radio security and look for the kid etc. etc.  At this point, my cell phone (with all personal numbers and texts on it) is in the hands of some malevolent teen, I have just been cussed out for no reason, and my class is unsupervised.  I started crying in the main office.

The bell rang, people went home, I spent an hour meticulously filling out paperwork against the thief and the cusser.  I made copies of the referrals and submitted them to the administrators.

Both kids were in my class the next day.  And the next day.  The next day, one of the police officers searched the kid who stole the cell phone (this is 3 days after he stole it, as if he's going to bring it to school) and found nothing.  Neither student was ever punished.

I looked into it, and found this little gem:  in order to be expelled from school, a student must

• receive 6 different referrals (each referral comes after 3 warnings and parent conferences)
• from 6 different teachers
• all in the same 6 week period