Escalation Clause

Shane was happy to be back in school Tuesday. A few days later, I got a text from Carrie. Shane's teacher texted her.

Carrie asked me what I thought we should say. I said that the teachers really needed to work with Shane on his capitalization and punctuation. Plus, I wasn't sure if he was using the right "your." Was he referring to someone's butt? Or was he calling them a butt? But, hey! He used the right spelling of butt.

Carrie didn't think it was overly funny at the time. She was upset, because it felt like she only heard from the teachers when it was a "Look what your kid did now" situation. She gave an honest reply that we'd support them, but wanted to know more of the circumstances.

For the record, I don't do live commenting on anything because of the temptation for kids to post ridiculous things. I...uh...may have done some of that myself. At a staff meeting. It was hilarious, but the point is that temptation is strong for kids and they may not have my comedic appropriateness (and I've done it more than once over the years...The last time was at a training and the trainer was moving so slowly I made an account for Batman that appeared when she didn't expect it).

Anyway, Shane did something impulsive and was easily caught. He needs to learn to think before acting.

And he needs to work on his writing. I made him practice.

When I asked Shane what happened, he said that he had been arguing with someone. They were rude, mad him mad, and he typed in they were a butt.

"But how would anyone know who you were talking to? Do you think the teacher thought you were talking to him?"

That made Shane stop for a moment. He said Mr. B had come to the room to let Shane know he'd seen it and was going to write home.

I can sympathize some with the teacher. I don't like leaving my classroom in a sub's hands, because I have no way to direct anything. Shane did something annoying that popped up clear as day in writing on his teacher's computer. He may have been trying to monitor how things were going and boop! "ur butt."

I've talked to Shane a lot of times about having the intelligence, wisdom, and strength to recognize when things are escalating.

He's still working on it.

Case in point, Friday I got a call from the after school teacher. Shane had a bloody lip. He'd been arguing with a girl and she said something that he really didn't like. He threw something near her and she threw something that he probably wanted to have dodged.

Shane's doing well over all, but I sometimes wonder how he'd be doing at Jackson Via compared to Scottsville. There were more kids after school, but there were at least double the helpers. There'd be three different 3rd grade classrooms and they'd be smaller. There would have been a chance Shane would have been with his friends.....but there were also some rough moments with other kids kicking him, etc. It could be Shane would be learning some of the exact same lessons he's learning in Scottsville.

I need to schedule a meeting with the school at some point to check in. Maybe once I'm caught up with everything (......like next year?).