All that you have is your soul (Tracy Chapman).

Tuesday 4 April 2006

Because Teaching Isn't Challenging Enough!

After nearly a year of teaching, another “first” happened to me this morning.

I was teaching my Year 7 form, who are without a doubt the most dysfunctional class in the entire year (just my luck eh?) and as usual a fight broke out amongst the students. I tried to get over to the victim, but as I approached her she was already on her way out of the room.

After an incident last week where I got into trouble for stepping out of the room for a moment, only to come back to a fight, I have drawn an invisible border around the edge of the doorpost, through which I will not venture when a class is in session. With this in mind, I didn’t give chase through the hallway and also assumed that she’d calm down and eventually come back.


She didn’t.

In fact she’d walked out of school and gone home.

When the lesson was over and I had dismissed the class, I spoke with some of the other kids in playground to find out if they’d spotted her. They told me she’d taken the lead of another student and gone home (after a fight).
I immediately got hold of the head of Year and explained what had happened.

He called the house and sure enough, there she was. Later in the day, she came back with her aunt who complained that she wanted to take the girl out of school because it wasn’t “safe”.

So let me get this right:
A girl walks out of a classroom, leaves the school premises and goes home. We get in touch to find out if she’s ok and we’re told that we aren’t safe!

I do feel a little bad about the whole situation, but at the end of the day,
I refuse to be held responsible if a child takes a decision to remove herself from my care. The one issue that could have been contentious is if she had been injured (i.e. run over) on the way home from school, since we are responsible for her wellbeing during school hours.

So, how was your day?!

1 comment:

Just said...

My day was reasonably calm this time.

I think you did exactly the right thing.