Oh dear

When reading this, please do not worry about me. I am doing quite well and am as back to normal as ever.

I had a pretty rough week, which culminated in a negative event on Friday during my lunch period.

Firstly, all week my students were acting pretty crazy. They refused to listen to any directions, they were being ridiculously disrespectful and I was just beginning to lose my cool.

On Friday I had "the talk" about 2 times and both times they listened for about 2 seconds then went back to doing exactly what they were doing before.

Then 'the event' happened. One of my regular lunch participants and student was sitting in his regular spot as normal (We will call him boy 1). I was behind him facing the computers, helping one of my students log on. Then a 2nd boy came in (boy 2) and placed his entire arm around boy 1's head sort of choking him. A few students commented on it and I turned around and told boy 2 to "take his hands off of boy 1" and when he didn't I went over, placed my hand on his shoulder and repeated my directions. He finally did what I asked but then boy 1 (who had his back to us) stood up, turned around and tried to either hit or push boy 2. But instead of hitting boy 2 he hit me (since I was standing right there) right in the face (around the cheek bone). It wasn't very hard and there is absolutely no physical damage, it didn't even hurt. Instead I was simply shocked that this was happening in the first place.

Due to a myriad of factors, I 'lost my cool' to put it lightly and began swearing like a sailor and crying really hard. First I told boy 2 to "get the f*** out of my room" and then went off on how none of the students "f***ing respected me" etc. etc. Now this was clearly not the way to react but basically that event was the big straw that broke the camel's back. I mean the kids think all their shenanigans are really funny, but all they are is draining. I was also crying a lot and couldn't even look at any of my students without bursting into tears again so I just walked out of the room entering a few times to grab my cell phone and my laptop. This lasted about an hour and I talked with several administrators, security, other teachers and my dad.

Everyone was very supportive of me and had nice words of both encouragement and advice, all of which were appreciated. Many of the kids were also quite concerned since they had never seen me act that way and some of them were afraid I was going to leave and never come back (while that thought never even entered my mind, I did consider leaving for the rest of the day if I couldn't pull myself together, though that turned out to be unnecessary since I did manage to get a hold of myself after a while). It is hard not to take what the kids do personally even if I know that is what I have to do. They're kids, they aren't talking to each other to hurt my feelings, they are just talking to each other because that is what they want to do. But when I work so hard and they give me nothing, it just makes me so upset. I don't ask for much and they won't even give me that. I know that I can't change who they are overnight and make them into respectful human beings, but they're just so awful sometimes that it really drives me crazy.

Needless to say some new rules are being imposed for 2nd period and lunch time. I can only do so much, it is true, but I have to try to change things around because it is getting ridiculous and it has to stop if we are going to function until the end of the school year.

But as I said before I am perfectly fine now, I got a lot of the emotions out of my system and I am back on track for dealing with the students. What happened was an accident, and while the students will be getting in serious trouble for fighting, I am not going to add any additional burdens because I was physically involved.

I greatly respect and care about my students, I just wish that sometimes they could give me a little respect back.