Truth be told, I've had internet back for a few days now, but it has been all kinds of crazy and I am just now getting back to blogging. Between BOE meetings, professional development, and spring fever, a lot has happened. I'll be covering recent events in later posts, but for now I need to talk about today.
Today was the hardest day I have had in my professional career. Today was the day I almost gave up.
You see, I have the distinct privilege of teaching a little boy we will call...Bill. This is his second time around in kinder, a fact I still don't quite understand (he's one of my best readers). Little Bill has quite a reputation in our school, one he has built into an identity for himself. His world is constantly filled with angry people, mainly people angry at him. He is known to be loud, disruptive, defiant, and violent...an all around "bad" kid. In fact, on the very first day of school he said to me "I'm gonna try really hard and be good in this class. I know I'm bad, but I'm gonna try."
Did you catch that? He knows HE is bad.
Breaks your hear doesn't it? It broke mine. I vowed I would do everything I could to show him that HE is not bad, however, the choices he makes are.
I'm not going to sugar coat it, Little Bill has been a holy terror some days...ok, most days. In fact, he had two suspensions under his belt for this year. However, I know that we've made progress. He learned to remove himself from potential bad situations, and to come get me instead of resorting to other behaviors (hitting, pushing, yelling, etc.). He sits and participates in our morning group lessons. He actually does his work, and then turns it in.
Progress.
Until today.
This morning did not go well for Little Bill. Disruptive choices lead to isolation from the rest of the group. He was angry, and chose to take it out on another student during the lunch/recess transition.
I was positively livid. The mama bear/ monster teacher in me came out ( usually only happens when one of my tots is threated/hurt by another). I let him know that he was done. For good. Period. End of Story. Amen.
He was no longer welcome in my class ever again. My principal backed it up with a suspension.He sat in the office the rest of the day, waiting for his ride home.
During plan, I ran an errand down in the office. Little Bill asked for permission to use the restroom. As I'm walking down the hallway, I hear his voice call out "Hi, Ms. S____". I chose to ignore him and keep walking.
I regretted that 2 nanoseconds afterwards, but he was already gone.
In all the conversations we've had about behavior, I have tried over and over to help him understand that he is worth something, he is not bad, he matters, that I see HIM. And, like I said, we'd made progress.
And I destroyed, or at least damaged, that progress with 2 seconds of silence.
The beautiful thing about kindergarten is that there is plenty of room for mistakes, even for the teacher. We are all learning and growing together...which is really hard sometimes, but always worth it.
Even on hard days... I love my job.
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