Sympathy Jeans

courtesy of Pixabay CC0 Public  Domain

This morning two of my students wanted to vent about another teacher on my team. I told them how inappropriate it was for them to complain to one teacher about another, and that I would not be able to comment on or sympathize with them about their complaint.

The students said they understood why I couldn’t comment on the situation they wanted to tell me about, but said they appreciated being able to vent about it to someone. One of the students, a young man, then pouted and said he sure wished I could sympathize with them.

I joking told him my sympathy genes had been taken away when I became a teacher because keeping them would have caused me too many heartbreaks. The student laughed and asked me if that was why I always wore khakis, because the school had taken away my sympathy jeans.

After such a start to this Early Dismissal/Early Dismal Day – yes, another one – things seemed to be going well until it was time to watch the in class news program on the television monitor. I checked to see that the students on the right side were paying attention to the news, and had turned my attention to the students on the left side of the room when a ruckus broke out on the right side. Where only a second before peace had reigned, two of my male students were suddenly involved in a knock-down, drag-out, punches-thrown, blood-spilled brawl.

Rushing to the scene I quickly separated the two, aggravating my arthritic hip in the process, though I didn’t realize that until after the adrenalin wore off a little later. I immediately called for the Assistant Principal to take care of the two boys and the Custodian to take care of the spilled blood. Then I asked the two boys what in the world they were fighting over.

What I learned when I asked was hard to take. The two of them were fighting about who could beat who in a fight. These are two of the last boys I would expect to see get in this kind of trouble. Both are reasonably well behaved for their age, have caused no issues before, and are, or were, friends.

I have a feeling the question of who would win in a fight was brought up by one of the young ladies in class who was enjoying the attention of both boys. Since each claimed they would win in a fight between them, I guess the one boy chose the moment the in class news program started to prove it would be him. It turned out to be neither. Now they both get to stay home for five days and have this on their previously clean records. Since I wasn’t wearing my sympathy jeans, I don’t feel all that sorry for them.

With only 8 days until the End-of-Grade Tests, and only 19 days until school ends, it is sad they had to go and choose now to lose control. I’m just glad, as big as one of those boys are, that I didn’t get hurt other than a little tenderness in my hip when I stopped the fight.

As always, I remain,

The Exhausted Educator