I got locked in with one of my small star classes. All of our classroom doors have locks on them. I was teaching a small star lesson with the violent one when things got a bit crazy. The violent had been having a pretty good lesson when he took out a packet of something from his coat jacket. It looked like big white tums in a plastic case like one would find on a packet of day or night quill or countless other cold medicines. He was putting the packet in his mouth, and I asked him to give it to me. He refused and the TA quickly took it away from him. The violent one went crazy and started slapping the TA over and over. I decided to remove him from the classroom before he started hitting the other children and I asked the TA to get his parental unit outside. The TA left and the violent one slammed the door shut and began to play with the lock. The TA knocked to get back in and I tried to let her back in, but the violent one started hitting me over and over again so it took awhile. I couldn't open the door after several attempts. I could hear the violent one's nanny yelling at him from outside the door. I asked the TA to go get someone else to help. One of the customer relations staff came to the door and kept on asking me to try again a few times to unlock the door, but it was pointless. Luckily, the violent one realized that he was in big trouble and was now quiet and looking at his activity book like the other students were. I went through the rest of the lesson and games for 45 minutes while a bunch of people outside the door were trying everything to open the door. Luckily the students were pretty chill with it. One boy looked pretty worried that we were never going to get out and I kept saying "They'll help us," even though I'm sure he didn't understand any of that. Of course, we were in one of the rooms with no windows in the back of the school were it gets dreadfully stuffy! Fifteen minutes after class should have let out someone did the old credit card trick outside and we were freed! Luckily, the parents looked like they were quite amused with the whole ordeal and I got hugs good-bye from most of the students.
I quickly rushed into the staff room because I just had to tell someone of what I went through! Luckily, Miles was there and I spat out my story before running late to my next class which was blissfully uneventful after that last class!
Miles stuck around an extra hour to go out with a beer with me and Ryan and Marie. We found a tiny pool hall across from the restaurant we were at and played a few games, too. I feel lucky that I got to share that experience with such awesome people.
You need to talk to the director about this child! You nor your children your your TA should have to tolerate this violent physical activity. I would assume the parents would be upset if they knew that this child was responsible for the "lock in" vs just probably thinking it was a mechanical problem with the lock...seems THEY would approach the people in charge to remove this dangerous child. In America, this child would be expelled until his behavior improved.
ReplyDeleteOMG on a lighter note this is horrible but hilarious! You are such a great writer, I'm going to read it to my students as an example of "voice" ha ha ha jk.
ReplyDelete-Hi Sandra. Unfortunately, EF is a business and they want to make money. Sadly, all of the customer relations staff are paid based on retention rates, too, and that makes it even trickier. They are not going to refuse a student. It's also just a very different culture. I'm hoping to get at least a parent-teacher conference out of this situation.
ReplyDelete-Thanks, Meghan! I think in a few months it will be a pretty funny story for me to tell.
Holy cow! Makes one wonder though WHY he's acting out? Situational or chemical imbalance? Stay strong! You're amazing!!!
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