In hindsight, it was naive of me to assume that I could reason two boys out of a fight in my classroom today. They had no interest in making the right choice once names had been called and egos bruised, but to their credit, there was no swinging until I moved out from between them to call for backup. Such gentleman.
The thing is, fights don't look the same in real life as they do in the movies. Red faces, tears, missed punches, rolling on the floor in an angry embrace. It's embarrassing, if you ask me.
Now, I have to reason them both into apologizing to the other frightened 7th graders in the room who, to their credit, stood in silence and egged no one on. We all compared the shakiness of our hands and the rate of our heartbeats when the boys, each of whom have at least six inches over me and facial hair, were finally removed from the room. Then my remaining students recapped the whole fight as if we hadn't all been right there to watch it go down ten seconds earlier. And I let them. The recap makes us all feel better, and even though I acted tough and pretended to have things under control, let me just say here, holy shit.
8 comments:
You should get hazardous duty pay!
Ddoc
I had to break up a few fights when I was student teaching in a high school. They, too, towered over me, but I usually had a few kids who helped me break it up. Glad you didn't get hurt.
Good job. It sounds scary - but also like no one was seriously hurt. I wonder if they had the images from the movies [insert fight here]in their heads too.
I couldn't believe I made it through jr high without a fight. The girls were big into fighting. MT girls can be scary. Some of them wrestle large animals...
I remember my classes being a little (or a lot) more crazy on Halloween. The combination of costumes that hide true identities (and accountability, apparently), less structure in the teaching (it is a "holiday" after all), and the high they get from all that sugar (the most evil culprit of all) is not conducive to calm and obedient students.
I'm glad you were able to remain calm. It would have been inappropriate to react like I did when you told me that you hadn't brought your snowpants for skiing....
Wow, good work, J-Do. Why aren't real fights fun like the ones between Colin Firth and Hugh Grant?
i remember once in high school this guy ran up to another guy and punched him in the face SO HARD. I felt like I was going to vomit.
are the fighting boys going to stay home for a few days? maybe they can read about non violence as a strategy for working toward your goals?
love that idea, lh. It's odd to feel unsafe in your own classroom. Ugh.
sorry i'm behind on my reading.
and i'm sooo sorry about the fight. you were very brave.
i will admit that i saw a fight at my new school, and i ran into the library for backup before even approaching it. it didn't look like a one-person job.
Post a Comment