Oh - now it's freaking ON...

If there's one thing I can't stand in a student - it's freaking defiance. It REALLY makes me see red. Early on in my teaching career I did actually lose it totally with one little defiant punk - grabbing him by the shirt-front and slamming him against a wall. Okay, okay - sounds bad. And I DID get in a teensy-weensy bit of trouble for that one - but, to be fair, this kid was a little criminal-in-the-making-son-of-a-bitch, and believe me - if YOU had been there and YOU had had to try and teach this mongrel, you would have agreed that a good, hard planting of the boot to the groin wouldn't have been out of place at the time.

Anyway - we had a house meeting today ( yup - we do the whole house thing. Kinda strange sometimes, not having come from that environment myself. No house system in sunny Oh-TACKY(!) college. Feels like being in a Harry Potter novel sometimes - y'know, just without any of the magic stuff ). We have a house singing competition coming up soon. The assembly area is in the big drama room in our block. So - as the boys can't seem to go freaking FIVE MINUTES without wanting to cram food into their bottomless gullets, a bunch of them start ... well, cramming food down their gullets ( I really can't say that they're actually EATING the food, because that would imply some kind of civilization ). I go to one guy, let's call him Zeke. Zeke is an idiot. One of Zeke's parents is on the board - which is the only reason I can see for him actually still being here. Zeke is eating, in defiance of all politeness, not to mention room rules. I say to Zeke "Please put the food away - or bin it. We don't want you eating in here and making a mess. You can eat at interval - it's, like, in only 15 minutes."

Now - to any normal, rational person - that would seem pretty straight foward. right ? DON'T EAT NOW - DON'T EAT HERE. YOU CAN EAT SOON - JUST SOMEWHERE ELSE.

I have to repeat this message to another couple of people - before I blew my black-whistle-of-doom, and told the assembly the same message ( please put the food away - don't want it in here - it makes a mess - eat in interval, it's only in a few minutes ). So - Zeke has heard me say this AT LEAST TWICE.

A short time later I'm helping to move students into their positions for the singing - and what do I see ? This little bastard has only grabbed the food BACK out of where he put it, crammed the golf-ball sized lump of it RIGHT into his mouth, and is trying to chew it, turning his head away from me in a fiendishly-cunning bid not to be caught !

"You." I say, "Out." I point to the hall.

He has the nerve to look surprised !

"What?" he answers ( only, with his mouth still partially full of food it sounds more like "Wuhhhuuu ?" ).

"OUT!" I repeat.

He starts walking in the opposite direction !

"OOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUTTTTTTT!!!!" I enunciate - now stabbing my finger repeatidly in the direction.

"But I just need to get..."

"DO. NOT. CARE. OUT. NOW. MOVE. GO. OUT. OUT ! OUT!!!", my fists are unconsciously balling up with such force I'm surprised that black holes weren't spontainously generated.

So - I have a nice private chat with him about how his behaviour, while probably not seeming like such a big deal to him, was defiance of the lowest and worst kind. He was given a reasonably request by a teacher clearly, he was given it AGAIN, and he STILL decided to do what he wanted to do. He is to write a report for me on his behaviour ( four questions which I write for him - giving him a sheet of paper to answer on ) at interval and present it to me at the start of lunchtime.

This should have taken 15min MAX. 10 ( maybe ) to write. Possibly 5 at lunchtime at most to work through with him ( though more likely 20 seconds - I say simply "Thanks, don't do it again, get out." ).

Did he turn up ?

Nope.

Dirty mother-f**ker.

So - I am going to foward his name into the school detention list ( there's an hour after-school picking up litter ) for the defiance, and THEN he can come and spend a lunchtime with me writing out that original report under my watchful eye ( becaause he almost certainly hasn't done it ).

That might sound petty and small-minded, but it's the "broken window" theory in action. You crack down hard on the small stuff - you never have to deal with the escalation to the big stuff. Not that this is actually small - it's just a punk-arse student thinking he doesn't have to do what a freaking authority figure reasonabally asks him to do.

All part of the teaching mantra I've had since my very first days ( at a pretty tough school ) - "No snot-punk kid gets the better of Seraph!". It may not be terribly enlightened, PC, caring, or much in the spirit of furthering the future of NZ youth - but hey, it works for me.