welcome back!

I forgot to add the fight that happened literally at probably 8:04. I signed in, turned the hallway, hugged probably 40-some kids (kind of amazing that the smush of kids didn't turn into a fight, actually) unlocked my classroom, put my stuff down, came out to talk to L, and see Mr. W, whose classroom is across from L's, holding two girls apart, one of them L's and one of them I didn't recognize. Mr. W is a very nice guy, somewhere in early middle age land, a bit stodgy, runs a computer lab for resource level special ed kids. He could be the very slightly stuffy dad on any given TV show; given the right script, he's hilarious. I missed the start of the fight, but it was a good one... one of the girls had scratches up and down her face and by the end they'd literally torn each others' hair out. I run up to help Mr. W, and as I'm literally prying the girls' fingers off each other, he brightly chirps,

"Welcome back!"


Uh huh. 8:07, hugs are over, one girl is in the office and I'm spending advisory holding a student in the hallway away from the door so she won't go attack the other girl again. As another teacher calls it, tumble-weave from the fight making its way down the hall ahead of us.

Obviously what these kids really need is more curriculum driven instruction and another standardized test.