Teaching

I took the day off today. It was legitimate, which is rare, but all of my legitimate absences happen for the same reason: lack of sleep, which is sort of like saying that all deaths happen due to a lack of blood to the brain. It ignores the root causes.

I am the faculty representative to the Disciplinary Hearing committee, a job I acquired because I was the first to respond to the e-mail, but it is the most compelling thing that I do at my school. No lesson, no unit, no single conversation can have as much of an impact on the life of a student as the disciplinary hearing, where we discuss keeping or expelling students. We don't vote, the Principal makes the final decision herself. We just discuss. In all the hearings of which I've been a part, on only two occasions has my opinion been off from my Principal's. Once, I was wrong. The other time, we just disagreed. Once, of the four non-voting adults in the room, I was the only one who thought we should expel, and we did.

Yesterday I was sick, but I came in to school to be at a hearing I felt was important. The girl's behavior is sinister. She is a bully, a true female bully. She teases the fat kid for being fat, the speech-impeded kid for his impediment. She teased the lesbian girl first about her hair, then about her sexuality, and the girl left our school to get away from the bully.

I overheard her in the halls Friday before Thanksgiving calling someone a "fucking faggot," and it was my report that broke the straw and earned her the hearing. Earlier in the day, I had joked with her advisor about trumping up charges to get her sent home, but I didn't need to.

Her life, as you would expect, is a wreck. She lost her father last year, and her coping mechanisms are broken, at best. She was heavily teased herself her freshman year, more than two years ago, and when those who bullied her were transferred out, she came out swinging. I was not predisposed to expulsion before the hearing, but I was prepared to ask difficult questions that required thoughtful answers.

There are two ways students behave in a hearing. Either they are loquacious, or silent. The talkative ones come back. The silent ones better have a shining heart of gold on their sleeves, or they get transferred. The bully, for once, was silent. That is a difficult place to be to answer a question like: "How have you been a positive influence on others at this school?" Was the question a trap? Can any 16 year old identify how they were a positive influence in High School? Maybe I could think of something. I knew a girl who could clearly answer that question, but she transferred out of our school to get away from the bully. Maybe the question I really wanted to ask was "how will you replace what we have lost because of you?"

Of the four regular members of the committee, I was the only one who voted to expel. One of the Dean's voted to bring her back under a discipline contract, but said he wouldn't lose sleep if she was expelled. Her advisor was clearly moved by her tears, her situation, the desparation in her mother's voice. Or maybe he sees potential in her I haven't seen. Or maybe he's just seen worse.

I did lose sleep over her. I didn't realize it until it was too late, and I was in no state to come in to work today, but I'm still having a hard time wrapping my mind around it. I don't think the Principal decides based on what I think, but I do believe that my thinking is aligned with her decisions. My feelings are insignificant, of course. For me its simply a night or two of sleeping. For her, it could be the rest of her life overcoming the ramifications of the decision. We are all simply pebbles in the river.

I don't know yet if the girl was expelled or not, I would have found out if I went to work today.

What irony.

Comments

[Alan]

Meh.

[Amanda]

i'll just say this: One girl like that can have so much of an impact on other people's lives, and not in a positive way. it's not fair. It's also time for her to learn that no matter how bad her life gets, she can't make it worse for others. it just doesn't, or shouldn't, work that way. i think you did the right thing.