Here we are -- the new year. After so much consternation involving lost/gained positions, I'm back.
Same school, same job, different students.
I recently stumbled upon my behavior notebook from my first year of teaching. It's a small, brown and green notebook that promises it is 100% post-consumer recycled materials. Inoffensive and unassuming, one would never guess the words it held inside. Upon flipping through, I notice names and actions scrawled in blue and red ink. Rxxx stole pencils. Rxxx punched a student. Dxxxx stabbed a student with a pencil. Txxx started a fight. Axxx ran away from the classroom. The ink trickles down the page like a tear-face, worn from sitting in my flooded basement over the summer.
I was about to throw out the soiled tome, but I stopped. Right about where I listed all the things Rxxx did in one day (two pages front and back of behaviors) and decided to keep the book. It's a reminder of a world that is out there, a few miles south of the school I'm in. It's a reminder of what I went through and how far it took me.
I wonder where those students are. If they continue to be passed through the system, and there's nothing to prevent this, they should be entering 3rd grade this year. I wonder how many of them made it. I'm sure many moved, transferred or disappeared, but my mind still thinks of them.
