So. Another strange day teaching. I work with kids who are out on suspension. This particular district has an in-school program. Some kids are awaiting placement, some are doing their time before going back to school. They are not your typical students, usually. There's a range. Today's range was fairly sad: a troubled but unaggressive kid. He's talkative and likable when I work with him, which is what the other teachers report too. The home situation sounds chaotic. He came in today with his disgruntled parent. He cried and smacked his hand into the wall, cutting it. Then I was supposed to work with him.

Wasn't sure what to do, but I told him I knew he was having a hard time and I wasn't there to make his day worse, then I told him sometimes it helps to write when I'm upset and that he didn't have to show it to me. Twenty minutes later he finished, showed me what he'd written, and reduced me to tears, which I'm sure is really unprofessional. He put his head down and started crying and couldn't stop. I took him into the office to get tissues, and then the administrators got in on the act. There was a LOT of advice being offered, including the benefits of going to church. No idea how much got through. He is essentially polite and sweet-natured, in my experience, so he listened without saying anything.

I told him to show what he'd written to his mother, then we did grammar b/c I thought it might help settle him down. And then I showed him how to play Boggle, which he loved.

I don't fly well by the seat of my pants, so who knows if that was the best way to handle it. My initial reactions often seem to be wrong when it comes to managing behavior. The administrator seems to think I got him more upset by letting him write about his feelings, but OTOH he seemed sort of proud of what he wrote--I think he liked it that I told him to show his mom. Basically we're let loose with the kids and they only care when a parent complains....