Continued...
1. I love this story, as will become obvious...
Teaching seniors at Monrovia High School. I had a student named Zach. Zach wasn't a bad kid, but he wasn't a shrinking violet, either. He wasn't afraid to buck authority if he thought he should.
One day, still during the passing period but before class started, Zach and a classmate entered my room in a dispute about something. Suddenly, Zach put the other kid in a headlock. The other kid was clawing and trying to get out of it, to no avail. Zach was saying, "I'm not going to hurt him, Ms. McNary. I just want him to stop running his mouth." There was no doubt in my mind that the other kid asked for what he was getting, but here I was the person responsible for keeping order, and I had to do something. My mind raced. Do I need to call a male teacher to come in and break this up? Do I need to call the office for assistance? What to do?? I started by standing close to the boys and saying, "I am going to ask you, in the nicest way I know how, to stop!" To my absolute shock, Zach let the kid go, and the kid didn't retaliate. Crisis averted! In my mind, I was saying, "That worked??? Ask a kid to stop fighting, and he does????" Everyone settled down and class went on as usual. I told Zach that I would still have to write him up for the incident, which he accepted with no complaint at all. Whatever punishment he got from the office was okay with him, I guess. Zach made me look like a genius that day.
Later that same year, I had Zach's class in the Media Center, doing research. We were sharing the facility with a freshman class that had a young teacher. Somehow, Zach got sideways with the freshman teacher. He smarted off to her, disrespectfully, and she came to me about it (as she should have). Internally, I sighed because, once again, I had to think of the best way to deal with this so that all of the parties would come out happy. I didn't want the teacher to go unsupported, but I didn't particularly want to set Zach off, either. (That never works.) I told the other teacher that I was going to call Zach out in the hall to have a three-way conversation with the both of them and me, but I needed to know what she wanted as an outcome. She said, "An apology would be acceptable." So all I had to do was figure out how to get an apology out of this kid. Hmmm...
We met in the hall. I don't remember how the conversation went, but I talked to Zach like an adult--not a hot-headed kid--and the next thing I knew, he was saying that he sometimes had trouble keeping his mouth shut and was apologizing to the other teacher. Well! That was easy! She accepted his apology. We all went back into the Media Center and continued with our business as if nothing had happened. The other teacher came to me at the end of the period and told me how well I had handled the whole situation. I was still bumfuzzled by the fact that Zach had made me look like a genius again!
Zach was just one of those kids who wasn't afraid of mischief but wasn't going to lie about it, either. (So different from most students.) I really, really respected that about him. After those incidents, I think I would have trusted him with my life. In fact, I did. Zach went on to become a Marine whose service protected us all. He lives in Stilesville, IN, now and is one of my Facebook friends, so many years later.
2. Bomb threat.
Teaching seniors in Monrovia. I have written about this incident on this blog before, in another context. I had a student in my very last class of the day. While the kids were lined up at the door waiting for the bell, the young man became upset by something that had come down from the office to him. He commented, "I should just come back and blow this place up." This was quite soon after the Columbine school disaster. The comment put me in a pinch. I was quite sure that he didn't mean it. I knew the kid pretty well. HOWEVER, he made the comment in right in front of other students, and I understood that if I didn't report it, and he acted on his threat, it would be MY neck that would be dragged through the headlines as the guilty party. I could imagine kids saying, "Ms. McNary was standing right there when he made the threat but didn't do anything about it." I had no choice. I reported the threat, and the kid (who actually lived out of the district boundaries anyway) was expelled from school. I've always felt a little bad about that one.
3. Marijuana.
Again, teaching seniors. I had a student who was arrested for marijuana possession and ended up in jail. After he served his time, he was back in class telling us all that, as soon as he was 18, he was going to move to Amsterdam where pot is legal. I was appalled. I think my comment was something like, "You are going to leave your home and family so you can have a drug? Is pot that important to you??" He said it was. Then, one day, he announced in an amused sort of way, that he had been drug tested the day before and knew it would come back "dirty". More jail time for violation of probation. I'm not sure whatever happened to him. Obviously, he didn't graduate. Wonder if he ever made it to Amsterdam...
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