I don’t normally bleed at work, and I’m not terribly fond of it, but I managed to be bleeding before the first bell even rang this morning. I broke up a fight– or, at least, what was about to be a fight– and one of the combatants managed to scratch my finger in an annoyingly painful fashion while I was separating the two of them. I spent most of the rest of the day telling my boss that he owed me workman’s compensation once my finger fell off. I didn’t know one of the kids; he’s relatively new to the building (possibly this year, but I think he came in late last year) and the other one was an eighth grade kid who I’ve been having irregular run-ins with since he was a fifth grader. I’ve broken up more than one fight he was in and manhandled him into the office on more than one occasion.

The weird thing? I actually get along with him fairly well, all considered. He didn’t start this particular brawl, and the fact that he let me get in between the two of them and separate them actually represents progress. I’m not going to go so far as to say that I’ve made a connection with him– I honestly don’t think anyone in the building except maybe for the football coach can say that, and I’m not even sure about him– but I seem to have figured out how to finesse him to get him to do what I want. I grabbed him in the hallway later that day and let him know that I’d put in my write-up that he wasn’t the guy who started the fight, and talked to him again at the end of the day to make sure that there wasn’t any ongoing beef with the kid who had been messing with him. He said it was going to be okay, and I figured he was telling the truth.

Then his bus was late. The buses are terrible this time of year, and this was a perfect example of why: when the bus finally showed up to school, there was still a primary center kid on the bus, who either didn’t know his address or had gotten on the wrong bus or some piece of nonsense that was keeping the driver from dropping him off at home. Complicating things, the driver’s radio wasn’t working properly for some reason and she wasn’t able to get in touch with anyone at the little guy’s school. So the kids all filed outside to get on the bus and then the driver had to make them all wait (outside, in drizzling rain) while she went inside and made some phone calls to try and figure out what to do with the kid.

This didn’t set well with him. So he and another kid (his girlfriend, maybe? And as I’m writing this it occurs to me to wonder where his little brother was…) decided to walk home.

They can’t walk home if they’re supposed to ride the bus, even if the bus is late. There are massive legal issues involved; if they’re bus riders, they ride the bus. Period. Is it unreasonable? Yeah, probably, on some level or another, but it’s still the rules and I’ve got to enforce them. I managed to get him to head back into the building, but he wasn’t happy about it.

“This is fuckin’ bullshit.”

One of our new paraprofessionals overhears this. “What did you just say?”

“Fuckin’ Christ, dude, leave me alone.”

He takes exception. And I did something I haven’t done before: I actually waved the guy off, letting the kid go into the building unmolested and holding the para back (not physically, mind you) to convince him to ignore a fourteen-year-old not only directly disrespecting him but doing so in an impressively profane fashion.

And the interesting thing? By the end of the conversation, the guy agreed with me. The kid, meanwhile, went inside, like I wanted him to, and while he was the last to sit down like he was supposed to, he did it. The thing about this kid? He’s all street, and has absolutely no parenting whatsoever at home. His mother’s worthless– another teacher in my building, who has his little brother, and is new to the building, met her the other day and said she was the rudest person she’d ever met. I have absolutely no idea where or who his father is. For all I know, neither does his mother.

This kid is not going to back down to anyone, and he’s even less likely to do so when he’s already had a shitty day. There are things I need him to do, right? I need him in the building, where I’m not going to get my ass sued off if he gets hit by a car while he’s walking home or just never goes home at all. I need him sitting down and being with everyone else (granted, this I need less than I need the first thing) and I need him back on the bus in a few minutes and not in a screaming match with the driver who’s keeping him from getting home on time. And a stranger (remember: new paraprofessional) getting all in his face about how he said “fuck” a couple of times is not going to make any of those things happen.

So I basically let him get away with dropping the F-bomb a couple of times. Maybe I’ll talk to him about it tomorrow. Today, this afternoon, wasn’t the time, and doing it in a confrontational manner definitely wasn’t going to work. Confrontation itself doesn’t work with this kid. The only thing I’ve seen work with him is quiet, calm conversation and simple, direct requests, which he’ll usually comply with, and ignoring his occasional outburst.

Is this doing the right thing? Or am I guilty of not having High Standards of Behavior now? Have I Done Nothing to punish his profanity if all I do is remind him about how to talk to adults tomorrow? Is a lunch detention really gonna make any difference?

More on this tomorrow.

(PS: I’m not demeaning the para, by the way, who so far I like a lot. I might very well have reacted in precisely the same manner he did if it was a different kid, one who being a bit more confrontational with had a chance of being effective. But it was never ever going to work with this kid in this set of circumstances. I don’t want to make him seem like a bad guy– he just made the wrong call in a snap decision.)