Some Students Will Never Learn... Day 17.

As a first year teacher, there is a chance that you may be thrown into a situation that you are absolutely 100% not prepared for; there will be no amount of schooling, at that very moment, that will help you in the decision that you face.  I was "lucky enough" to be put into one of those situations last year when I had to make the decision as to whether or not I wanted to have a student arrested.  This particular student, who had eaten lunch with me on many occasions and I thought I had a pretty good relationship with, ended up stealing my iPod touch, my sunglasses, and the measly $3.00 I had in my wallet.  I'm assuming you are now wondering, "How did she got caught?"  Well, calm down, and let me tell you... about 2 weeks after my things had gone missing and I had filed a report with the police officer at school, Captain Klepto came into my office and asked if she could charge her iPod on one of our computers while she went to class, I told her she could and she left.  That's when I noticed that she was no longer using an iPod Nano and was now using an iPod Touch.  Interesting. So I went over, looked at the back of the iPod, and was pleasantly surprised to see my original engraving still intact.  I then brought it to the police officer and he went and tracked her down.  About an hour later, the officer asked me to leave my class and I was faced with the decision: Do I want this student arrested or do I want her to receive a warning?  After having an internal battle inside my head as to what to do for about 30 seconds, I decided to have the student arrested in the hopes that this would teach her a very serious lesson: that her actions would directly effect her life and how she is viewed by others.

Now let's fast forward to today.  Today, Captain Klepto was arrested for stealing over $1,000.00 worth of equipment from the gym at school; it had all been caught on camera. Moral of this story?  Some students will NEVER learn.  Ugh.

Alright, moving on.  Today I was in a Science class at the end of the day.  Just as the bell rang at 2:05 and all of the students were exiting the classroom, one student, who had previously been making fun of one of my special education students for the back brace that she has to wear, grabbed the handle to the emergency shower, turned it on, and completely soaked another student as well as the majority of the floor in our classroom before she ran laughing hysterically from the room.  The science teacher I work with chased after her while I was left behind to clean up the mess.

So this brings me to my New Teacher Tip of the Day:  You are going to meet students who are definitely going to go straight to hell when they die.  The only upside to these students is that you get some great stories out of them.