Wake Up Call

First off, the Big Principal who assumes I know who she is without an introduction needs to leave to cover cafeteria duty. The counselor who is assigned has a crisis to deal with.

Then the 8th grade counselor needs to arrive a few minutes late. She is wrapping up a crisis.

McDuff takes a phone call before taking a seat. Two more crises.

I look at the 9th grade principal. “Where’s your crisis, Calamity Jane?”

I am the first to speak. This is going to be MY meeting dammit and nothing says so like taking to the podium before being invited to do so.

Housekeeping items first. I’d like to obtain copies of the reports filed by Pat and Lars a week ago.

Oh! And speaking of housekeeping, there is a 1000-legger slithering across the floor toward McDuff’s shoe if anyone is interested.

McDuff has several notebooks with him that are brimming with papers that are stuck in haphazardly at all angles. He starts rifling through the papers to find Pat’s complaints. He is making idiotic small talk the whole time and tries to distract me with some flier I should have gotten on Back to School Night but did not. It was jammed in one of the notebooks and a good prop if he aimed to distract, but I was not that easily distracted.

What I focus on is the fact that as McDuff examines forms, and turns over sheets of paper, and unfolds documents in search of Pat’s complaints, I can observe that about half of the papers were similar complaints submitted by other students. Too many to count. And all just stuffed in a folder where they will probably just get ignored.

I reach out to McDuff. I need to stop him. I really don’t want to be sitting in the principal’s office all day with my hand on my ass. I tell him he can find them later. I have a few points to address.

I ask all the questions Lars and I discussed (before he turned all to mush and didn’t want to push any buttons.)

Why was nothing done the moment Pat complained.

Oh they responded.
They changed the lunch tables.
The kids just didn’t listen

And moved Kevin’s Science seat.
They just didn’t know who the other two kids were or they would have given that some thought.
And they called Kevin’s mom but she wasn’t home.

I am sure Ashton Kutcher is going to bound from the closet to inform me that I’ve been punked.

I want to scream at them. Did anyone in their years upon years upon years of academic experience devoted to educating young people ever talk with a real live young person?

I take a broader approach.

I tell them that as they know, kids at this age are testing. Testing limits. Testing boundaries. Testing their environment. Testing your mettle.

They should have anticipated that the kids would not comply with the cafeteria rearranging. The kids called their bluff. Gambled and won. They guessed that McDuff et al would lay down the law and walk away assuming in all his hubris that Pharaoh’s law would be followed. So let it be written, so let it be done. Fools.

I let them wallow in their ass-facedness and then moved quickly to make some demands about follow up on Pat’s situation. Gained some assurances that I would not have to darken their collective door for this purpose again.

And just as McDuff was restuffing and closing his notebooks and breathing a sigh of relief, I moved promptly onto the bigger reason I had come to see them.

The looks of disbelief were priceless.