Fight!
The fight broke out in a flash. Math class for high schoolers who were not quite ready for the entry level courses, but are a bit beyond addition and fractions. With assignments due the next day, and a test the day after, the vast majority of the students took advantage of a sub day to sit around socializing. Not that I was surprised. One look at the book shelves where the small city telephone book sized work books were kept told the whole story. A jumble of books, tossed and kicked in place, covers tattered and marked after a few short weeks of use; more than the typical benign abuse of school property one sees from all too many students. This looked like aggressive resistance.
In the ten years sub teaching I had never seen a fight in the classroom. Once or twice students squared off face to face, hands ready to punch, but backed down when given the out of me yelling at them to chill. Yesterday's incident started out the same. Flair up of temper, a bit of trash talk followed by what I thought was a reduction in tensions. With only a few minutes to go in the period, I made the mistake of trying to ride it out to the end without having the potential combatants removed from the room.
Bad strategy. Suddenly the two girls were on each other with slugs and slaps, tumbling into overhead projector cart, desks and computer monitors. My frantic attempts to punch up emergency numbers on the telephone seemed to take forever, with three mis-dials before getting through. In the mean time two other students were busy video recording the action with their cell phones, and another girl briefly participated in the fight. Even though it seemed like a long time the whole thing was over in a couple minutes, but of course it took the rest of the day to calm things down. Everyone in the next two classes had heard all about the fight, and many had seen the videos. Few of if any were really in the mood to do school work of any kind.
At the end of the day the head of security came in and filled me in on the suspensions that were levied against the fighters. In addition to substantial suspensions levied against the combatants, I was also glad to hear that the kids who participated in the fight with their video phones were also assessed brief suspensions as well. Suspensions separate the principle participants in an incident like this, but one wonders if any meaningful conflict resolution will also be attempted. Is there really such a thing as meaningful conflict resolution? The longer I live the more I question that whole notion, but that is a topic for another discussion.
In the ten years sub teaching I had never seen a fight in the classroom. Once or twice students squared off face to face, hands ready to punch, but backed down when given the out of me yelling at them to chill. Yesterday's incident started out the same. Flair up of temper, a bit of trash talk followed by what I thought was a reduction in tensions. With only a few minutes to go in the period, I made the mistake of trying to ride it out to the end without having the potential combatants removed from the room.
Bad strategy. Suddenly the two girls were on each other with slugs and slaps, tumbling into overhead projector cart, desks and computer monitors. My frantic attempts to punch up emergency numbers on the telephone seemed to take forever, with three mis-dials before getting through. In the mean time two other students were busy video recording the action with their cell phones, and another girl briefly participated in the fight. Even though it seemed like a long time the whole thing was over in a couple minutes, but of course it took the rest of the day to calm things down. Everyone in the next two classes had heard all about the fight, and many had seen the videos. Few of if any were really in the mood to do school work of any kind.
At the end of the day the head of security came in and filled me in on the suspensions that were levied against the fighters. In addition to substantial suspensions levied against the combatants, I was also glad to hear that the kids who participated in the fight with their video phones were also assessed brief suspensions as well. Suspensions separate the principle participants in an incident like this, but one wonders if any meaningful conflict resolution will also be attempted. Is there really such a thing as meaningful conflict resolution? The longer I live the more I question that whole notion, but that is a topic for another discussion.
I wonder what the rational was behind suspending the videographer was?
ReplyDeleteThey had potential evidence of who started what.
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...Mark
The security person who came in at the end of the day and filled me in on the consequences of the altercation told me that recording the incident had the effect of encouraging the combatants. The fledgling videographers only jumped in after the first blows were struck, so they didn’t really show anything of the lead up to the final event. However, I was kind of surprised at the accuracy of the report the woman from security gave me, after interviewing the kids who were involved, as well as bystanders. I was told by kids in the room that they had not seen tensions between these two girls before, but my impression from the first words exchanged between the two that they had been at each other before. Paul
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