Many of us mistakenly think that we can handle those most rare kids if we “just love them” enough. We are wrong. What I said in PQA in a Wink! about Mildred and Kyle and developing alternate personalities with them doesn’t apply to these kids. We put our careers and our sanity on the line when we rush in like fools as social workers instead of teachers, as per:
http://www.safeschools.state.co.us/docs/Safe.School.Act_2008.pdf, Colorado Revised Statutes CRS 22-32-109.1 (2)(a)(II)
I certainly don’t mean the term as it is used as in the term “little monsters” to describe students in a playful way. To compound the problem, these monsters work cleverly under skillful passive defiance learned over years.
We must grow to be different teachers if we have students that fall into this most extreme category (we have also referred to them as jackals in earlier posts on this subject). We need a plan and we have to follow up on it with parents and administrators and, most importantly, with ourselves.
Bryce’s “Alternate Plan” is excellent. I don’t care how hard it is to get rid of these kids. The way we teach, the kindness and the humor factor and the humanness of it all, require that we move forcefully against these kids who can ruin classes and careers. How many of us are being totally yet unnecessarily handcuffed right now by such kids because we didn’t act early enough this fall?