The SST heard 'round the campus

SCROLL FOR AN UPDATE:

I'm sure it will be. I mentioned in yesterday's post that a meeting would take place today regarding the student who was the subject of the emails, and the meeting turned out to be everything I imagined it would be: a f**king train wreck.

The mother sat there with her laptop with an accusing scowl on her face the whole time; the father sat there looking defeated; and the student sat there with every ounce of hate in his heart that he could muster.

After the teachers gave their reports on the student's progress (none of it good), the student belted out with "They all get to say something, when do I get to say what I want to say?!" The leaders of the meeting made the mistake of indulging this (sorry O'Reilly) bold fresh piece of humanity, and the kid let loose, starting with me.

After being told by his mother not to start talking about how I pick on him, the first thing he said is that I pick on him and that I only ever address his behavior and no one else's (patently false of course). And then he just started going down the line, confronting each of his teachers sitting there and saying what horrible teachers they are and how no one likes them. I was just about to speak up and put a stop to this crap when the student's Language Arts teacher beat me to the punch as he stood up and said in a voice shaking with anger and emotion, "I am not going to sit here and tolerate being talked to like this by a 13 year-old child. I'm outta here."

I stayed long enough to give the student's parents a blow-by-blow account of the disaster that was this kid's day in my classroom, and as I did so, the student's mother began doing a facepalm that sank lower and lower as I went on. I then stood up, told everyone that I had had enough, and I departed, as did the student's math teacher, who left sobbing. She is such a nice lady, and she never deserved to be spoken to like that. The student's father actually went out to the hallway with her to console her as she repeated, "I have so tried so hard with him, I have tried so hard!"

As I rounded the corner of the admin building hallway, I overheard the father say to this student, "Congratulations [son], you've managed to piss off every teacher in that room."

I wonder what happens tomorrow?

Good Day to You, Sir

Update:

I was so worked up about this meeting that I posted from my classroom on my mobile device, and then started driving home. I was a couple minutes from home when my cell phone rang, and who should it be but my principal. First things first, she apologized for letting the student in question speak to me and the other teachers the way he did, but it turned out there was a reason she let him do so. Apparently while this kid was going on his rant, my principal had looked over at the District Student Services Director who was also attending this meeting, and he had given her a "stand down" gesture with his hand. Apparently, he made the instant decision that it was best to just let this kid continue his rant and dig his own grave. Apparently, the Director had dealt these parents previously, and they had expressed doubt that their darling child really talked to his teachers in the way that the teachers kept insisting that he did. In what turned out to be a combination Perry Mason/Jack Nicholson-as-the-Marine-Colonel moment, this kid dropped his facade and showed his parents exactly who he was and how he acts. The Director was making sure the parents got a healthy dose of reality.

It worked. This kid is not coming back; his parents have agreed to send him to the alternative school in our district. Thank God! Now maybe I can finally teach something to the students in this class that has previously been, for all intents and purposes, held hostage by this student who is no longer an issue.

Good Day to You Again, Sir