100

Yuck.  That about sums up how after school went today.  Oh, the school day was fine.  It was just from 3:00 until now.


The kid from yesterday was going to stay after school and write sentences as a consequence... he still got to play hockey/have recess/active time and he wouldn't miss any class.  Yeah, good on paper, not so successful in reality. 


Mr. E and I decided he should write the 4th commandment and meaning... I thought maybe 15 times, he thought 50-100 times.  But the kid was also disrespectful today.  So we compromised and did 25 for yesterday and 25 for today, 50 total.  He was going to stay until 4:15 and if he wasn't finished, he'd come again another day.


Mr. E requires sentences to be in cursive, and this kid only learned cursive last year, so I wrote it out for him on a piece of paper.  As I was writing, he kept repeating, "I don't think so" and walked away.  When I wasn't looking, he crumpled them up and threw them in the trash, sat in his desk and ate beef jerky.  No remorse.  I told him he'd get more sentences added.  He shrugged and said something along the lines of "who cares?"  Eventually I got him over to the white table and he uncrumpled the paper he'd thrown away, recrumpled it, and threw it away again.  So I gave him the choice to write or sit there doing nothing. 


His mom didn't respond to my emails.  I suppose I could've called her, but at that point, it seemed like calling would only make things worse.  And besides, this whole thing was caused by his lack of respect for school authority, so wouldn't calling in mom or dad to make him mind further undermine my authority?  Ugh. Big mess.  With his attitude/behavior after school he gradually worked his way up from 50 sentences to 100. 


Eventually his mom called (she must've seen my emails) and asked to talk to him.  After talking to her, he finally started writing.  Soon his dad came in to sit and supervise him.  But by that point, he only had about twenty minutes of time left to stay at school.  His mom is upset he has to write 100 sentences and she's upset at how long they are and that they have to be in cursive. 


His mom calculated how long it would take him to write 100 sentences in cursive: 10 minutes per sentence times 100 equals 1000 minutes, or 16 1/2 hours.  I didn't mean for him to end up writing 100! He was being stubborn and I had to be stubborn to show him I meant business!  Not sure if it worked or not, but his life is going to be pretty miserable until he gets those sentences written.  His mom and I did find a compromise to hopefully make things go faster: he writes the first 25 in cursive and the rest in print.


UGH! I hate dealing with things like this; there's no good way to handle it. And now I feel like a crummy person.  Good thing there's church tonight...