Enough Rope

We have a student this year who is totally invested in being "bad". He's a smart kid, smart enough to have figured out that grades lower than a C get you the kind of trouble he doesn't want to deal with, and smart enough to know that an unending series of annoyances may get you isolated temporarily from the class but rarely will result in a referral to the administration. Still, he is eleven, and so a miscalculation here and there is inevitable.

Today was team t-shirt day. This is an annual tradition: the front is always designed by a student and voted on by all the kids, and the back has their names written in their own handwriting, so it's pretty cool. This year they were extra awesome given the fact that students had the choice of two tie-dye shades, and it was with a lot of excitement that they received their shirts this morning.

I was prepared for a bit of distraction in each class, but when I walked over to see what this guy was doing instead of the assignment, I was surprised to see him blacking out names with a permanent marker. "Are those the kids you don't like?" I asked in a bit of disbelief.

"Yeah!" he answered me enthusiastically (remorse is really not his thing), "and I've highlighted the names of the kids I like!"

"Yeah, I''m going to have to take that from you," I told him.

"OK, but don't look at the names of the people I like," he said cheerfully. "That would be embarrassing."

I assured him I wasn't really interested in that information, and then continued on with the lesson. After class he asked for his shirt back, but I told him I was going to have to hang on to it for a while.

It was much later in the day when I looked at his handiwork. I was on my way to speak to the principal about him, and grabbed the shirt as one more example of his inappropriate behavior as I headed to the office. My jaw dropped as I walked. Not only had he marked other kids, but he had also applied his system to the faculty names. Oh, I was highlighted (lord knows why), but the principal was crossed out.

I'm pretty sure there are going to be some consequences for that.