I hear the whistle blowing....

Yesterday was crazy. I mean full-on, spring madness, why-would-you-do-that crazy.

As may or may not have been previously mentioned, when students walk down the hall here at The Alternative School, they are to walk in a straight line, not talking. This happens with various degrees of success. So yesterday morning, the middle school girls were doing a MARVELOUS job of this. They were behaving so well that I stopped a whole line of them on the way back from breakfast and gave them bonus points for doing so well (more on the points system later).

While I'm doing this, a line of boys goes past on the other side of the hallway. One of them is talking (the fact that it was only one is slightly miraculous). I say what I usually say in these circumstances, "No talking in the halls."

His response: "Well, you shut up your mouth then" or something to that effect.

Now my back was turned, so I didn't see who said it. One of the other staff on morning duty did, however, and she pulled him out of the line. It would have ended there, except he decided to mouth off to her, too, and the principal happened to be passing through at that time. Buddy Boy got sent to boot camp. So he goes (grumpily) and lines up on the wall with the other kids in boot camp. When the teacher in charge of boot camp comes by and talks to them, he tells her "F*** you."

This all happened before school officially started that day. O.o

From what the teachers told me, the kids continued in this vein all day. The assistant principal came on the intercom twice that day, once in the middle of the morning, once in the afternoon before dismissal. In the afternoon he said something along the lines of "We have expelled 8 kids today who didn't think we were serious. Middle school students in the gym, I can hear you from here, I can hear the whistle blowing, and if there's anyone down there who doesn't want to behave properly, we can send you home to think about it for 7 to 11 days."

This morning we had twice as many kids in boot camp as usual. Is there something about this time of year? On the bright side, the kids who aren't in boot camp are keeping their heads down, at least in the halls. We'll just have to see how it goes.