fight

disclaimer: i do not advocate attempting to break up fights between high school children. i have known the aggressor in this story three years and assessed my situation before interacting. i do not intervene in fights between girls, children i don't know or emotionally disturbed children. my school has very few fights but i have broken up two this year. both were between sets of ninth grade boys. in the one not mentioned here, both boys were just at five feet tall and i was able to pull them apart using only the strength of an out of shape, 39 year old teacher lady's body. in other words, i don't put myself at risk.

today there was a fight in class. now, i am no stranger to fights. the very first day i walked into a public school classroom there were eleven little boys and the last teacher had escaped and we had five fights. and a hurricane. all in one day. i've always worked in unusual schools with "challenging" populations. challenging is often code for "bad". i like bad kids. they keep me busy. however, when you choose to work with kids who come with their own labels, you get the bonus of dealing with more fights than you'd expect. i learned early on that with high school boys who are not "disturbed" (this label is something you get a feel for, but it's vague) i could walk in between whatever chaos was happening in a room and shove one boy away from the other without fear of injury. this is because i am female and that is just fine with me. so, as i said, i'm not a stranger to fights. i've broken up plenty, but i am annoyed every time.

the thing about high school boy fights is i never see them coming. i can be staring at the two kids for five minutes and i never anticipate an actual blow. they all start out the same. today's fight started several days ago. a boy did something incredibly dishonest and really tacky and then portrayed himself as a victim of another child in my class. this resulted in a terrible lecture from me, the dean and a security guard and with the other child being hauled off to the dean's office where it was quickly evident what had really happened. the fake victim has been a problem in my class all year, plagiarizing every paper he has handed in, talking incessantly through all two hours of every day he's in my class and randomly accusing people of ugly things for no good reason. he also takes things from other people- things he doesn't want or need. he later destroys them or throws them out.

the fake victim sits in the back of my class. the accused child, a disaster of a student in his own special way, sits behind him, in the library, because he can't function as a part of the regular class. he does no work, which is frustrating because he, like the fake victim, is really a smart kid. both are failing my class. so today while i was trying very hard to explain conflict to my students who are writing 20 page historical fiction pieces for their final marking period, the accused stood up and hovered over the fake vicim's desk. i saw him get up. i heard conversation in hostile tones. i saw fake victim lean back and look up. that's when accused slapped him on the back of the head. and i was surprised. mostly because i really never see the first hit coming, but partly because if i had been accused i would have thrown a closed-fist punch. an open hand slap was an odd choice. fake victim, now more or less a real victim, stood. another slap. by this time i had stomped my way back to the two and they were doing what high school boys do. this is a thing that fascinates me because it is not what girls do. i will not step in to a girl fight. they pull hair and kick. this is not for me. but high school boys stand chest to chest and butt each other like all those antlered animals. this is when i usually jump in.

and today i did at just that point. i shoved my way between the puffed up chests and faced victim, yelling for him to get into the hallway. i began walking toward him so that he walked backward up between the rows and toward the door. i yelled at one of the girls in my class to go next door and have someone call security. i yell during fights because i am mad and the yelling makes me feel better. so as i stomped up the rows with victim retreating in front of me, accused was right behind me, trying to slap around me but not connecting at all. i managed to get victim out the door into the hallway and tried to keep accused inside. a boy from class tried to help, but accused slid past both of us and on his way out the door managed to reach around me and slap victim one more time. that kid has a reach. security came up and took victim away. i went back to class. we talked about conflict.