Some days it just doesn't pay to chew through the restraints

Heyas,

So, I'm not feeling particularly clever or sarcastic today...just bloody fucking tired. Today, two of my boys got into a fight in my classroom. full on kicking, punching, choking, trying to KILL each other. And I go and try to break it up, get between them and separate them, and the kid I'm holding back suddenly turns around and fucking punches me in the stomach to get me to let go so he can go back at the other kid. Punches me. Deliberately. Hard enough that I couldn't breathe properly for about five minutes after the fight ended and the offenders were sent to the office.

And then you know what? The office fucking sends the kid BACK to my classroom, unescorted, to get his things so he can go home for his three day suspension.

Three. Fucking. Days. He HIT me and they give him what is essentially a paid three day vacation.

And then, in the next period, I hear yelling in the hallway during class...so I go out to see what's going on and it's two more of my kids (didn't have me that period) going at it, yelling at each other and cussing. So I clear the hall and write them up for detention and all of a sudden, several of my students come up and tell me that the girl who was yelling has a knife in her bag.

And I know the girl...she's not a bad kid. She has a hideous home life and she makes bad choices, but she's not a bad kid. But I can't ignore that possibility, so I have to pass the information on to the office.

And they search her bag and find a knife. So she's expelled.

And here's the thing that gets me. The boy who punched me, I'm sorry to say, is going to be dead or in jail by the time he's twenty, unless there's some kind of miracle worked in his life. He does not care about anyone or anything. He was *grinning* at me while another teacher hauled him out of my room. He knew exactly what he had done and that he had hurt me and he was PROUD of it.

There have been exactly five kids in seven years of teaching that I have looked at and said, this is just a bad kid. Five. This one is going to be the sixth, I'm pretty sure. I can't help him...whatever he needs to get his life on track, I don't have it. And he got a three day suspension for deliberately striking me.

The girl? I'm not defending her having a weapon in school. There was no excuse for it. But I know that girl. She wouldn't have used it on anyone. It was there for show, or because she wanted to look tough, or even because she had it in her bag for some stupid reason and forgot to take it out. She wouldn't have hurt anyone with it. She is a child that can be helped. I was one of the teachers she tried for, came to for help, talked to, and TRUSTED. I could have helped her, I WAS helping her overcome the bad things in her life...and she's getting expelled. She'll probably be tossed into an even more hardcore school than ours and fall through the cracks.

And I had to be the one to report it and start the ball rolling. So, I get the sociopath who struck me back in my classroom in three days and that poor girl gets tossed aside into the cesspool that is "the system" in my city.

There are days when I absolutely fucking HATE my job.