Behind Closed Doors
I had a girl in my class as a sub that was a complete nightmare. She basically told me that she wouldn’t do work, she didn’t care, etc. She was oppositional to everything I said for no reason and at one point she was up writing on the whiteboard and wouldn’t sit down. The whole lesson was her distracting other students, just generally being a jerk, and enjoying that she had a sub she could infuriate.
I gave her detention for lunchtime the next day and she just laughed and said, “As if I’m going to come.” For some reason, she got to me more than students usually do—last period on a Friday, probably. I was stupidly angry at her, mostly internally. After class finished I went to add a behavior incident for her on the school system we use for disciplinary things.
The way it works is you can see the student’s history of incidents and refer your incident to head teacher, welfare teacher, deputy etc. When I found out what was happening to her, I was stunned. It turns out she had recently had a bad breakup and her ex was now harassing her, her family, and her friends. This includes turning up at her house with a gang in the middle of the night and threatening her with various things. The police were even involved.
I honestly just closed the classroom door and cried at the hopelessness of the whole thing and I didn’t even end up writing the incident. I felt guilty for being so angry, completely lost that this was a reality for a 15-year-old kid, and terrified for what the future is going to hold for this girl. It’s depressingly likely that she will end up a domestic violence statistic and there is nothing I can do to intervene.