Punishing the Victim?

It was 6th period. I was warned. I had to watch out for this group. (This was the history teacher for the same kids in this math class.)

I don't know what I did, but the class was pretty mellow. They weren't as loud as the previous two periods. Unfortunately, they weren't doing any work. So, I was walking the class, trying to get them on task.

And I was soooo tired. I've been dragging all week. Then last night I tried to go to bed really early (like 8 PM early), but the neighbors thought that Thursday night was a good night for a party and that 9:30 was a good time to take it outside and get very loud. No nice long night's sleep for me.

I don't know exactly what I was doing, but I happened to look up and catch a girl chasing a boy across the back of the classroom. Uh, no. I put a stop to that, and I assigned a consequence (a "think sheet").

The girl wasn't having any of it. She claimed she was the wronged party. The boy had smelled her hair!

I tried explaining that chasing the boy in a classroom was wrong. I told her that I had given the boy the same consequence. But that wasn't helping.

Apparently, another boy did the smelling of the hair at the behest of the first boy for a bet of $1. At least, I think the first boy was in it somehow. He might not have been. Honestly, I didn't care. All I knew was that two students were up and running around the room, and I couldn't allow that.

The alleged hair-smelling boy? He was studiously ignoring all of us. He was working on the assignment.

The girl refused to do the "think sheet". She was the victim!

I wrote this all down in the note. It was near the end of the period. And if the girl was going to refuse to follow my directions, so be it.

See, this sort of thing is what is going to get her into more trouble. Refusing to follow my directions? Her teacher can milk that all the way up to a referral.

I have no idea if I'll know how this turns out. If I find out, I'll pass it along.