Between Beds and a Hard Case

Sometimes particular settings give us more trouble than others. One particular student had more trouble at the residences than at the school. Each student lived in a residence owned by the school. At the more dangerous houses, called high crisis houses, there were 10 students at each house. As they worked their way through the program, they had a more relaxed staff to student ratio. Before they were to leave the program, there would only be 1 staff and 4 students. Some students were well-behaved in the classrooms, but struggled with the out of school regiment. Eventually this was partially alleviated by having the students spend most of their time in school. By the time I left that place, the students were arriving at 7 am and leaving at 9 pm. They went to school 7 days a week, but they did not have access to their teachers on the weekends. Over the course of the year, they did not go to school for about 5 days. Those were holidays and occasional snow days. It is safe to say that they spent most of their waking hours at the school.

As a teacher, I would sometimes have to start, or end my day at a residence. Starting my day at a residence meant getting the students ready for school, with everything that entails. They needed to eat, and dress and whatnot. When my day started at the school, I would occasionally have to accompany the students back to the residence and I could leave once the evening staff got there. I remember a staff was so late one New Year’s Eve that I left the house only 10 minutes before the ball dropped. Sometimes there were other reasons to stay. If there was a crisis at a high crisis house, you had to wait until the situation was resolved. Some days were long. The days I worked only at the school were spent doing paperwork, some of the days ran as long as 16 hours. There was that much paperwork. At the residences, you could be baited into doing double, or even triple shifts.

One of the evenings when I went home with the students, I had to wait for my relief staff. I was in charge of making sure that the students on the second floor were doing their homework. Each of the bedrooms in this house had two students bunking in them. This room was no exception. However, one of the students in the room, Carl, had his own staff (eventually he had two staff because he was so good at manipulating people). Unfortunately for me, the staff with this student was the incompetent staff from the previous story. Carl’s roommate, Carlos, was in my class for the 6 months leading up to this day. Carlos was trying to make it look like he was working without doing any work. (That may sound familiar to many teenagers and their parents). He was not successful at it. I knew what his work was supposed to look like. I called him on it. He didn’t change what he was doing so I did what I was supposed to do. I broke his contract for noncompliance. That basically removed all of his privileges and rewards.

Needless to say, he was very upset with me. He jumped out of his chair and swung wildly at me. His first punch missed by about 3 feet. I did as I was trained, I stepped back into a defensive stance and called for help. The staff in the room was in the perfect position to approach the student from behind and take him down. She didn’t move. I could see that she was going to be useless to me. The student took several steps toward me. We were then standing in-between two beds that were about 3 feet apart. He was swinging wildly and somehow missing everything. It is important to note here that people who are full of rage are not effective at being violent. Eventually, he threw a punch that grazed the side of my head. At that point I decided that I was going to have to do something to control the exchange so that nobody got hurt, but being wedged in between the two beds severely limited my options. I ended up lowering my shoulder and knocking the student on and over one of the beds. I landed on top of him. We were face to face, which is not the safest position to be in. I could hear staff rushing up the stairs as Carlos grabbed two big fistfuls of hair.

The staff in the room looked on, but never moved. The staff from downstairs eventually pried his fingers loose before I lost too much of my hair. Luckily he had grabbed the sides of my hair which was significantly shorter at the time. As far as the staff member was concerned, she was not successful in any environment that the company had to offer. She struggled with the high intensity situations that were part of that job. Not everyone is cut out for Intense situations like that and having gone through it, I would never want to return to it.

As for the student, he mostly struggled at the residence. There was a different morning when he came after me with a pencil he had stashed. I took him down relatively easily considering I wasn’t stuck between two beds. However, his landing was not very comfortable this time either. It was summer time and the air conditioner had been running all night. This particular air conditioner dripped when it was on. He was lowered to the ground right on the wet spot without any of the staff realizing it. He kept saying “Here is wet.” In broken English, but the staff assumed he was trying to manipulate his way into getting out of the restraint. It wasn’t until we lifted him up in his transport restraints that we realized the he was completely soaked from his shirt to his socks. Luckily, I was not involved with redressing him. It may appear that we had a hostile relationship, but it was decent when we were at the school. It was only at the residence where he demonstrated hostility toward me. Considering his numerous altercations with staff members there, I would say it was the place, or the student, more than the staff that was causing the issues. I have the feeling that most people haven't been in that kind of situation, but they do happen, and it is hard for everyone involved. I look back now and I enjoyed teaching the students, and working with my coworkers, but I don't miss any of that violence or the following restraints.