Thursday, March 18, 2004

Lad in my class..........let us call him OJ. Has dreaful behaviour problems. Can't sit still, constantly in trouble, can't concentrate for longer than 30 seconds. Tried everything with him short of changing his medication, all to no avail. Then, as of Monday, totally transformed. Quiet, sitting, reading, working, as if I had a new boy in class. He suddenly becomes popular, everybody wants to be his friend. This morning, I praised him to the stars over a wonderful piece of writing........and I wasn't even acting. It really was good. I said to him, "This is SO GOOD, I'm going to give you a prize. On my desk there were a few pieces of fruit, because I'm on a healthy eating thing. I gave him my satsuma...the one I was really looking forward to having after lunch. The look on his face was a picture........broadest smile you've ever seen.

In the afternoon, there was quite a serious incident involving 5 other lads........funny thing is, OJ wasn't involved:- nowhere near in fact........nothing to do with it. Amazingly, none of the usual suspects were there at all. By now, I'm really starting to think that OJ has had some sort of road to Damascus moment.

Hometime came and off he trotted with a copy of his work to show Mum.

Then, 5 minutes later, one of my nicest Mums appears and asks, "Is OJ in your class?"

"Yes," I reply, "Why, what has he done?"

"He just threw this at me, and it landed on my head."

'twas the satsuma :O(