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Mrs. A_____�and a lady I�donapos;t know sit at the table in the Guidance Conference Room.� Not that I know either of these ladies, but the conference is for W______ A_______ and I can see the relationship between mother and son clearly from the nametags and from the craggy face.��

I introduce myself.

"Yeah, I got something to say to you, too,"�says the mother.� I�have only been a teacher for two years, as many people around me like to point out (notwithstanding the official letter from the District Office-- the one with my last name misspelled-- that calls me "highly qualified"), but I know better than to say more.� I wait for the assistant principal to arrive.� When the waiting gets uncomfortable, my attempts at smiling at this lady I have just met failing in her Mt. Rushmore-like stare, I make a pretext to go out into the dingy "lobby"�of the Guidance Office and look around for the other teachers.� I see Mr. S_______, and he tells me they will be there in a moment.

When most the team is assmbled-- three of W______apos;s core subject teachers (ELA, math, social studies, science), Mr. S_______, the assistant principal, and Mrs. C______, our 6th grade department leader, Mrs. A________�says "What about that, uh, security-- the guy that control the in-school detention".

Mr. S______, my personal hero and a warrior among men, greets the ladyapos;s offense with a smile and says, "Let me go get Mr. M______."�

He disappears for a while.� Presently, he returns, and W________apos;s math teacher enters the fray.� The meeting is ready to start.

At some point I notice an aluminum walker folded against one of the tables in the guidance office.� I wonder who is using it-- the mom, or the other lady, who turns out to be W______apos;s aunt.

The boy himself is also present, head hidden in a skull-log-encrusted black hoodie which his mother frequently tells him to remove.

"This ainapos;t the time to hide" she says.

The boyapos;s first couple of teachers give their reports on W________apos;s behavior and progress, and my heart begins to sink as it becomes clear that W_______apos;s behavior for them-- and both of them happen to be black--- seems to be fairly good.� Their relationships with him are strong.� Meanwhile, the mother is angry because negative reports have come home from myself and Mrs. J_______, the only two white people in the room.�

Iapos;ll go ahead and say that no overt reference to race is made in this meeting.� Mrs. A________ seems to think myself-- and especially Mrs. J_______ have some kind of grudge against her son, though.� She repeatedly makes reference to us "going home and sleeping on it"�and coming back the next day with enduring hatred for her son. �

I begin to wonder, being the warm-and-fuzzy-liberal-arts-majoring-journaler/blogger I am:� am I holding a grudge?� Certainly there are students who seem to present themselves as trouble-makers in every class, and W_______ seems to be one of these.� But have I�labelled him in a way that causes him to meet my expectations to be bad?

The plot thickens, though.� The mother seems to feel that because she "reported"�Mr. M_____�(for allegedly "knocking W_____apos;s juice out of his hand" and insulting him), the entire school was somehow turned against her son.� The phone calls, she says, increased after that incident-- which is kind of like saying casualties increased after the Iraq War began, so they must be caused by global warming.

She became increasingly angry, and I did, too.� When it finally became my turn to speak, I told her, as calmly as possible, that her son had recieved multiple warnings for his behavior, as per school policy.� I�told her exactly which behaviors-- talking during instruction, walking around randomly in the middle of class to throw paper balls in the trash, distracting other students-- had gotten him in trouble, but she didnapos;t really seem to take it all in.

At the end of the meeting, she referrs to a Strike Slip I�had written Walter, saying "And another thing, when yapos;all send home one of these things, make sure you gave W______ a warning first."� I�direct her attention to the note on the slip, which said "Student will not stay in seat during instruction, despite repeated warnings."� This doesnapos;t seem to sink in, either.

To be fair about the whole situation, the walker in the corner turned out to be the motherapos;s.� She "broke her back" in 2004, and understably is now in a fair amount of pain, and is probably too disalbed to discipline her son.� The aunt suggested that we "call his daddy" if there was in trouble.� The father gets home around 6pm.�

Good thing I�sleep in the cabinet in my classroom.

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