Day 7 - Meltdown

5/9/14

Today was mostly a repeat of the past few days, though it started off not too well. The first class is fifth grade everyday, and this class was not one of the better ones. There was one group I worked with on their song, and mostly just one kid who was having trouble. It didn't take long for him to understand what to do, so I was about to do the rounds and check on other groups when I noticed that the third kid in this group was sat a little bit away from the other two and not doing anything, so I went over to try and help him. Right away I could tell he was having none of it, but I didn't really know how to handle that so I just tried to help him out, which should have been easy, since his part was exactly the same as the other kid's, only on a different instrument. But every time I asked him to try it himself, he just wouldn't do anything, so I abandoned the pointless effort to go help some other group. Not long after, Joe started going around to grade their practicing efforts, since they were supposed to perform today, but couldn't because many kids weren't there. The group I had helped was last, and when they were done, the kid with the attitude threw his music across the floor. If Joe hadn't caught that, I would have been on him, but as it were, Joe kicked him out of the room and followed to talk to him. He told me later that the kid had a major meltdown; he was yelled at Joe and called him an idiot. He's lucky he's still in elementary school, because he'd be suspended for that behavior in middle school or above, and he almost is in middle school; he's about to be a sixth grader.

The rest of the day was uneventful. I was excited to go back to school later and reunite with the Hair tribe to rehearse for the campus opening on Saturday.