Homeschooling is still an option, right?

Like any mother, I've been having a lot of difficulty coming to grips with the fact that my baby is growing up. Sure, everyone teases me that soon my little boy will be taller than me, but reality gave me a swift but gut-wrenching bitchslap yesterday when my baby came home with his Junior High School applications. This process, of course, is far more elaborate now than it was when I went to Junior High twenty years ago, and it can be mind-spinning, for both the child and the parents.

However, I don't want to do to my child what was done to me, therefore I want him to have a lot of say in where he goes. Like his mother, my son is not a linear-thinking child, and thank the gods, there are a plethora of programs at good schools that focus on the arts.

That said, wherever he goes, I am going to worry. And no, I'm not a worrywart. My fears are founded and were reaffirmed today.

For Goddess' sake, I teach at a Junior High. I know exactly what these children are capable of, and I thought I'd heard everything. We've had kids thrown over desks, kids jumped after school (to the point of needing hospitalization), cops up at school questioning students. Today was the icing on the cake.

I have a student (I will call her Jane) who, for the most part, is a good student, but is the personification of the "rebellious teen". I always figured it was a front she put up for her peers. She has, on occasion, stormed out of the classroom, leaving me and my CT staring after her, forced to call the dean in, something we both LOATHE doing.

Today, Jane was just OFF. She didn't want to do the work, and was apparently feeling the pressure of being teased by her other teachers and classmates for the hickeys she was sporting. She flipped out and attempted to storm out. Again. I say attempted, because my CT blocked the door. Jane, in turn, stomped back to her seat and continually disrupted class to the point that her classmates reprimanded her, telling her to "cut it out because you're just digging yourself deeper".

In conversation with my CT after class, I learned that Jane has been a disciplinary case for quite awhile, ever since her mother passed away last year. This does not excuse her behavior, but it does give some insight into why she does what she does.

The worst was yet to come, however. I learned that she had been suspended for giving boys oral sex in the stairway.

What kind of environment have we created for our children? I didn't know that was at thirteen, which is how old Jane is. Where did we, as educators, go wrong? And this is the environment I'm sending my son into next year? What the hell am I thinking??