"Yo, I hear there a fight on 5..."

I know I tend to repeat myself. But I think I repeat myself because the things I observe tend to reinforce these statements I make. I wrote earlier about how these kids are indeed just that... kids. They are children. When I worked in Maine, I believe the reason the teacher and myself were so successful with our special ed. boys was because we let them stay "boys" just a little while longer. They saw that it was ok that WE were juvenile, so they felt safe being juvenile themselves. Unfortunately kids in the Bronx don't have the luxury of staying kids as long as they would like.

As a result, there are many fights in my school. MANY fights. Some are little scuffles... but some develop into outright riots which are like a tidal wave and you can't move against it. These fights might include multiple scraps and of course there are the onlookers who make it that much worse.

Believe it or not, some of the worst fights are girls. Girl fights tend to be bad because that's when the onlooker factor skyrockets. When two guys fight, there are definitely spectators, but if there's word it's two girls, kids will run out of their classrooms to see it. Actually, one of my proudest moments as a teacher was when there was a fight in my hallway, the first fight I remember seeing at my school, and NONE of my juniors ran out of the room, or even GOT OUT OF THEIR SEATS! I was so happy about that.

So as a result of all these fights and various other security issues, we are supposed to have phones in our rooms. On my floor we went a whole year without a phone in our room. So if there was any kind of issues, we had to get out our cell phones and call security. Once again, dad's voice rings in my head.

The two scariest moments I had working in my school, and believe me, there haven't been many scary moments - in fact, there are pretty much the only two - involved fights that spilled into my room.

During my 4th period freshman class, there was a knock on the door. I answer it:

"Yeah, I need to talk to E. - he's my cousin."

"Well you can't talk to him now - we're in the middle of class."

I close the door and go back to my class. I then notice about 20 people collecting in front of my door. I didn't think they were ALL his cousins. In fact, I highly doubted that first kid was his cousin anymore. Called security on my cell phone and they took E. out of my room to talk to him. E. didn't make it to the end of the year, he transferred to another school.

Another time is when some kids were after J. and they DID manage to get into my room. That was even scarier, because there were probably 10 kids in the room after one kid, and there was nothing I could do. I played cool and acted indignant and for some reason that worked - they left.

We're told not to break up fights. It's not "our job." That's what these security agents are for. Security agents look and talk and act like NYPD... but make no mistake - they are not cops. They're the muscle of the school and if I'm not mistaken do have the power to charge a kid. But it’s their jobs to get in the middle of a fight and physically break it up. I have heard many students say that these security agents actually escalate kids, rather than de-escalate them. In special ed. we were taught not to get in "power struggles." You, as an adult, emotionally "walk away" from some issue and it takes the wind out of the kids’ sails. They have nothing to go on. Well these security agents, they're not interested in just ending a beef and having a kid go on his or her way, they want you to know they are right. (This works in any situation. Most fights occur... let's say between a married couple or two family members... the fight isn't about an actual issue, but who is right and who is going to come out "victorious." If you have a genuine issue don't make such a case out of it and chances are you will get what you want in a less traumatic way... I'll elaborate on this another time...)

One of the fights that really stand out to me is one day toward the end of the year, there was a "girl fight." And these two girls were going at it down the hall from my room. I happened to have a free period at this moment, so I stepped out to see what was going on, hearing that familiar roar of a fight.

The two fighting girls were actually moving as they were fighting, to right in front of my room. As they did, I was able to step in between and in one fluid motion I was able to step in between and guide the girl facing me right into my room. But the most fascinating thing about it was usually you see the posturing going on right to the end. "You're lucky this teacher is here, Imma KICK YOUR ASS...." etc. In this incident, this girl's body language spoke volumes. As I stepped between them and guided this girl into my room away from the crowd, her body language said, "OK, I am going into your room and thank you for saving me." There was no resistance and she in fact hurried in my room.

When I talked to another teacher about this later on, he said he wasn't surprised. He said that often times they want to be "saved" from fights. He said he has seen fights where the kids were screaming and yelling at each other but nothing physical started until adults got there and could break it up.

As I said... Children indeed.