A good day

First week of school is over. First DAY of school was this past Wednesday. In "Dodge City" (a reference to the school with a new "Matt Dillon" in town), we suspended a kid at 1:45pm. First day. Thursday the sheriff suspended 2, and Friday, she told 4 kids to go home early. I told her it was getting worse, and she said that actually, she was anticipating suspending at least 10 on Friday, so she thought the day went fine! Her zero tolerance policy will get a workout in the next two weeks, as many of our troublemakers are still on a "honeymoon". There's another situation developing with a student who is never picked up on time after school. She sadly waits in the front of the school for sometimes as long as an hour. Not surprisingly, she is one of our students who also has behavioral issues (she was suspended the 2nd day of school), but yesterday, she flew into my office after the bell rang and announced to me that she had had a good day. When I inquired about her day and gave her a thumbs up, she said, "I had a good day because I did NOT get into trouble!" And grinned at me. Knowing quite a bit about her, I know that school is about the only place where adults care what happens to her. As her "village", what an awesome responsibility we have!