Gladly Would I Teach

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Last week I wrote about a terrible theft problem that my school endured a couple of decades ago. If you didn’t read the original story, you might want to read it before reading this post:

Watch Your Pocketbook

As a reminder to those of you who read the original post, while we were having an after-school faculty meeting to warn teachers not to bring their purses into the building because students had stolen two teacher pocketbooks from filing cabinets on that day, someone stole the administrator’s pocketbook from her office!

First we laughed at the irony and then we took up a collection to give to Sue, the administrator, in case she had an emergency while driving home that night. We all got home a little after midnight. What a day!

The next morning, Sue called me to tell me that a really sweet girl had called her at home to tell her that she had found her wallet on the way to the bus the previous afternoon. She had wanted to return the wallet to Sue, but she was afraid she would miss her bus; so, she took it home. Sue thanked the girl and asked her to bring the wallet to school with her on Monday.

Sue had only been in the school for a few days and knew few of the students.

“Sue, who was the student?” I asked.

“Oh, she was a really sweet girl. Her name is Cindy” (fictitious name).

“Was it Cindy Jones?” I asked.

“Yes, that’s her name. Do you know her?”

“Not only do I know her,” I replied. “I’ve already suspended her twice for STEALING!”

Sue then tried to convince me that the child seemed really sweet and didn’t think she could possibly have stolen her pocketbook. Besides, it didn’t seem logical that a student who stole would call to report the theft. That didn’t make sense.

I assured Sue that some of our kids were both dishonest AND not real bright.

That afternoon I drove to Cindy’s house, met the mother, and retrieved the wallet. (We later found the pocketbook itself on the school yard.) I’ll never forget Cindy’s house because it had burglar bars on every window on the ground floor, the only house in the neighborhood with such security.

The following Monday was a whirlwind of student interviews and unpleasant encounters with the mother who swore she had “never had an ounce of trouble” from her daughter.

In the end, Cindy served a few months in alternative school.

She returned to our school months later and resumed her thievery.

I’m so glad I decided to return to teaching instead of continuing in administration!

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Edie Parrott

I just read a poignant blog post about a stolen purse (Veteran Kindergarten Story), and it reminded me of an experience I endured almost two decades ago when I served a 5-year stint as an assistant principal, the longest five years of  my life.

I was working in a “challenging” high school, a school where we had great kids but also our share of kids who sold drugs and kids who disrupted classes. One year we had a small group of kids who stole items so swiftly, so slyly, and so shamelessly that they appeared to have popped right off the pages of a Charles Dickens’ novel.

Purses were their specialty!

When girls walked into bathroom stalls and locked the doors, one student would reach under the stall wall and swipe the purse. Or, a student would reach over the stall door and grab the pocketbook off the hook on the back of the door – long before the girl could leave the stall and identify the culprit.

When teachers showed movies or videos with the classroom lights turned off, one of the thieves would quietly grab a pocketbook off the floor, hide it, and then ask for a pass to the bathroom where he removed the money and credit cards from the purse before throwing it in the garbage.

The thefts finally reached teachers when a student stole two purses from two different filing cabinets late one Friday afternoon.

The thefts had become so brazen that we had to pull the faculty together on a Friday afternoon to inform them how serious the thievery had become and to suggest that teachers lock their purses in their car trunks instead of bringing them inside the building. That Friday we had a new Associate Principal, Sue,  in the building since the principal was ill. At the meeting, Sue apologized to the faculty for the thefts and asked for teachers’ help as we tried to identify and punish the students who had wreaked such mayhem. While finding the thefts disturbing, teachers were at least  thankful that we had shared our concerns with them.

After the faculty meeting, administrators returned to Sue’s front hall office to talk. We were exhausted. It had been a really long  and tiring day, and we still had to wait around for another couple of hours before we would leave to supervise Friday night’s football game. As we sat in Sue’s office, we decided to order supper.

Sue opened her drawer to get money.

That’s when she realized that her pocketbook was missing.

While Sue had beenconducting the faculty meeting and advising teachers to keep their purses locked in their car trunks, a student had stolen Sue’s purse from her desk drawer.

At least we had the weekend to recuperate.

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Edie Parrott