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Sandra has a love-hate relationship with teaching. On one hand, the kids were cute and heartwarming, and she had semi-decent pay and free lunches.
On the other hand, kids could sometimes be nightmares. Especially first graders. Arguments and fistfights started over toys, snacks, games and things that only made sense to small children, and six-year-olds could be incredibly petty about things they didn’t want to do, like schoolwork or group activities.
Kyle Cooper was probably the last kid she expected to get into a fight. The six-year-old boy never talked to anyone unless prompted(and even then in as few words as he could get away with), and spent the majority of his time drawing in a notebook he never let anyone else touch that he hid under his desk whenever someone came up to him.
Sandra largely left him to his own devices, seeing as how he almost never caused trouble and when he did it was minor and completely accidental. He was probably the one kid in her entire class she trusted to be left in the classroom alone.
She was defusing yet another argument(Andrea and Erica liked to steal Courtney’s toys and snacks, and Cheryl seemed to enjoy fanning the flames) when there was a loud shriek from the corner of the classroom and she rushed over to see what had happened.
Chris Bennett, unlike Kyle, was exactly the sort of kid she expected to cause trouble when she wasn’t looking. He’d taken Kyle’s notebook and was waving it above Kyle’s head while the younger boy frantically yelled at him to give it back.
Chris made to rip out one of the pages, and was prevented from doing so by Kyle leaping at him, snatching the notebook from him and sinking his teeth into his arm.
“OWWWW!!” Chris shrieked, waving his arm wildly around and failing to dislodge Kyle.
Sandra forcibly pulled the children apart. It took a little bit of prying, but eventually she managed to dislodge Kyle from Chris’s now-bleeding arm. The bite marks honestly looked more like a small dog’s than a human’s, but that was probably from the amount of shaking. Hopefully.
“Chris, go to the nurse with Ms. Cornell. Kyle, I’m taking you to the principal’s office.”
The most annoying part of major incidents was not dragging tantruming kids into the principal’s office or dealing with the vice principal trying to hit on her as soon as the kids were out of the room.
No, it was dealing with the parents. Inevitably the parents fell into three camps- the ones who just wanted this over and done with, the ones who couldn’t believe that their sweet little angel could have done such a thing, and the ones who absolutely believed their ungrateful brat could have done such a thing.
Sandra was curious which camp Barry and Helena Cooper would fall into, since she had never talked to them outside of handing over a report card.
Barry and Helena had arrived surprisingly quickly- only six minutes after the school contacted them.
“Do you know why the school called you here?” Sandra said as soon as they were settled in the principal’s office.
“Kyle apparently got into a fight.” Barry replied. “Which I’ll need more details for, since they only told me he got into a fight, not who and what started it, who else was involved and their prior history or how severe any injuries are.”
Kyle said his own piece- by babbling gibberish vaguely reminiscent of various animal noises. Sandra internally sighed- Kyle seemed to prefer gibberish to actual words, and he probably wouldn’t say a single word in English even with prompting right now.
Somehow, Barry seemed to understand what he was saying. “He took your notebook?” he asked. “And tried to rip it up?”
Kyle nodded.
“How bad was it?”
More gibberish. Barry nodded.
“Well, then. I don’t see any problems here.”
Sandra pinched the bridge of her nose. Looks like she found which camp they fall into. “Kyle bit another boy hard enough that he was bleeding. He will likely continue to bite people if he’s not corrected. This is not me making things up to tarnish his reputation or hurt his feelings. This is a serious and real incident.”
“No, we believe you. I’m just not sure what the problem here is.” Barry sighed. “So he bit someone- kid’s not dead, not hospitalized, no broken bones or punctured organs, just a little bit of superficial bleeding. Why did I have to come here again?”
Sandra blinked in utter bafflement. How is he not sure what the problem is? Kyle bit Chris bad enough to make him bleed!
“Barry! This is a living first grader, not a murder victim!” Helena gasped.
Barry snapped something that Sandra didn’t entirely catch. Helena glared at him until he reluctantly sighed and backed down. Sandra was honestly impressed.
“Would you please go on, Ms. Browning?”
“Yes. Another boy, Chris, apparently stole Kyle’s notebook, which spurred him to bite Chris on the arm. Chris will likely require stitches for some of the deeper cuts. Kyle is uninjured, but will likely be suspended for the rest of this week, which will be about two days since it is Wednesday.”
Helena sighed. “I think that’s the best we can get. I’m not going to make Kyle apologize, that would require making him speak English or taking a piece of paper away from him that he might decide is his because he wrote on it.”
“Do you have any more questions?”
“No, and we should really get going.”