Seven-thirty! This is this time I wait for every morning, the time I dread. Either he’ll come around the corner or not. If he comes around the corner, it’ll be a long day. If he doesn’t, it’ll be an easy one. As I wait, I continue my walk around the cafeteria making sure kids eat their breakfast. The first bell rings and I give out hugs to my own kids and tell them to have a good day. I watch my kids round the corner down the hall, and then I hear him. He yells to other kids in the hall as he runs. Jonathan has always made the loudest and most obnoxious entrance one could think of.  Jonathan is new to the school this year and in second grade. He comes around the corner wearing the same clothes as yesterday, his red superman t-shirt with a ketchup stain from lunch, blue jeans that go down only to his ankles, gray socks that are supposed to be white, but they look like they have either been washed with colors or not washed at all. His coat is red, gray, and black and must be a hand-me-down from one of his older brothers because it’s too big for him. His shoes have seen better days.  I’m not sure how his feet stay dry in all this rain lately.

I started working for the school district in 2007 and have been working with troubled kids, one on one, through the LRC (Learning Resource Center). I have always enjoyed my work, knowing that I make a difference and seeing the change in the kids’ academic performance as well as their social behavior.  But this was the first year that I had dreaded coming to work. 

Jonathan jumps in front of a couple of kids in the breakfast line and I reluctantly go over to remind him of where he needs to be, as if he couldn’t figure out by now that he needs to stand at the back of everyone that was already in line. As I reach him, he looks up at me with his dirty face and asks,

“What”?

“Jonathan, do I really need to remind you of how we stand in line?” I ask him.

 He rolls his eyes and walks to the back of the line, mumbling something under his breath. I can’t make it out and probably don’t want to know.                                                

As Jonathan gets his breakfast and sits down, I remind him that we can’t throw food and to pick a spot in the cafeteria that he thinks he can sit at for the next ten minutes until he finishes his breakfast.  I have tried assigning him a spot but it just doesn’t work. He tends to get up and walk around, causing problems for other children when I put more pressure on him. Working with Jonathan, I’ve learned to use reverse psychology for everything. Together, my four kids are less work than this one child by himself. Jonathan is always getting into trouble, picking fights with the other children, hitting, kicking and even spitting at other kids. He has become more troublesome as the year has progressed. However, there’s always been something about Jonathan, something deeper. He has always looked like a lost boy, with a look on his face like he needs help, but doesn’t want to admit anything is wrong.

 As Jonathan leaves the cafeteria, I remind him to bring his pencil when he comes to work with me later. Each day Jonathan comes into my office at 9:00 am for two hours of reading and spelling, and I work with him again at 1:00 pm for Math. He can no longer work in the classroom with the other kids. He has become such a disruption that his teacher has asked me to pull him out to work with him.

My 1st grade student that I work with in the morning leaves, and I stare at the clock wondering how late Jonathan’s going to be this time. He usually takes his sweet time, as if he is letting me know that we’ll get to work, when he is ready. I try to not let him see that I’m bothered that he’s late, and I immediately get our materials out to work on reading. I’m surprised not to see him wearing his coat he always has on, and I watch him as he sits down.

 As I turn to look at the book we’ll be reading today, I do a double take, what’s on his neck? The side of his neck is really red; did he get into a fight with one of the other kids this morning? Great! This only means that I should be getting a call soon from his teacher asking me to talk with him about his behavior. There are days that I feel like we’re progressing. I get him to cooperate and he does really well for a couple of days. This is short lived, and he returns to the negative behavior we are all used to seeing from him.

 I turn to face him and ask him what happened in his classroom this morning. He looks at me with a confused look, and that’s when I notice his lip is swollen and blue.  What the heck has he been doing? How did I miss seeing that this morning? He was only gone for an hour before I saw him again. I ask him again, “What happened in your classroom this morning?” He tells me again, with his confused look, “Nothing, why?”

“Well, then how did your neck get so red?” I ask.

His face changes. Now it shows more concern. He asks to go to the bathroom. I have had to escort him to the bathroom for the past two months because of the trouble he causes while he’s in there. He walks in and I don’t hear a sound.

 A couple of minutes go by and still nothing. I call out to him,

“Jonathan, are you done?”

 “Just a minute” he answered.

As he comes out of the bathroom, his eyes are read and swollen as if he has been crying. I know better than to ask him anything until we are clear of the hallway. He would never admit to anything while he’s within hearing distance of anyone. As we walk back into my office and take the seats that we previously occupied, I ask him what happened. Five minutes go by before he finally answers (I now realize that he was getting his story straight), that he had a bicycle accident this last weekend.

 I think deep down I know what is really happening, but do I want to admit it to myself? I decide not to say a thing; I don’t want him to feel like if he tells me something, I won’t believe him. I sit there for a minute waiting.

 Finally, I return to our reading assignment and ask him to read the book I have prepared for him.  At the end of our reading time, I remind Jonathan that he can talk to me if he feels like he needs to. He does a half smile and walks out of the room. Could this really be happening to a student I’m working with. I had heard of cases of child abuse, but had never been this close emotionally to them. 

The one o’clock hour approaches, and I wait with butterflies in my stomach. How am I going to approach this again? I realize that kids act up to get attention even if it’s negative attention, but I never thought there could be some abuse going on. One o’clock comes and goes. Finally, Jonathan comes in quieter than he ever has been before and flops into his chair, his head down. As I get ready to speak, he interrupts,

 “Mrs. W?” Jonathan asks.

“Yes?”

 I look at the math materials so as to not put him on the spot.  Jonathan looks up and then tells me what deep down I really don’t want to hear.

“My Dad hit me”, he says.

As the tears fill my eyes, I look around the room so he doesn’t notice. I ask him if I could see where his Dad hit him. He tells me” yes” with a somber look and begins to stand up. I let him know that I will have to take him to the office and have another person present before he can show me. He is very reluctant to go; he doesn’t want another person to know what is happening. I tell him that the person there would be for me, not him. He still doesn’t like the idea, but comes with me to the office anyway, walking slower than earlier and dragging his feet as we went.

 As we enter the counseling office, I remind him that the counselor is here to help me. Jonathan looks at the counselor and smiles. He knows her and has been to this office many times before. Jonathan looks back to me, turns his back towards me, and raises his shirt. His back has a welt the size of what I would guess to be a belt. When I look at the markings I talk to him and ask when it happened. He said, “last week,” He had not heard his Dad telling him to do something so he was hit. There are old scars on his back too. Jonathan has one bruise on his lower back, and one more on his right shoulder blade. There is one across his left side that looks more like a scar from a scratch that later he admits was a knife. He then tells me about his neck and lip. He says he was eating food that he wasn’t supposed to and was caught. He said his Dad took him by the neck and smashed his face into a door frame.

Again, as the tears fill my eyes, I look at the counselor and remember all the trouble Jonathan would get into over the course of this school year. What Jonathan was really wanting was something as simple as attention.  I ask him to wait here for just a minute. I need to go talk with our principal; I have exactly an hour and forty-five minutes to find out what I can do to keep this kid from going home tonight. If he’s telling the truth, there have to be other reports that can back my statement I am about to make. I just keep thinking I’ll be dammed if I’m going to tell him to go home, that we’ll figure this all out tomorrow. No, not one more night! I step into the principal’s office and begin telling her the story that I was just told. I ask her if there have been other reports of abuse on Jonathan. I learned that his older brother was already removed from the home because of abuse, but Jonathan stayed because there was no proof of abuse towards him, yet! I learn that there were several reports from Jonathan’s homeroom teacher, his P.E. teacher, and the counselor.

 My principal reminds me of what steps I need to take to report abuse. As an employee for the school district, I am a mandatory reporter. I am ready to tell whoever I need to get Jonathan’s message out. I fill out the appropriate paperwork and am calling the proper authorities when suddenly, I felt fear. Could this man come after me or my family for turning him in? I know that reporters could remain anonymous, but he has to be able to narrow it down to about five people. I give him that much of my fear, and only that much. He is not going to control me too.

Within one hour we have people from the police department, and child services, Jonathan’s home room teacher, our principal, the counselor, and I in a meeting. Three-thirty, Jonathan is taken into the care of child services. Jonathan is confused, scared and has the look of gratefulness all at the same time. As Jonathan walks through the two sets of doors, he catches sight of me, runs back in, gives me a great big hug, and then walks back to the lady who is escorting him out. The last time I see Jonathan is with tears in my eyes and a smile on his face. The way it should be. I feel like I saved him, saved him from his nightmare he couldn’t awake from. It is two weeks before school lets out for summer.  I keep wondering what might have happened during that summer if I hadn’t taken notice of his injuries.

 

                                                       

 

Why had an intervention in Jonathan’s life taken so long? How many people have to make reports on children before enough is enough? Why is it that children of a lower socioeconomic class get passed around the system until it’s almost too late or is too late? My working with Jonathan has helped me realize what to watch for in children, like his desperate need for attention, regardless if it’s negative attention. Jonathan, acting like a bully, wearing the same clothes twice, and questioning authority, are signs that I now know to look for in another child.