My fault

The fight was probably my fault. Fortunately these kids all know each other so well that they know when one of them is about to lose it, so three of them jumped up to hold Daysha back when she started stepping towards Emily.

One of the things that really frustrates me about the culture at this school is that the kids never learn how to de-escalate a conflict. Every statement requires a response, every insult needs to be topped, every threat needs to be one-upped. Things that should be little conflicts at worst blow up quickly.

We were playing a simple game. Two students sit next to each other with dictionaries, I say a word and they race to find the correct spelling. Emily has had some kind of verbal conflict with most of the girls in the class (I hear her say in a confrontational voice about three times a week "I'm dead ass, just try to prove me wrong"), but I don't think I knew the extent to which she was willing to take it. When Emily had beaten two opponents I thought she needed someone on her level to challenge her. Daysha is a bright kid and hadn't said a word all day, so I asked her to try it. Next thing I know Emily was walking away saying something, Daysha was walking towards her saying about the same thing, and then it was "I'll smack you in the face with a book" met with "I'll hit you in the head with a chair," and then shouting and clawing and the three-kid restraining team and the hall monitor and then it was finally done.

All because I thought Daysha could spell as well as Emily and thought some friendly competition might get them focused on something academic.

Stupid fucking mistake.

If I'm being honest with myself, the problem probably was really Emily's short fuse; the more I get to know this kid the more I think that she's a catalyst who needs just the right critical mass to cause a huge explosion, and that critical mass is not small. Too much mass and her explosion will get snuffed, too little and it won't have any fuel to burn. This kid needs an audience.

And she needs a teacher who can help keep her from getting herself in that deep that quickly.