A Meeting for M.

This morning, I attended a meeting for M., a student in my 1st Period Computer I class. Apparently, he is failing lots of his classes and has gotten into a bit of trouble recently. The meeting was with a number of his teachers, his guardians, the school psychologist, etc.

M. is a pretty quiet kid in my class. He usually wears a huge winter coat to the classroom. He then sits in his chair and sort of curls up in the coat. It is very easy to overlook him, as he tries to be invisible.

I try to interact with him, but have not really given him any extra attention. It looks like he might actually need the extra attention. He seems to be doing the "invisible thing" in a lot of his classes and has not been participating or turning in any work. Thus the Fs.

One story that I picked up at the meeting, though, when a history teacher was out a couple of weeks back, M. tortured the substitute. Somehow, he found the remote for the classroom TV and kept turning the TV on and off when the teacher wasn't looking. He got in trouble for that. Apparently, he also picked a number of fights in football this fall and got kicked off of the team.

M. is a rather small kid and history indicates that at his elementary school, he was picked on a lot by bigger kids. In addition, his mother does not seem to be part of the picture and he lives with his grandparents, along with lots of other grandkids in a small house.

Fortunately, the "team" decided not to give him an "Emotional Disability" label, even though the psychologist is pretty convinced that M. is depressed.

I agreed to meet with M. after school on Tuesdays to help him complete some of his Computer Assignments. I will be paying more attention to him in the future, even if he is trying to be invisible.