Fighting Words

I witnessed my first fight in my classroom today. It was by no means the first one of the year, but it was the first one for which I was actually present. It was a skirmish (using one of our vocab words this week!) between two students that have had an altercation before. After talking to parents and working with the pair to resolve their issues, we didn’t see any real problems. We put them in the same group when we rearranged desks and we didn’t have any problems to begin with. Recently they had been going at it a little and we decided to move them. We wanted them to try to work it out, but given their history it wasn’t worth it. Today at lunch, there was an issue with one of the boys throwing crayons at the other one. I intervened and told both parties to stop throwing things and if they didn’t have anything nice to say, they shouldn’t say anything at all. This seemed to do the trick, but boy was I wrong!! We were lining up for recess and I purposely called groups to line up in a way that would not put those two students together. Somehow, unknown to me, they were standing right next to each other in line. I turned around, saw them, and attempted to tell them to separate, but before I could, D. turned and shoved P. with full force-even knocking another student in his path to the ground. I was so flustered in that instance and had no clue what to do. I immediately moved D. out of the room and called for the principal who happened to be standing in the hallway at the time. I then asked P. if he was okay and sent him to my CT. We had to send the other girl who was collateral damage to the nurse for a bruised nose. I’ve always wondered what I would do if a fight broke out in the classroom….now I know.