It's nearly six o'clock. I was stood up by the sun again. Snow saturates every bush, every tree, like suds in the kitchen sink. Everything is still so inconceivably dirty, gummed up with invisible (and sometimes visible) grime, though.

Tomorrow I have to meet with a parent to tell her that her son, DaNonymous, needs to be put in another school, a school where his needs will finally be met. This is something my co-workers and I have been pushing for since the beginning of the year. His mom was't interested at first, as that required coming in for meetings and initiating a battery of re-evaluation tests and paperwork. When I met with her earlier in the year, she swore that DaNonymous is actually very capable and is just being defiant. That's why he can't read or write or sit still for ten minutes without invading someone else's personal space or launching projectiles. DaNonymous is defiant.

The mom learned of some kind of extra welfare money that would come in if DaNonymous were suddenly in a more exclusive educational environment and voila, she's now in full support of changing his IEP and setting. If mom doesn't act fickle and defensive about the special education label tomorrow, that is. May none of you, and I mean myself, too, be so busy or have goals so skewed that you someday educationally neglect your child.

School started again today after a week's break. The students were overall well-behaved, much happier to be back in school than the teachers. One of my Advisory students, a bullied girl that brings much of the torment on herself, made up with me today. She's socially maladjusted and reluctant to engage in any of the behaviors we've discussed to address her situation (ignoring students that tease her, telling a teacher when someone is mean, etc.) Instead, she eggs classmates on for the negative attention, even sitting and trying to hold hands with students who tease and hit her.

Anyhow, my socially retarded student had a falling out with me when I had to break up a street fight between her and a boy in her class. It's not really as dramatic as it sounds. Being a small white woman wrestling angry black kids isn't all that hard when you've got a good seven inches and twenty-five pounds on them. After wiping the hair out of my face, I wrote them both up and got them six days of classroom removal and exclusion from the next field trip. My bullied girl then went home and told her mom that she was not supervised on the trip and that the other teacher who handled the incident and I were not around when the fight occurred.

Hell hath no fury like a teacher lied about. I had words with mom, with daughter, with anyone who would listen. The student stopped hugging me in the hallway; I stopped missing it. I was thoroughly disgusted.

But today, she sheepishly waved at me during class. Nothing was spoken, but I knew she wanted back into the fold she'd inhabited. That she might always be the kind who can't distinguish being held back in a fight from being held. After class, she transitioned to the next class, or started to, but came back and grabbed my waist. She hugged me extra hard.

I sighed and put my arm around her. I felt old and tired and somehow better.