Recently a student of mine was written up by her bus driver for spitting on another kid. I am hoping this was her attempt to experiment with what she has been learning about hedgehogs- that they spit on each other for over 20 minutes at a time (Nobody knows why!)- and not her determination to be bus bully of the month. In any case, when I received the written notice there was a section of boxes catagorizing the offense. There was, of course, the violence box, swearing, moving around, yelling, disregard for authority boxes: Typical stuff. But to my sort-of delight, my student's deviance had been marked EXCESSIVE MISCHIEF.
Ha. I thought, Excessive mischief. How poetic: Implying that a certain amount of mischief is acceptable, if not encouraged. That mischief is an inevitable and essential part of being. Heck, I remember throwing pop cans out of the bus when I was in grade school, bagels out of cars in high school, doing donuts on the quad in college. Mischief is a one of the thickest fibers of life, and I'd like to think that this write-up document whole-heartedly acknowledges this tried and true fact.
There is a line, however, between mischief and Excessive Mischief. Being mean, dangerous, and gross is exactly where that line exists and my student definitely crossed it. So I tied her up and stuck her in a cupboard for about twenty minutes, while blasting Sheri Lewis's Song That Never Ends through a set of headphones I taped to her head and am pretty sure she'll never do it again. Conditioning folks, it's all about conditioning.
She will be back on plain old type 1 mischief in no time, I trust, and hope that her endeavors are as full of the wonderous joys of youthful mischieviocity as hiding toxic fish sauce in the back seat of your friend Maya's car in order to get back at her from when she sprinkled your lawn with instant mash potatoes. But the second that shit gets excessive, it's all lamb-chop baby, and there's no turning back.
