A little bit about Bailey...

Bailey frustrates me. For weeks, no, not weeks, for MONTHS now, he's been wasting his 4th grade education. Since the beginning of November, he's had maybe one day out of every 10 that he's been compliant and put effort into his work. I'm not talking about being disobedient now and then, and then getting to work after a warning. I'm talking about accomplishing NOTHING for the 2nd and 3rd quarters of this school year, and well on his way to wasting the 4th quarter as well. Until we can get him a special placement in a therapeutic classroom (a highly restrictive environment) for kids with behavior problems, we're trying the tough love approach. He doesn't get anything he doesn't earn. In the last week, he's lost access to his TV, his Gameboy, his MP3 player, and his handheld solitaire game. He's putting zero effort into his work, even when he is compliant and working. He's just answering the questions to get them done, he doesn't care if the answers are correct or not. Y'all, he's 9. He's a 4th grader. There's no excuse for any of this behavior except he only wants to do what he wants in that immediate second, consequences or rewards be damned. So I told him this morning that if he could have a "good day", he could have either his TV or Gameboy for the evening. A "good day" by resource room/IEP standards is 80% achievement. He got it. He didn't have to work hard to do it, he didn't have to struggle to get there. He just decided that he wanted the Gameboy bad enough to perform to get it. He can turn it on and off at will, and most of the time, it's off. I'm really frustrated with him and what makes it even worse is, nothing we do has any effect on him at all. Until he learns that making the correct choice is the only choice, nothing will ever change. We have a meeting with school next week to talk about how this is going and I'm going to push for therapeutic placement. I'll go past the school board to the state superintendent of public instruction if I have to.