Disclaimer: Don't own, never will.
"Max, I'm telling you that you've got no idea how to handle our kids. In my first year at Waterloo Road, there was this little scrap of a boy in my class called Jack. He was late to school every single day. He 'didn't' read. He 'couldn't' read. And he 'hated' school. I didn't just send him to his year head though, or let him slip by."
"He was the only person functioning as an adult in his house. He had to get himself up, put together a uniform and remember his bus pass and his free lunch card. Late starts were forgivable but he'd come in totally empty handed every day. Asking him to arrive in school with a pen was too optimistic. I spent weeks getting him to read out loud in class because he loved it. And then one day when I asked him to do a writing task, he started with the usual fuss."
"Usual fuss?" Max inquired, shifting forward in his seat to listen in earnest for the first time, intrigued.
"No pen. No book. No intention of doing it." Kim grinned, smoothing the hem of her shirt rapidly as a cover. Secretly, she studied every single contour of Max's face as his face contracted into a bemused smile caught somewhere between amusement and a frown.
"You should have sent him from the class immediately. Given him detention and some lines. Would have sorted him out." He snorted, gesturing for Kim to continue languidly.
"That's why you've got no idea. I didn't send him out. I left him at his desk and ten minutes later he rushed up to the front of the room. He waved a grubby, ripped page at me with a few lines of wild scrawl on it with a Christmas present smile on his face. He was delighted with himself and so was I. It was more classwork than he'd ever done before." Kim chuckled at the recollection, smiling hazily.
"And I suppose he's now a fully functioning member of society?" Max queried, finishing the last dregs of his coffee.
"No." Kim admitted a little guiltily. "He was expelled at fifteen for mugging a pensioner outside the gates and then violently assaulting a female teacher."
"And they say that standards of behaviour are slipping." Matthew tsked, apparently deciding that amusement out weighed disapproval by a mile.
"You probably would've had him scrub the playground, wouldn't you?" Kim teased flippantly.
"With a toothbrush." Max replied.
All she could do was laugh and pray he wasn't serious.
Please review.