Future Lawyer

Zoe comes home from school and tells me she went to the principal's office today. Now I know something is suspicious because up to this point she's had model behavior at school (at school, not always at home but at school she's good as gold). She reminds me of this persuasive argument paper the 4th graders had to write to the principal a while back. She wrote hers on bullies. She was trying to convince the principal to help out the kids when they run into bullies. Good thinking. She mentioned these two boys who like to call kids names, they are rude and one day apparently one came up to Noah and screamed in his ear after school. Zoe had told me about this and the times they've called people names. I've basically told them to ignore them (unless they scream in Noah's ear again, they're not making my kid go deaf). They pretty much sound like small time thugs to me.

So the principal reads her paper and she was so convincing in her argument he wants to talk to her about it. She goes in the office and waits for him to call her and doesn't even know why she's there. She's all nervous, of course. Then he calls her in and asks her about the things she's written in her paper. He asks her their names and she tells him the name she can remember. He starts looking at his computer and figures out who the boys are, then takes off without telling her what he's doing. She waits there for a while then he comes back into the office with the two boys. He asks them if this really happened and they make some lame excuse about not remembering but the principal isn't buying it. He tells Zoe to let him know if they ever bother her or anyone else again and lets her leave, keeping the boys there.

Crazy story! But I gotta say I'm proud of her for being so brave. If I was her as a kid I would have been scared to death to meet any boys I accused of bullying, but then I was a big chicken girl. I'd say she's pretty darned good at the persuasive argument. Maybe I'll have her write him another paper on getting a security guard down by the path to keep the teenagers from taking kids' scooters out on joyrides.