Monday blues

Monday was a bit of a rough day of Joe and I.  Joe, of course, more than me.  My Monday blues were caused by Joe's pain.
Joe's Monday- Joe hasn't been able to make many friends.  A couple of the girls are nice to him, but don't play with him while at school.  This is mostly because the Year 2 girls are in a "eeewwww boys" phase.  From time to time, Joe plays with a boy named Rhys in his class and was wanting to play with him during lunch on Monday.  Rhys was playing with some other boys in their class.  It became a problem when the 4 other boys decided to prevent Joe from talking to Rhys.  They told Rhys to run away while they stopped Joe.  Joe tried to go after Rhys to talk to him, but that just escalated the situation.  All four boys were grabbing Joe, pulling on his hat, and blocking his exit.  Joe tried to push past them and leave.  This caused two of the boys to hold him while the other two started punching.  Joe managed to get away and went to the closest teacher, who either didn't hear him or didn't understand him as she did nothing.  Joe sat by his classroom door for the next 15 minutes, until lunch was over.  He then told his teacher Ms P (Mr C was only a sub for the last term...much to our dismay).  Ms P had all 5 boys sit on the bench outside the classroom, by themselves, and told them to sort it out.  REALLY?!  She thinks that 7-8 year old boys can do conflict resolution by themselves?!  They are just too young for that! 
At pick up time, I typically sit in the courtyard with my friends while we wait for our kids to flock to us from all over the school.  We are closest to the kindergarten rooms as that is where the better benches are and all of our youngest students.  Joe didn't show up so Tom and I went to find him.  He was in his classroom, complaining to his teacher that he doesn't want to come back to school.  The teacher explained that he had an incident, but all was sorted out.  She asked Joe to write down all the names of the kids he likes in his class.  She said she'd go over the list with the class so that they'd know that Joe wanted to be friends with them.  I wasn't real sure about this list and what it would accomplish. 
Once we got home, Joe and I had a sit down and I actually learned all the above mentioned details.  I was both feeling hurt for Joe and really ticked off at the teacher for having them sort it out!  No punishment or anything for those boys.  Plus, poor Joe didn't want me to go to the principal because he said those boys were his friends and he didn't want them to get into trouble.  Honey, they aren't your friends if they treat you like that. 
First thing when the school opened the next morning, we walked into the office and requested a meeting.  The principal was in a meeting, but would be able to see me after morning assembly.  While we were waiting, we walked over to Joe's room and asked the teacher not to share the list of people Joe likes as I thought it could just lead to other problems.  
At our principal's meeting, I explained what happened and what the teacher did.  We talked about what should have been done as well as some ideas to help Joe make friends.  The boys will have detention for their behavior and the counselor will be visiting his classroom to talk about how to treat peers, etc. 
I felt a lot better after the meeting so hopefully things will improve a bit for Joe.