Day Fifty-nine: Hope you know...

I had a hard day. It was long. It was stressful. I thought I had prepared so well. I started off running late when I had a meeting for this week's assembly. I hadn't been able to get a hold of the speaker we were hoping for this week. I'll be gone Friday on the field trip and everyone looked at me like it was my responsibility to fix it. (One of those "I'm only in charge when there is a problem" moments). My supervisor went to bat for me and when I finally found out the speaker could not come before January, he offered to tell the principal so I didn't have to.

With each class I went through a presentation on a few different styles of art along with a few principles of design. After that we went to the computer lab to research more on our own to create their own project based on a line from the play we read. The assignment? I wrote it out on the board as follows:

-Pick a line

-Look at pretty pictures

-Tell me what you're going to do

-Tell me what materials you'll need

My 3rd period class took FOREVER to settle down. With the rest it took about 10-15 minutes before we went over to the computer lab. They took 45 minutes. I need to go back and do a little more reinforcing of coming to class and being ready to get to work.

I knew I needed to leave a few minutes early to go to an appointment. I'd cleared everything with my principal. With the craziness of the day, and then a meltdown 6th period, I totally spaced it and didn't leave until over 30 minutes after I meant to be long gone. Oops.

Now as to what actually happened at the end of the day. One of my students got upset and walked out. He's come a long way with me and usually comes to my class more than once a day. He feels safe there I guess. So after I took the rest of the students to the computer lab and checked with the teacher there, I went and found the student sitting in the hallway. I sat down next to him and calmly said, "I know you don't want to drop my class. I know that you are upset about something and it's not about me. What's up?" He then started to tell me about some very upsetting news he had found out and was trying to deal with. All I can say is that it really sucks. And I told him that. I reminded him that I'm not okay with him taking his anger out on me, but that if he lets me know what's going on, I can be sensitive to it. "Ready to come back to class?" "Yeah." Phew. Then after-school he couldn't find his backpack and was freaking out that someone stole it.

We found out later that one of his friends had taken it just to mess with him and gave it back.