I deserve a badge...

...because I survived today.

I work at an elementary school. I have a group of 5th and 6th graders called group G, and my coworker Kate has another group of 5th and 6th graders called group H. Each group has 16 kids.
About 5 minutes before I left for work, I received a text message from Kate, "There's an ambulance parked in front of the school..." and then "And a firetruck" followed by, "And they just took a person out". I immediately begin thinking about one of my kids that I have been worried about for a while and it freaks me out a bit...what if something happened to one of them? I have no idea what I would do.

So I get to work and Kate says she has not found out what happened yet. I went into the office and asked Deb, the secretary, what was up with the ambulance. She said, "We had an incident" and I asked her, "Was it one of the kids?". As soon as she said no, I immediately felt relieved and didn't stick around for anymore details because frankly, she didn't seem to be offering them. So I got all my supplies ready (we were going to make dirt cups) and prepared for my day.

I met my group upstairs at 3pm sharp to find out that the 6th grade teacher was the one carted away in the ambulance because she had some sort of shaking fit or something. The kids were pretty stirred up/upset about it, understandably. We took them into the gym and started basketball on one side and sproutball on the other. Tia gets smacked really hard with a ball and immediately starts crying. I began playing sproutball (my favorite game in the world) when Kate yelled my name and called me over to a kid who was on the ground. He's honestly one of the sweetest kids ever, and there he was, rolling on the ground, crying and clutching his face. When he pulled his hands away, there was blood everywhere.

When you get a cut in your mouth, it tends to look like your entire mouth is bleeding because the blood goes all over your teeth and gums. So Caleb had blood everywhere and was pretty much hysterical. I tried to calm him down and explain to him that he was ok but it didn't work very well. The kids started gathering around and I kept them back as much as I could. Kate (who had ran to the office) came back and said we needed to move him to the main office. I picked him up off the ground and Kate took him to the office.

A minute or so later, I asked around to see how it happened. It turns out a girl, Caly, accidentally elbowed him in the face.  She started to cry when she was talking to me about it and said the other kids were blaming her and yelling at her for it. She and a friend went out into the hallway. It was time for gym to be over so I rounded up all the kids and explained to them that Caleb was ok and that it wasn't fair to yell at Caly when it was clearly an accident. During this time, another kid came up to me and said I needed to send Ryan to the office for hitting Jose.

The kids got their snacks and were seated in the MPR. I called Ryan up to me. Ryan is a small kid with a terrible lisp and Jose is a bigger, athletic kid who is pretty aggressive. Ryan told me what happened (with tears in his eyes) and we talked it through, he returned to his seat. I then notice that Caly and three of her friends are still in the hallway and everyone looks upset. She refuses to come back into the room or go to the office and says she wants to hide somewhere. At this point, I am unsure of what to do because Kate is still in the office with Caleb and we are shortstaffed by 3 people. I have group G and H under my wing. I told her to take a few minutes and then come back in.

Some time passes, I send another kid for her, and she is nowhere to be found. Kate ends up finding her and I start playing cards with some of the other kids.

A few minutes later, my boss walks in and says that Caly is in hysterics in the office because everyone was so mean to her. She starts talking to a table of boys about how they were treating her. One boy starts crying.  Another of Caly's friends is crying as well. I'd like to add that during this entire period of time, two kids continuously come up to me to ask for help with their Spelling homework. Over and over, for almost every word.

We decide to start making our dirt cups and split up into our groups once more. Caleb ends up going home with a swollen lip, nothing too terrible, and Caly is still crying somewhere. So we start making pudding and smashing up off-brand Oreos (Twist and Shouts). Clean up time rolls around so I send a few responsible kids to go wash out the dishes. I then notice that I can't find two of my boys, Chris and Ryan (a different Ryan). I send a responsible kid to go look for them and Adam tells me, "Chris fell down the stairs and is crying." Fucking awesome. I bring him into the MPR and he shows me a huge bruise on his arm and another on his leg. I ask, "Why were you on the stairs?" and get no answer. I am also told that another kid, Steven, kicked him. Steven isn't even in our program so I really have no idea what to do, because he's denying the whole thing.

Chris, who is crying and bruised, gets called to go home. Awesome, I love sending my kids home injured and full of tears.

We end up in the computer lab, where nothing tragic happens. I think the shenanigans ended about there.

Let's take a count of crying kids: Caleb, Caly, Mackenzie (her friend), Tia, Ryan, Chris, Braxton...and then later, when we got home, Kate and I.

I feel bad about what happened to all of them. I hate it that I can't protect them from injury and meanness of other kids.  I hate the fact that when it rains, it pours.

I need a drink.

But one little thing I have to share...so, our secretary, Deb, is pretty damn intimidating. To the kids and the staff. I've been working on her all year and I think she likes me a lot. I got her to buy me a candy bar in exchange for jewelry made from pipe cleaners and beads. I ended up giving the candy to the kids...