12:42 p.m. - 2006-10-11
what child is THIS?!
So the other day I had a new girl come into my class. This happens from time to time. I get a new student and they come in with the rest of the kids and they say something like "I'm new. Its my first day." So this little girl, we'll call her Sahara, comes in with the rest of the kids. She does her homework, we do snack time, a short outdoor play time and then move on to dinner time. During dinner, one of the other kids says to me "Miss Jessi, Sahara doesn't have a ride home today." I inquire with her and send her up to the office with another student so she can talk to the program director and they can call her mom. About one minute after I send them upstairs, the building manager comes over to me and says "Do you have a Sahara Johnson here today?" And I said "Yes, I just sent her upstairs to call her mother." The building manager says "Well, the police just called because there's been an Amber Alert issued for her.
WHAT!?!?!?!
(I found out later it wasn't an Amber Alert, but a local, multi-community police alert.)
I go upstairs to find them and they are on their way back down because the door to the office was locked and the lights are out. Great. This means that none of the full time staff are on-site. Just like that time I had to go to the hospital, which was my first day on the job.
I had to rummage around the office and find some staff cell numbers and tell someone what was going on while the building manager called the police back to tell them she was alive and well. I asked Sahara why her mom didn't know where she was and she looked at me wide-eyed and said "I don't know - she told me to come here today." I asked when she registered for the program and she said "I think my mom came in last week."
Somehow another parent got involved and said he'd take her home because he knew her family. (Ummmm...sorry Buddy, I'm not telling the police when they get here that I let the missing child go with some man whose name I don't even know.) So I'm trying to politely explain why he can't take her and he starts objecting.
As this is happening, Mr. Jeremy, one of the other teachers comes by with a 5 year old who has the biggest goose egg I have ever seen on his forehead. Like, it looked like a golf ball was stuck underneath his skin.
"What happened?!" I say.
"Oh, he just fell."
I ask if he is going to call the kid's mom. He says, no, let's just put an ice pack on it.
I'm trying to stop the dad from taking Sahara with him and Mr. Jeremy is treating a potentially serious head injury with an ice pack. Awesome.
Right then, the police and a frantic mom arrive. It seems that Sahara lied and her mother had never even heard of our program. Basically, she just decided to get on a different bus after school and come with her friend to the program. Now, 10 year olds aren't famous for being the world's most responsible people, but didn't she think that her mom would wonder what happened to her when she didn't get off the bus at home???
The part about it that I think is really funny is that the majority of the time she was there, she had to sit quietly and do homework. She even brought it up to me and I checked it for her and made her go back and finish her spelling homework that was incorrect. Then she had to read silently until it was time to go outside. See, when I did sneaky things at that age, it usually involved getting out of doing stuff like homework.
