Rough Landing, Holly

Oddly enough, it's days like these that remind me of how much I love teaching. I will never be short of stories to tell. I wrote my first referral today, but not for one of my students. While I would love to post what I wrote in the referral word-for-word, I turned it into the Dean before I made myself a copy, so you'll have to do with what I can recall from memory. But believe me, the incident is FRESH (I wish it wasn't so fresh) in my mind.

So, this has been a pretty crazy week for me. I'm losing my voice and getting a cold, mostly from the fact that the heat in my apartment wasn't working up until yesterday. The cold has begun to settle in to the city, which makes part of me miss the sunny, sunny South bay. Plus I have these four girls (believe me, I've used stronger words to describe them, but right now I'm in a better mood) in my 3rd period who have the entitlement syndrome (they feel they're entitled to an A, even though they bombed my unit test). I've got kids failing left and right, not for lack of understanding, but mostly because they have 2 assignments total turned in. And this, this is how I end my week...

It's Friday, and I'm in my 5th period prep taking a breather and mentally preparing myself for the onslaught of 6th and 7th period. There's about 10 minutes left in the period, so I hit up the staff ladies' room. I'm washing my hands and about to head back to my classroom, when I [beginning referral word-age here] smell, hear, and see urine coming under the door. I snap open the door and a student quickly turns his back to me. He says he was waiting for his girlfriend by the girls room and was ducking into the little hallway so that his teacher wouldn't see him. I ask him what's going on and he denies having anything to do with the smell of piss on the floor.

So I give him the benefit of the doubt, although he was the one who was standing in front of the staff bathroom door right as I opened it and he was the one with the awkward body shuffle (think... probably pulling up his pants), and ask him if he saw who did it. At first he says no, but then when I point out to him that he is the only one standing in front of the door and I literally saw the pee coming under the door, he says oh yeah, he did see some guy. He makes up some generic description of about 80% of the male population in our school, so I say sure, come down to the office with me and help me report this incident because you're my eyewitness. He's reluctant to go and a few times turns around and starts walking away, but I'm persistent. I'm not letting this go. I just got peed in the vicinity of, I'm not letting this go. Finally a security guard comes by and I explain the situation to him and he escorts the student to the Dean's office.

I then proceed to make the most bizarre phone call down to the main office to call for a custodian because someone peed on the staff bathroom door. To which, the secretary says "Someone PEED on the door?!?" My thoughts, exactly.

Needless to say, it made quite a story to tell during Happy Hour. I debated about posting this story here because I know my mom reads this blog, but I couldn't not post it. Welcome to school in the inner city. Where kids pee on doors.