When it rains it pours...

I've often heard the phrase, and have previously felt the truth of the statement, but it seems I am in for a reminder course. A couple of weeks ago I found out that my grandmother was diagnosed with bone cancer in her hip and rib. While she is a strong and optimistic woman she is in obvious pain and the disease and treatment are painful to both the body and the spirits. As I was adapting to this news my students decided to throw me a curve ball to re-arrest my attention. That incident was mentioned below in which students decided to say incredibly inappropriate comments to each other. Parents and admin stepped in and by yesterday things seemed to finally balance back out. It was an awesome day with sunny skies (rather then the dull grey we had been living with for a week or two), a brisk morning walk, excellent behavior from students, productivity at work, and even cookies and muffins baked when I got my next hurdle.
A Skype message was flashing for my attention as I came to turn up the tunes for my baking endeavors and the message shattered my exuberant productivity with news of my fathers admittance into the emergency room for severe heart pain. The rather abrupt message (left in haste by my brother who had ran to retrieve some medications to take to my father at the hospital) justifiably left me shaken. For about thirty minutes I handled the news quite well getting a tray of cookies out, putting a tray in, calling and waking up (and filling in) my sister, and in general pretending that I had important things to be doing. Then I sat still for a few minutes and started thinking about the situation. Mistake. I began to get frantic, jumped on Skype and called my mom. Almost as soon as I heard her voice I was in tears and hearing my dad tell me he loved me then hand the phone back to my mom saying he was in pain and couldn't talk right now put me over the edge. The ambulance arrived to transport mom and dad to another hospital and I was left alone again, half way around the world, with no idea what was going on and no way to help. Thankfully a couple amazing friends showed up and kept me well entertained with positive energy for the rest of the evening.
This morning I got up to good news that dad's chest pain had subsided and that things were looking good. They were going to take him in for an angeogram in 8 hours and I had work to take my mind off things.The day was interesting enough and busy enough to keep my mind occupied. Between colleague differences of opinion, planning, and teaching, there were no dull moments. The day was almost over and ... you guessed it... curve ball.
Standing outside the door after my 3 hour planning meeting (for the last 3 hours all 4th grade teachers including myself and the curriculum coordinator were in a meeting planning our next 6 week unit while substitute teachers were teaching our classes) were four of my best behaved students who immediately started bawling as I approached. Not exactly normal behavior, so I was obviously concerned. I asked what was going on and they got frantically upset. Amid sobs I deciphered that they had done something really bad, they were so sorry, and they knew they were going to be in so much trouble, someone else was taking the blame, and they shouldn't have done it, they were sorry, and they were convinced they were going to be suspended. As I attempted to sort though this latest drama amid choking sobs I discovered the supply teacher, the vice principal, and the parents of one of the four girls' victims in an incredibly charged discussion in the doorway of my classroom. After about 30 minutes of interrogation and piecing together of stories the vice principal, councilor, and I had finally painted a rather accurate picture of a rather childish moment of vengeance that had not been handled well by the poor overwhelmed supply teacher and had escalated into the zoo that it had become.
Needless to say, this situation will take a few days to finish dealing with and die down as it still involves some rather sincere apologies to the second victim that have not been said yet and likely some more parent drama. I just hope that the next hurdle has the decency to wait till I have successfully cleared these most recent two. ;)

Upside? Life certainly hasn't been boring lately! A whole unit was planned today. All four girls have punished themselves far better then I ever could have. And the biggest trouble maker from the previous incident has been better behaved today then in the last 3 months!