Bully on the bus

10/18/10

A student arrived to class just before 9:00 am - the students were already at art class. I noticed that his eyes were red - it looked like he had been crying. I asked him to sit down, I then asked him if he was okay. He said that he wasn't - that there was an incident that had happened on the bus. He was hit by a bully on the bus.

Two weeks ago we talked in Morning Meeting about what to do if you receive unwanted attention from a bully. This student really listened during the discussion. As soon as he got off the bus, he marched himself to the principal's office and told what happened. The principal did a great job handling the situation, and the student felt supported.

Ms. Wink had a great conversation with the student and she invited him to stay in the classroom and read and just "chill" instead of going to art. He seemed relieved that he had the time to calm down, wash his face, and be fresh-faced when he saw his class.

I was in a funk today - mad at myself for not getting enough work done over the weekend, fearful for the amount of work that lays ahead of me. I also had a headache - there's something about this building that gives me headaches (I've been told that this is common in this building). I very rarely get headaches, but have had a large number of them since starting this semester. Ms. Wink and Mrs. Callahan both checked in on me - it's so nice to know that I'm surrounded by such caring people!

This evening, I started reading the response logs of 2 students per night. The topic of the RL was Text-to-Self. They needed to take a segment of their free-reading book and relate it to a story from their life.