Pre-Virginia Tech?

...OOOOHHH..!! I don't EVEN KNOW where to start. Today was going fairly well for a substitute in the other room kinda day. You see my partner teacher was out for the day having a root canal done. So it was me versus 42 kids. Me- being slightly outnumbered- made sure to have enough work for my kiddos to do, so that there was NO time to mess around. I thought that we were doing fairly well. Except for a few choice students that will most likely one day grace the news and covers of magazines for less than positive situations.

Anyway, back to today. So we have 18 buses that come through in the morning to drop students off for the day, and then pick them up after school. This means that we have 2 sets of buses. When there is a substitute, you are in charge of the first set of buses, then you run back to pick up the second set; like today. I ended up taking 34 of my 42 students on the first set of buses. As I walked back to pick up the remaining 8 students, the good sub had already lined them up and brought them out to meet me :) made it much easier. Or so I thought. After standing around for 5 minutes [which doesn't sound so long, until you are trying to keep restless elementary students quiet and in line] then it is forever. All the buses were there but for some reason there was a delay. I was getting antsy, the sub was getting antsy, and the kids were going stir crazy. Then I had one of 'em come up and whisper to me,




"Nitsuj has a gun."




My heart stops.


Of course this had to wait until the exact moment that we were to be walking to get on the buses. Not wasting anytime I walk over to the student's backpack, take it off of his shoulder
and step away from him. I was asking myself "What if there really is a 'real' gun in here?" and "What if it goes off?" I didn't want to reach in and accidently set something off.

Teacher shoots students waiting for buses.

How would that look in a review?


I openned up the backpack. As I carefully moved the mess of papers around, I found the gun. I did hear the offending student attempt to say:



1) "It's just a BB gun"


2) "I don't know how it got in there!"


Who cares!! What I want to know is that if this GUN has been in my room all day???


What would you think if you saw something like this? No kidding if someone were to pull something out like this and ask for my purse or my car, I WOULD GIVE IT TO THEM!!! It is too realistic. I had to pull this kid out of line, and walk him to a person on the administration team. Not the thing that I wanted to spend my afternoon doing. 45 minutes later the kid's dad had come to pick him up and was told that his son could come to school like normal tomorrow, but was to go to the in school suspension room to determine exactly what happened and what the consequence will be; you know- a consequence because it looks like a real gun. Real gun my butt. You put something into it, point it at someone, and that something comes shooting out. I feel real safe. Can I call the front office and complain that I don't feel safe in the classroom?

I am so done. Checked out. 16 days left.