It's never boring.

There's always something going on at work.
It's never quiet, even when we're doing something like watching a movie.

They're kids. They make noise.

Today's activity was a continuation of yesterday's. I got out all the fuse bead peg boards and the 'kabillion box', christened that by one of the kids who was awestruck.

"Wow! There must be a kabillion beads in there! Hey! Let's call it the kabillion box!"

So now the next time I have my label maker out, I'll make one that says that.

Kids are funny.

I also had slime planned. Bought a huge Elmer's glue/activator classpack from Amazon during the shopping spree at the end of summer.

Our usual afternoon schedule has the kids showing up at 2:15. We hang out, maybe do a craft project. It's always an optional thing, some of the kids don't want to do crafts. The older ones want to sit and chat, read books together or alone.

The littles are always very enthusiastic about crafting. They get glue everywhere. They drop snips of paper and bits of whatever we're using. It's humorous. When told that it's time to clean up, many of them suddenly have to pee.
"Can I use the restroom?"

I can't tell them no, or not usually, although I did that today.
Story to follow.
It's not okay to deprive kids of bathrooms, either morally or legally.

So I say sure, stand in the doorway of our classroom so I can observe the doorways of the boy's room down the hall and the girl's room just across from us.

I do remind them that, "We'll save some stuff for you to clean up when you come back, I know you don't expect everyone else to clean up after you."

Sometimes a kid decides that he didn't really need to go after all.
Like I said, kids are funny.

About 3:15 it's time to do a quick cleanup and then wash hands for snack time. If we're unable to have our snacks outside, we set up tables in the hallway. The classroom we're in has carpet. Impossible to keep crumbs and squishy pieces of fruit off the carpet, so we don't even try eating in there.

Today, I had set up the tables, put our snacks out on the top of the big bin I was temporarily using as a table, and we were lining up just inside our door (kids have to bring their chair with them to the hall) when the custodian ran up and said, "Hey, the art teacher has seen someone in the building who does not belong here. You need to keep an eye on your kids. We're doing a building sweep now."

There were at least 12 school staff still on the premises, and they all had assigned areas to look at.

I immediately turned, pulled the door closed, locked it and pulled the shade down.
I told the kids that a stranger had been seen in the building.

"There's no reason right now to think it's a bad guy, but we don't know what's going on. Until we do, we're staying in our classroom with the door closed and locked."

If any parents had showed up to collect their child(ren) I would have had to tell them to come back later. I wasn't about to open the door into the hall until I received the all clear.

Parents call our site phone when they arrive so we know to come open the door. After the doorbell debacle at the school I was stuck in last year (and past experience with portable doorbells at other schools) I don't like the idea of using a doorbell. So they call us.



So of course two boys and one of the girls immediately 'needed' to use the restroom.
I told them they'd need to wait a bit.

Turned out to be about 40 minutes. The school was thoroughly checked, no one who didn't belong there was found.

So we had our snack 40 minutes late, and that made our slime project 40 minutes late as well. Probably should have postponed it for another day, but the kids were so excited I didn't have the heart to do that to them.

As parents arrived for pickup, I informed them of the events of the afternoon. Nothing happened, and we were all safe, but I knew the kids would talk about it at dinner, ya know?
My assistant went home about 10 minutes before six.

I stayed until nearly 7 ironing the completed fuse bead projects.
I counted.
There were 46.

As I was leaving, the custodian, who came to walk out with me, told me that one of the 'almost never' used doors to the lower part of the school had been opened and a piece of wood put in the bottom of the frame so the door didn't quite close.

He wasn't sure if that meant the stranger had done it with plans to come back in and steal computers or other stuff or possibly come in during the school day with other ideas or if it had just been an accident the door had been left that way.

It's not likely it happened by accident, though.