March 28th, I Spoke Too Soon...

Well, I should have known things were going too well.   The parent meeting from this morning got rescheduled until tomorrow. They forgot to tell me.  I showed up for it and no one else was there.  It was ok though, because it gave me a chance to catch up on lesson plans before heading to the cafeteria for duty.  Things were going fine until my last class of the day.  You know the one.  The one with the Freds.  On the plus side, nobody died (and whatever Fred3 mixed together to create the toxic gas, he could sell to the military for millions!).  On the negative side, Fred3 decided he didn't need to follow instructions while combining exothermic reactions and decided to mix ALL the ingredients together.  He's spending the night in the hospital (just for observation). Fortunately, no one else was injured.  I spent the remainder of the day cleaning up his mess, trying to ventilate and remove the substance; trying to keep the rest of the class calm and away from the fumes; sending Fred3 outside for fresh air, then to the nurse; getting the kids back to the room in time for the bell to ring,  looking up what possible substance he could have created and inhaled and get it to the nurse.  Needless to say, by the time school was out I was a mixture of stress, worry and hopelessness all rolled into one. As soon as I could after school, I rushed to the hospital and checked on his status.  He was enjoying his moment in the spotlight with students visiting him and teachers and staff checking in with him.  Plus he gets out of school tomorrow.  Lucky for me, the other two Freds were well behaved.