Vanishing Students

"Where did you go?" I asked.

"Health office. My stomach hurts. I told you..."

Oh right. Now I remember.

Thursday. Continuation high school. Social studies. Third period.

It was the beginning of the period. I was passing back their atlas pages. They were identifying countries and their GDPs and literacy rates via an online atlas. They'd been working on it a couple days.

As I was passing out packets, the phone rang. I scrambled to answer.

This was when Joey asked to go to the health office. I said sure. At any other moment when I didn't have three other things happening, I would have stopped and written him a pass. If he had waited two minutes, I would have been able to pause to write him one.

But by the time I was done on the phone and the packets had all been passed out, he had already gone. And I had forgotten giving him permission to go.

Joey hovered (rather than sitting). He walked out of class. He came back with food... (I assume he had a stomach ache like Russell did.) This is normal stuff for the continuation high school.

As I went through the roll (before Joey got back, after the crazy of starting class), I noticed that two students were missing...

Aaron and Joey had been sitting next to each other. Joey returned. Aaron did not.

Did Aaron ask to go someplace? Did I forget?

Aaron never returned. And I didn't write him a pass.

So, at the end of the day, I talked to the attendance clerk. Apparently, Aaron had been hanging out in the main office during class. I definitely didn't give him permission to go to the office. That I would have recalled.

Sigh.

Aaron has been difficult as of late. Some students just don't go to class. They're on campus, but they find other places to hang out. (He could have totally hung out in class and did no work. It's not like many of his classmates were actually working.)

So, the attendance clerk marked it as a cut. Because, that's what he had done. I'm pretty sure.