One Last Time

Friday. I was back in the art class one last time.

When Ms. D was hired, she already had plans for certain days. They asked me to sub those days, and I said yes. Last Friday was the last of these days. 

And, I had been dreading it. Seventh period had been an issue for a while (as I mentioned), but after Monday's crazy (when I had them for less than a half hour), I knew they were now on sub behavior with me. Deep sigh. 

The assignment had them cutting paper (it was a 3D landscape thing). I knew this was going to be a mess. So, I had a strategy for how I was going to get them to clean up after. 

The school (it might be the whole district) has a new cell phone policy this year. No phones during class time. They even got the classes these nifty boxes: 

The kiddos (are supposed to) put their phones in the box at the beginning of the period and retrieve them at the end. And it has a lock on it. 

(I caught a girl on her phone during class time. The first consequence is just to lose the phone for the rest of the period, but the second consequence is that the phone goes to the main office. I've been keeping careful track of first offenses...) 

I usually don't bother to remove the key from the lock. No one has tried to retrieve their phones before time. But on this day... 

So, clean up time. I explained what needed to happen. And I informed them that no one would get their phones back until it was done. 

It got done. 

There was a mess. Play time for middle schoolers means mess. Thrown paper. Spilled water. Pencils on the floor. Flowers everywhere. (There's a plumeria outside the classroom that has blooms. On their worst days, they get obsessed with bringing in flowers.) It wasn't supposed to be a play day, but they weren't cooperating. 

The mess was picked up, so they got their phones. (They would have gotten their phones back, of course. I just made sure to leave them enough time to get the room picked up.) 

And that was goodbye. Phew. 

Earlier that day, a bunch of new assignments popped up on the subbing app. One of them, for the following Friday, was for Ms. D. I didn't get it. Mostly because I didn't click on the button that said "book".