Oh boy

Yesterday shortly after school began, I had a girl tell me, "I don't feel so good."

She didn't look so good.  I sent her to the office to call her mom.  Her mom couldn't pick her up immediately so she came back to class.  I asked her what she wanted to do--try to do schoolwork, go lie down in the nurse's room, etc.  She said she didn't know.  Then she said she'd stay in class.

Then she lay her head on her desk.

She looked so miserable I took her down to the nurse's room.  I said, "Do you feel like you need to throw up?"

She said, "Yes."

I put a garbage can nearby and told her to remember to take her mask off is she needed to throw up.  I arranged her coat to be a sort of pillow and left her.  The secretaries in the next room would keep an eye on her.

My class was on task when I returned like the little angels they are.  I swear I have the best class in the school!

A little while later, a boy said, "Every time I talk I feel like I'm going to throw up."

I sent him to the office with a note to call home.

Another girl kept seeming to fall asleep.  Then she'd be fine.  She's super quiet anyway and would never complain.  At recess I said, "Are you feeling OK?"

She said no.

I said, "Do you feel like throwing up?"  She said no.  She said her head hurt.  I asked her if she wanted to call home.  She did. 

Besides that, I had two students already absent.

I gave every one of my (remaining) students a Clorox wipe.  I had them wipe down their desks and chairs.  Then I gave everyone another wipe and had them wipe down door handles, my desk, the stools by my desk where they sometimes sit, the computer cart, the faucet handles where they refill their water bottles.  This stuff gets cleaned pretty regularly anyway, but it felt like desperate times.

During P.E. I went to the office.  One secretary said, "Your class is dropping like flies!"

The other one said, "Give them all Tylenol and send them home!"

I was afraid it may come to that.

Another girl kept coming to me with ailments.  She has ailments regularly that I mostly ignore, but yesterday she would have gotten away with being sent home if they hadn't been so random.  Her hip hurt, her arm hurt, her leg hurt, she had a bump, she fell last week on the stairs.  She was hot.  (I told her to take off her coat.)  She said, "Oh.  OK."

Elementary schools:  not for the faint of heart.