Made it. It’s finally the weekend.
I had part of a project go missing yesterday. One of the characters from our build a shelter project disappeared. I have to be honest, I feared the worst, that a student had picked them up and taken them. I hate feeling that way, but it seemed quite possible. My hope was that it had just been accidentally knocked to the floor and lost to the cleaning crew.
It turns out it was possibly some weird combination of all of the above. Once it was discovered that Lint Balle was missing, I did what any design teacher would do and made missing posters.
I posted them on the doors to my room and one outside our MS office as well. I also notified the students via Google Classroom that Lint was missing. Some of my DT 1 students thought I was starting some sort of new game and came to class excited to solve the mystery. Once I explained, they were slightly disappointed but eager to help with the search as well. The DT students were a bit more distraught since Lint was a part of many of their projects. They mostly just asked why I didn’t make another one. 🤣 I had to explain that I didn’t actually make Lint, I just found them in my house. Ironically, deepening the mystery of where and how Lint actually came to be.
At lunch time, a colleague approached me and sheepishly told me that they in fact were the culprit. Somehow Lint had turned up on their desk in the room next to mine and not knowing what it was had simply tossed it in the trash. Gut wrenching news. But at the same time, a relief that I knew what had happened. It will always be a mystery how it got there, but now we know the truth.
I’m a bit disappointed in myself for assuming foul play from students. I have some particularly challenging personalities in one class this year, and my frustrations got the better of me. Just one more thing I need to continue to work on to be a better me. I need to continue working on building those positive relationships with those kids and finding ways to connect.
In the meantime, this afternoon I did what needed to be done and closed the mystery by announcing to my students that the disappearance of Lint had been solved.
Because school should be fun and we all need a little chuckle heading into the weekend.
Ryan Harwood 