Very Emotional…Part 1

Dear Diary,

What a day this has been! And by that I am referring to the fact that it has been a very emotional day…

The phone rang once around 4:30 this morning. Hubby didn’t answer it; guess it didnt register that early that I no longer have a phone on my side of the bed. Not sure who called. Guess it wasn’t important but it did wake me up. And I couldn’t go back to sleep. So I was up before 5, doing a load of laundry and loading the dishwasher. At 7 I sat down to watch GMA and fell asleep. By the time I got up again and dressed it was almost 11 when I walked into the church office. I am sooooo glad that I don’t have regular hours. I completed the most pressing tasks, left to pick up lunch and returned home. Pretty unemotional…so far.

While I was eating lunch, I picked up yesterday’s local paper. Front page carried an article entitled, “Sex offender tries to volunteer at area schools”. The reporter is someone I know and respect. She always reports in a professional way. When she came to school to do an article, I always knew that I would be quoted correctly and that the article would be written “the right way”. Not sure how else to explain that.

As I read the article, several people I know were quoted. One, who works for the school district, said, “she ‘didn’t want to make people really scared’ by including the information about the sex offender”. This was in reference to a communication that was sent to campus principals that did NOT include that information. My first reaction was that she was not in a position to “protect people from being really scared”. Her job was to share information that she received from the police. There seemed to be some question as to when and how and what the school received and when and how and what they shared with the campuses. (I really don’t have time for school politics anymore). Then I read the name of one of the persons identified as trying to volunteer. OMG!

He was a former student. He graduated in ’96. I remember sitting in on his ARD. He is mentally challenged and at the time, I wasn’t aware of what all of his challenges were. At the time I was concerned about his reading level since the class that he was trying to get into had a lab component whereby I took my students to an elementary school to work with the elementary kids. Most of the work was one-on-one reading. During the ARD, he claimed that he liked to work with little kids. His grandmother and aunt were present for the ARD but didnt say much. Much to my disappointment, he was placed in the class. I just didnt feel right about the placement. I know some of my concerns were selfish on my part. I wasnt sure how to adapt the class to meet his needs and yet keep the standards high so that we would continue to be invited to the elementary school for the lab portion of the class. Several weeks later, this student had a schedule change and was moved out of my class. When I inquired why, I was told that the p.o. said to make the change. P.O.??? Probation Officer.

…continued