Thurfriday

So yeah, I flaked.  It was a long week and I've been exhausted and recovering from illness.

On Thursday, I had several meetings to plan re-evaluations.  No parents showed up but I managed to obtain participation by phone for both of them.  The rest of Thursday was uneventful except for an extremely generous and unexpected gift to me and my family from everyone in the department.  While I have alluded to dealing with some personal problems in my life, I may as well say it here now: my wife was diagnosed with stage four cancer in April of this year and it has been progressing rapidly despite treatment.  That is who I was with at the hospital last Friday.

My coworkers have been extremely kind and supportive of me and my family.  Even I am anonymous on this blog, I do want to say that I really appreciate the kindness and sensitivity that they have shown me.

Friday began with my getting lost on the way to an out of district meeting.  It is really amazing just how rural some parts of New Jersey can be.  I finally found my way, after a phone call.  No parents.  No one answered when we called home.  We spoke about the student who had an incident the day before.  The student backed down from another student and lost face and, oddly, wasn't in school today, either.

When I got back to my office, there was a message from the parent saying that their child was refusing to go back to the school ever again and that the parent was in agreement with this, even though they had only gotten the story from their child without talking to the school.  Before I called the parent, I wanted to speak to the school to see if they had spoken to the parent.  I left a message and didn't hear from them until late afternoon.  I was informed that they had spoken to the parent and had an appointment to see the student on Monday at their home because the other parent didn't want the student to leave the school.

This OOD really seems to go the extra mile considering they are willing to make home visits.

That is where my day ended.