The Big Dance

It’s the end of the year. It’s hot, the kids are starting to lose their cool. I notice that teachers are walking down the hallway shaking their heads; ready to be done. I am on the “climate committee,” at my school building. We planned a “luau” dance for a selected number of students. The students that were allowed to attend the dance had to meet the criteria. The criteria was that they could not have any unexcused absences.

The 2^nd thing was that they were not allowed to have any unexcused lateness. The third thing was that they could not run into any discipline issues. Finally they needed to be caught by a teacher doing at least 1 act of kindness. The period that we took count of this data was from May 1^st, to May 19^th. That is three weeks.

So you are asking yourself… What’s this have to do with your Crohn’s Paul?

Well, when I signed up for this committee, I thought that there would be an abundance of teachers planning all these great things. I guess the morale of the building is down, and only myself and the gym teacher signed up. We had to plan all these nice events for students. If we didn’t then who would? The students would be stuck in the redundancy of coming to school each day, not looking forward to anything fun.

Well the stress this last week and half leading up this big dance was crazy. It really set my stomach into a whirl-wind.

In our school’s budget, we couldn’t afford a disc jockey. We had to use our own laptops and make playlists with the clean version of the songs. I was in charge of ordering one hundred pretzels, and a hundred juice boxes. The gym teacher was in charge of the decorations and the music. The day before the dance, I was running around making sure that I crossed my t’s and dotted my i’s. I was supposed to break up my classroom between the other two third grades classes, since I needed to be at the dance. Not all of my students were going. The day of the dance, I come to find out that my two grade partners were not present. My stomach dropped. I ran to the bathroom. Three bouts later I calmed myself, and started going around to the classrooms asking teachers if they can take one or two of my kids that aren’t going to the dance in the afternoon.

My mind was spinning because I skipped lunch, as I had to help set up the gym for the dance. I was so stressed that I kept running to the bathroom. Then it really hit me. What’s going to happen if I have to go during the dance? It was literally the gym teacher and myself.  Now I was feeling sick!

When the dance started the students who weren’t allowed in had tried to make their way in my sneaking in. So I had to stand by the door to make sure nobody without a ticket entered. I had to really go to the bathroom, and the urgency was getting intense.  A paraprofessional who works with only one student saw that I was having a hard time handling the door, and knew my situation. She came over, and calmly said,

“Go Mr. Richman, handle your business.”

I thanked her and ran to the rest room.

One part of me I was frustrated because I shouldn’t have to go through that. On the other hand, I was grateful that there are great people on this earth that would do anything for me. I know that being down all those people probably won't happen again. I also know that there are people out there helping me. I am so glad the dance was over, but very happy that my students had fun!