With my new schedule, I teach the first 40 minute period, then the next two are Spanish classes, and then I teach the 4th period, right before recess.
During this 4th period, on the second day of school, we were practicing procedures and I had three students who didn't show me the procedure properly. Two of them corrected their errors, but the third lay with his head down, refusing to move. I gave him a warning for disrespect.
A few minutes later, one of the girls told me he was crying. I tried to help him subtly leave the room so I could talk to him once the class got rolling, but he wouldn't budge, or speak. With recess just 20 minutes away, I continued on and figured I would talk to him during the break, not in front of the whole class.
So, we kept going. About 5 minutes later, he started vomiting all over his desk. At this point I was able to whisk him outside, but not as quickly as may have been desired. I tried to urge him to go see Gilda, the school-everything, but he sat on the side of the futbol field and continued to throw up. I brought him some water and went back to the class, getting them occupied with anything while I tried to take care of him.
He couldn't talk, let alone walk well. When I took the kids to recess, a bit early, I took him to Gilda. She was convinced he had a cough, because he was choking on it, until he continued it the way that he had been (we even argued about it, “Miss, it's a cough” “No, it's a stomach thing, he's been vomiting. Oh, wait...there you go. You see?”). She called home and we went back to the room to get his things. I sent him on his way, which seemed to be fine, to go deal with some of my kids who were misbehaving in an area they aren't even supposed to be during recess, when he fell to his knees and continued to throw up.
He had nothing in his stomach from the get go, so it was getting ugly. I sat with him until 5 minutes to the end of recess, when I had to go get food myself. Ronnie, the school vigelante, asked if he could call the kid a taxi, but I knew his mom was coming, I wasn't comfortable putting him in a taxi with a driver I don't know, and I couldn't imagine how horrible that bumpy tuk-tuk ride would be for a kid this sick. I asked someone else to look after him until his mother came and ran to get myself some food before I went into my next segment of teaching, which is substantially more than 40 minutes.
As I sat down to eat, I saw my kids back in the not-okay-to-be zone and had to go talk to them again before finally finishing my breakfast. At the end of the day, after I had class, I went by his house to check on him. His mom was out, but the new girl working at the restaurant his family owns said that he had made it the doctor, gotten medicine, and was doing better. He was asleep when I went by and he didn't come to school the for the rest of the week, which I imagine is for the best.
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