WHO STOLE MY PRECIOUS??!!!???

Yesterday's student drama: Nate the yuba player in 3rd period comes up to me at the end of class and says "Someone took my iPod." "Where was it?" I asked. "In my backpack... I left it alone for a couple minutes as I was moving my stand and chair back to the main room, when I cam back, my backpack had been moved, and the Ipod was gone."

Wow... pretty good timing. It's almost as if someone knew where it was, knew exactly when he would leave it alone, and moved in for a quick theft with surgical precision. I was almost impressed with the efficiency.

I didn't know what to tell him except "Well, I'll keep an eye out for it... and I'll notify the administration, but I don;t know how much good it'll do."

Well, the kid's mom called and e-mailed me later that day. I didn't get either since I went home early. She was pissed. Luckily, not at me. She was upset that band was the boy's favorite class, and that I tried so hard to teach good citizenship... how could someone from the band community do something like this. She made it clear that they were going to the police and pressing charges. (Against who, I'm not sure... it's not like we had any leads.) She wanted us to detain every kid in band for questioning.

Right.

Anyway, I responded that I'm not sure admin would allow us to do that, but I promised to at least address the class. Apparently this wasn;t enough for her. She used a recently sent mass-email from my parent helpers to "reply-all" an angry e-mail to my entire parent base.

Yikes.

So this morning in 3rd period, I started to build-up to the best guilt trip I could muster:

Me: "Ladies and gentlemen... apparently yesterday someone discovered their iPod was missing from their backpack. Now it saddenss me to think that someone in this class would...."

Kid: "Um... Mr. Maestro?....." (hand raised)

Me: "yes?"

Kid: "Is that it over there?" (points)

There in one of the cabinet shelves right behind where Nate sits was a small device in a black case. The kid grabs it and holds it up. Nate looks at it, embarassed. "Yeah, it's mine."

Now, is it possible that Nate's mom scared someone into putting the iPod on the shelf? Sure, maybe, but how much you want to bet that Nate put it there and forgot? In any case, he got it back, and everyone should be happy.

Lessons to be learned:

1) If something goes missing, give it a few days before you start throwing accusations around.

2) BCC is a beautiful thing.