A Visit from the Dookie Fairie

Alternate Title: The Joys of Teaching
Alternate Alternate Title: Just Another Day in 1st Grade

One of my resource kids came up missing for a short time yesterday. I left the student teacher in charge, went looking for him, and found him in the stall in the boys bathroom.

"B, honey? Is everything OK in there?"

"Yeah!"

"Hurry up please, it's time to go to Resource."

"OK!"

As I'm walking off I look to the ground and notice poo. Lots of it. Some clumped, some puddled, but all on the floor in the stall.

"B, honey, is that poo on the floor!?"

"Yeah!"

"Golly ned, kid, why are you using a stall with a dirty floor?"

(silence from him)

(dawning recognition from me)

"B...that's your poop, isn't it?"

"Yep!"

(sigh) "OK...I'm coming in."

He hadn't locked the door to the stall, so I pushed it in. Surveying the scene my guess was that he had diarrhea, made a mad dash for the toilet while pulling down his pants, but didn't quite make it before things started spilling out. Onto the floor, onto his legs, his pants, his shirt, his shoes. He got it on his hands, so it was also all over the seat and the toilet paper dispenser. I've had kids with incontinence before, but this was easily one of the top 3 messes I'd seen.

It's a part of teaching the younger kids, especially the Resource kids. The part that's always bothered me is being around kids with no bottoms on when I'm a male teacher--it just doesn't seem prudent on my part--so I went down to the self-contained room and talked my favorite parapro into coming down to help. She works with our wheelchair and Down's kids, so she's an old pro at cleaning up messes like the one that B was in. We borrowed some clothes, and he was good to go.

"Thanks for the help, Mr. Rain!"

"No problem, B. Have fun at PE!"

And off he went, shiny clean, enjoying just another day at school.