Oh NO! The JELL-O!

On Friday, the 6th graders presented projects about climate in their science class, the hour right before I teach them math. Three girls gave a presentation about El Niño/La Niña using blue JELL-O with white icing. After they presented they passed out plates of JELL-O to every student. I was in the teacher lounge, and they even brought some to me. I had a bite, but I thought it tasted a bit weird. Then again, JELL-O is not my favorite. Towards the end of the hour, the science teacher told me that three of the boys were probably going to be late to math, because they had eaten too much JELL-O and thrown up on the floor of the boy's bathroom. 

Gross! I hate throw up...the smell, the sound, everything about it! So, as math class started, I pulled the three boys out into the hallway and explained to them that if they started feeling sick again, they didn't need permission, they just needed to run to the bathroom as quickly as possible! I also told the entire class the same thing. I had planned a fun lesson (I thought!) about misleading graphs and statistics. We watched two misleading commercials and then discussed. Everyone seemed to be feeling fine by this point. 

Yet, as the students started working on different stations, things turned for the worst. Kids started running out of the classroom to throw up...multiple times! So I called the school secretary/nurse from the teacher's lounge across the hall and told her what was going on. She told me to call the principal. The principal told me to collect more information...like who made the JELL-O and how many times each kid had already thrown up. So I quickly asked kids these questions and called the principal back. At this point, I started laughing, because I just couldn't believe what was happening! Kids just kept running out of the class to throw up, while I was on the phone. After I hung up with the principal, I saw that one of the original boys that threw up fainted! I kind of began to freak out. I quickly grabbed wet towels for him and called the principal again to tell her I really needed help. The boy wasn't very responsive at first, so I started asking him questions and moved him into the teacher's lounge. When I came back in the room, another boy was shaking and very, very pale. He wasn't very responsive either. All of the girls were sobbing. Thankfully, the principal and director came soon thereafter and took the four sick boys! The bell rang for lunch, but the girls were still sobbing, because they felt like it was all their fault. So I spent time comforting them. The English teacher came in and started google-ing all of these symptoms and concluded that they had food poisoning. Apparently, JELL-O packets can go bad! Seriously, what a day! During lunch word quickly spread about what happened. So one dramatic boy in the next class moved his desk away from the trashcan, because he said he could smell the throw up, even though not a single kid threw up inside the classroom! Needless to say, Friday was quite unforgettable!