A Teacher's Woes

The kids are driving me crazy this week.  Hopefully I can condense. 

Yesterday a girl in my last class lost her phone.  We had partner work going on in class and later switched to group work (during both cases the students switch seats to get with their partner/group).  During group work, the girl student comes to me and says she's lost her phone.  It was in her desk and now it's gone.  We all look around, everyone checks their desks, checks their pockets, the floor.  Nothing.  I ask her if she has the "Find my iPhone" app.  She does, so I head to my computer to open the website.  Before I can, someone finds it on the floor.  Everyone is excited, students exit, end of day.

Me, being the super teacher I am, knew immediately that the phone didn't magically appear on the floor (after we had already looked there).  Someone obviously dumped it there when they realized we were going to locate it using the app.  Unfortunately, since it all happened at the very end of the school day, I wasn't able to do anything about it until today.  I started by questioning the student who had found the phone.  And then several more students when they came back to class.  This was after I had given the whole class a "Be careful with your electronics and I don't think this cell phone was really lost" speech.  Then, towards the end of the class, a little boy writes me a note saying he saw another little boy with the phone.  I talk to them both separately, then together.  The first little boy stuck by his story that he saw the other with the phone, the second denied he had ever held/touched/seen the phone.  So another day ends with nothing resolved.

Until I get home and see an email from the mom of the boy who was accused of taking the cell phone, asking me to call her.  Apparently the boy was really upset.  His mom just wanted to know what had happened and get my version of events.

Bottom line.  I still don't know who took the cell phone and I've spent two days trying to figure this thing out.  Someone in the group is a liar mcliarson with sticky fingers.  I realize as I type this out it doesn't seem like that big of a deal, but I've had to invest way more time than necessary trying to sort everything out.  (If you're a teacher yourself or have even been in charge of a large group of kids, you'll understand.  Sometimes I feel like the last thing I do is teach.  Everything else seems to come first!)

Seriously.  This all could have been avoided if ten year olds weren't bringing brand new iPhone 5s to school.