Day One, Week Four... Update!

Hi everyone! You haven't heard from me for a while... I was sick all last week and was basically just dragging myself home from student teaching and falling right to sleep, waking up to work a little bit on my major project, and then sleeping again! I am feeling a little better now so I thought I'd take some time to update. 
Today begins my fourth week of my five week internship at Sky Elementary! I am almost done!
Last week I had my first observation by my professor. I worked 1:1 with kids at a sort of mundane shape matching file folder. I had already warned the professor that this wasn't my lesson plan or anything, and I'm glad I told her because the professor later basically told me the file folder game was silly and not challenging the kids. The best thing that happened during the observation, ironically, was that Ani acted out and didn't want to work with me! The reason I say it was the best thing is because the professor wrote down that I handled it by giving Ani a choice of where to sit, and gave him lots of praise during the activity. So it actually looked good for me! 
Something odd that happened... Remember Phoebe, who had strep that spread to her heart? (She's fine now, thank goodness!) This week she is on vacation with a family member. I think they went to Disney Land. Her little brother Pewee, who is three, came to school, though, and was his usual happy but mischievous self! 
The day went along as usual. At lunch time we put Pewee and the other AM kids on the buses to go home. We had our our long lunch break. We went out to get the PM kids off the buses. And there was Pewee, with a big smile on his face, getting off one of the PM buses! Apparently his mother had never showed up at the bus stop to pick him up. After failing to get ahold of Pewee's mother or any emergency contacts, the bus driver brought Pewee back to school for safe keeping.
Having to come back to school after sitting on the bus for an hour can be traumatizing when you're three! So we gave Pewee a hero's welcome. We all told him we were happy that he came back to visit us, and we introduced him to the afternoon class kids. Since Pewee hadn't had lunch yet, Mrs. Wing scraped up some random lunch food for Pewee to eat in the class. He got to have a granola bar, several chocolate chip cookies, half an apple, and a carton of chocolate milk. LOL! Pewee good-naturedly went to gym class with the afternoon kids. Then he came to the library with us, where he laughed at having to hear the librarian read the same story again! The whole time he had this amused grin on his face. It was probably so weird for him to see the same classroom, and the same teachers, but all different kids! 
Meanwhile, the office was frantically trying to get ahold of someone for Pewee. The thing that made the situation a little shady was the fact that there is a restraining order against Pewee's father. Because he's abused them in the past, he is only allowed supervised visits with Pewee, Phoebe and their siblings. So there was always the possibility that the father could have done something to the kids' mother, and that could be why she didn't meet Pewee at the bus stop or answer any phone calls. The office staff decided that if they couldn't find Pewee's mother by 1:30 they would call the police.
Well, at about 1:15 they managed to get ahold of Pewee's mom! She had had a court date, and had lost track of time. Instead of calling the school or the bus company to let them know that she wouldn't be there to meet Pewee at the bus stop, she had just assumed that Pewee would spin his way back to school and that somebody somewhere would take care of him. After answering her phone and explaining the situation to the office staff, she actually asked, "So, do you want me to come get him?" 
Uh... yeah, probably, that would be thoughtful! We're sure Pewee would appreciate it! 
Have I mentioned how I've grown to love these kids in the past three weeks? I can't believe next week I'll be getting ready to say goodbye!