I Make Little Girls Cry

Today at school, I was printing out pictures for an art project we would be doing. I had taken black and white photos of each of my students and printed them out. When I was done I noticed that I was missing someone but couldn't figure out who. So I called the names of the students I had pictures of and asked who I skipped. A girl raised her hand so I asked her to come to my desk. I opened my PhotoBooth ap on my computer and asked her to sit in my chair. When I turned my head to look at her, she was sobbing! Buckets of tears pouring down her face. She thought she was in trouble! I couldn't help but laugh a little bit because she was genuinely terrified. I explained to her that she's not in trouble at all, I just needed to take her picture for our art project. She did not stop crying. She had been so scared that she was in trouble and then probably embarrassed because I was kind of laughing. I felt so bad! Poor thing! I let her go into the bathroom to calm down and splash some water on her face. She was gone for about 15 minutes. One of the other students said, "Boy Mrs. Tucker, you really upset her!" Finally I sent one of her friends to go see if she was ok. When she did come back she looked like she'd been crying the whole time! Wow, I never expected someone to react like that to me! The moral of the story is: when calling kids' names, tell them why first.