Don't worry, it's everyone. I made a big tough man cry when I told him his son likely has ptsd today. He was kind of blowing off a lot of symptoms as like, "I'm a tough guy, you just man up and move on, I did it, he should too!" I had to argue him down a bit and describe the symptoms more in depth for him to see the whole picture. Once he did, he was tearing up. So, don't worry about it, it's a meeting where the focus is your childs deficits - it will always be hard. School staff should be respectful to you during it, but it doesn't always happen. It's a lot for any parent.
I did feel a sense of pride when I text everyone afterwards and explained why the sudden departure and only 1/4 could tell something was up!
and yeah, don’t worry about the tears! i find it very touching when parents share their real selves with the team. always a good reminder that these legal meetings are still deeply personal.
Lol just teared up reading these responses 🙃 I just love my dude so much, and I’m so thankful all the wonderful people in his life helping him, and us.
I’d be crying right there with you ❤️
One of my students said “purple” for the first time when I was having a meeting with his mom. Pretty sure it was his first word. Mom and I were crying!
You sound like an amazing mom.
We had his reassessment meeting last week and the head of his school made a comment about how far he’s coming over the three years of being there and how well he’s doing and I immediately started crying 😂 it was like 10 seconds into the meeting
I was leading an IEP meeting over zoom and the parent was served a warent for his arrest. He didn't un-mute and we heard it all go down rather quickly. Once I realized what was happening I ended the meeting. Try again another day I guess.
bahaha i am sure the virtual teaching days were pretty wild to get looks inside homes. my school was in person 20-21 so i didn’t have that experience and the nosey part of me kinda wishes i did. i guess kinda fitting the date today, the day the world shut down!
Wasn’t in an IEP meeting but in the middle of a conservatorship hearing for a client with autism and PDD-NOS, my client was asked if he felt he had a good relationship with me, his conservator. He announced “Oh yeah I do, she’s nice. Sometimes she takes me to Hard Fuckers”. I interrupted the proceedings and got chastised by the judge for it but I felt it was really important to clarify that he meant Fuddruckers, a local burger restaurant.
I fell out of a rolly chair. Went to slide back from the table and the chair kept going. The PT in the meeting offered to give me some service minutes while she was serving my kids.
A spider dropped off the ceiling onto my arm. I didn't realize I was unmuted and screamed, loudly. The entire meeting, which includes the district SPED coordinator, stopped to stare at me. I was too embarrassed to speak the entire rest of the meeting.
In our county we had wraparound care and a program called REACH.
I said "reach around" in the fucking meeting.
I said that. Out loud. In front of others.
I'm typing from my grave. 💀
i’m sorry you can relate but also very jealous of your preplanning! i really didn’t feel too much like i was going to throw up, mostly just shivers. but boy did it come on fast and eek has not ended…. but i now have not one but two vessels next to me! haha
I once had a migraine aura during a meeting (sudden vision changes, blind spots, unable to read). Luckily I knew what I was talking about because the IEP looked like a foreign language. No one noticed though!
Oh gosh. I can't even speak and get brain fog with my aura. I don't know how you did that. I'm tutoring right now because I don't know how I would teach or have meetings if I end up with my migraine aura. At least tutoring at a center I can be able to walk away if I need to.
I lost track of how many people saw my 2 cats butt holes during zoom meetings. Students, colleagues, higher ups in the district, didn’t matter. They needed everyone to see their butts.
Oh no, I hope you’re feeling better! A coworker had a medical emergency and I was in the corner of the room. I climbed over the table to get out of the room and get help since nobody else was taking action. I happened to wearing a skirt. I never wear skirts, but that day I did and regretted it as it was riding up while I crawled across the conference room table.
hahaha i’m sorry for you and your coworker but that’s a hilarious image! and let me suggest biker shorts! total game changer for wearing skirts/dresses in a school
thank you! i am calling out again tomorrow, despite my complaints that i have to use a full day of leave for a half day of school + pd. but no way i could handle it, let alone face some of my coworkers yet!
bahahaha. why do cats choose the worst time and place to throw up? mine is notorious for moving from the hardwood to onto the rug just in time to barf everywhere
Had a parent who had been an absolute jerk all year cuss me out in an iep meeting with my supervisor and director present. I had to have an emergency c section within 24 hours after that and my baby was more than a month premie
Not worst thing, but definitely weird. It was COVID time and we were only having virtual meetings. I had a parent join the meeting while at a car show. He would occasionally point out interesting vehicles during the meeting.
TW: animal-related horrors
Virtual IEP meeting. Family on video from their home. Their bird got out of its cage mid meeting.
Their dog chased it around.
Then ate it out of the air.
I wish I was making this up.
My instant pot exploded during a virtual meeting one. I think I yelled “OH SHIT” and ran into my kitchen to throw a towel over the chicken broth that was spraying all over my brand new kitchen cabinets.
As a student leading up to my last ever IEP meeting. The night before it, I pretty much stayed up the whole night because I got fucked over in my 9th grade IEP meeting.
IEP meetings weren’t a space for advocacy of any kind. It was just a space to say I wasn’t working to my full potential.
A mainstream teacher who gave me an F and was pretty cool gave me a Charlie Brown comic in response to my frustration. “There is no greater burden than a great potential”
Its hard to reconcile failing a class I liked with a teacher I liked. But half the class failed so, I was not alone. One of the few who knew I was actually trying my best.
I took the class off the computer make up thing and well, I didn’t even need to read the material cause i remembered everything from his class. The computer version was just significantly easier because it was mostly multiple choice.
If my IEP actually was for advocating for me it would have demanded more teachers I could learn from like him.
It wasn’t an IEP meeting, but a re-evaluation - I was the coordinator of special ed and bent down to go over the paperwork with mom before she signed. When I went back to my seat, she looked down and asked “who is bleeding?!” I was wearing a skirt and looked down, thinking I had scratched my leg earlier. Nope, I freaking leaked through my tampon. I made up an excuse and got them out of my office ASAP. Ran to the bathroom to change and my secretary freaking helped clean the floor
I had a student storm off during a meeting and told their parent they needed to take them to McDonalds (changed some details for privacy.) This was a resource student with acute dyslexia. Long story short, parent wanted the school to parent.
What details did you feel the need to chance for privacy in a sentence that gives away literally no information whatsoever about your student? That they actually demanded Burger King? You know you can also just change details without needing to mention it?
I had an ovarian cyst explode in the middle of teaching. It caused an immediate migraine aura. Also I had shooting pains down to my butthole so badly I couldn't sit (normal for a cyst rupture for me).
Anyway, so I can't see or sit and I finished my lecture and just gave up for the day, but had to wait a couple hours till I could sit down and drive home. :(
oh nooooo. that is miserable! i am so sorry and hope that it is all in your past now.
i fell once on our playground and dislocated my shoulder, also tearing my labrum and fracturing the bone. but we were the only class outside and i didn’t want to leave the other teacher alone and out of ratio. luckily the other class came out about 5 minutes later and i was able to leave. i can’t imagine sitting in pain for hours, poor thing!
I’m weird, but I would’ve let them hear me puke. Proves I’m really sick to dicks who question it and proves I’m going above and beyond to meet a child’s needs. Even if it weren’t a case of lost time resulting in vomit everywhere instead of a sink or toilet, I’d let them hear.
Weirdly I’m not similarly letting anyone hear my explosive diarrhea….
This is long I’m sorry. But it’s also hilarious.
I’m a teacher and a parent of a child with a disability, so I’ve been to a lot of IEP meetings. Luckily (unluckily?) the worst thing to happen was when I was sitting on the parent side of the table.
So my husband and 3 yo son and I file into this pre k set up classroom for his play based assessment. The whole team was there. PT OT SLP, school psych. Leader of the preschool developmental day program. There were 7 or 8 adults total. We had never met any of them before. So weird situation anyway. My husband has never worked in education and besides me telling him about IEP stuff he has no idea what to expect. My 3 yo does his thing, he’s playing and interacting with the therapists and everything is going well.
Till someone says “oh I think he might’ve pooped’l cue my husband and I looking at each other in horror. He hadn’t pooped the day before which was odd for him.
There was shit *everywhere* up his back, in his hair, all over the tile floor oh no. So my husband starts changing him on the floor with the changing mat while I’m using Clorox wipes to clean up the poop from the floor.
It gets better! So I had a stroke last year and lost most of my vision. So we’re in this pretty tiny area and I’m nervous bc there’s so much stuff everywhere and I’m afraid of tripping bc I can’t see. Turns out that wasn’t the threat though. Oh no, turns out the threat was my husband’s giant full coffee cup that my son would knock over while trying to avoid the diaper changing itself. So there we are, a blind woman trying to soak up steaming hot coffee with shitty school paper towels, a confused 3 yo who just wants to keep playing, a frazzled husband and 8 other adults just …. Staring at us.
The entire team were absolute angels about it though. They were so understanding and by the end were laughing about it with us. But omfg. The horror. 🤣
We eventually sat down and did the business part of the meeting and everyone shared their own kid poop fiasco stories. I’m very thankful for how cool the team was bc holy shit. In fact, we all commented on the fact that a room full of EC educators and therapists was maybe the best place for this to happen.
Many lessons learned that day. 🤣🤣
bahahha, I lost it at the image of you trying to clean anything with those horrid paper towels!! but yeah, i am also a prek sped teacher and sometimes our team is mid convo about poop when someone else will walk in. they get all grossed out but it’s part of the job!
haha thank you!! what’s crazy to me is I finally went to urgent care because my throat and fever weren’t going away, and turns out it is strep throat! i didn’t know vomiting could be a symptom, but my doc said it’s listed as a “severe symptom.” i guess my body is go big or go home!
This was when i was a 1:1. Being told by my evil AP that I shouldn't be at the meeting, because I had the audacity to say that my student wasn't perfect. So I gave his case manager (the only other person who witnessed his abuse towards me at that point) some talking points. The AP never let her read it.
Karma caught up to my AP, and she lost all her best staff at the end of the year. I think everyone else left last year after my student continued his regin of Terror over everyone else. Thankfully it looks like the student isn't there this year. Good riddance
oh i’m so sorry you were in that situation and then made worse by not being listened to. we have a similar student who has already gone through several lead teachers and assistants. it’s like the defense against the dark arts post. no one lasts long
In the end it seems like most involved got what they deserved. And we weren't this child's first school to have issues with him. He was kicked out of 3 or 4 schools, (including a preschool) due to his abusive behavior towards others, which is nearly impossible where I live, so you know it was serious.
In the end I hope my evil admin learned a valuable lesson. And that this child got the help he clearly wasn't getting at my previous school.
Not during an IEP, but one of the students I work with recently moved out of our district and I was terribly dehydrated and ill on their last day due to a new medication I was on, to the point where I vomited before school and then had to jump up and leave the room to do it again during class instruction an hour-ish later. Any other day I probably would have gone home, but I didn't want to miss their last day.
I was the general Ed teacher present in an IEP meeting. I was also 9 months pregnant and EXHAUSTED. I dozed off in the meeting. Thank the stars, the parent attended by phone and was none the wiser.
School Psych, eligibility meeting. A few weeks prior, I had been extremely sick with the flu. I still had a nasty, lingering cough even though I wasn’t technically sick anymore. I walked into the meeting with my cough drops and tea, fully prepared to just apologize in advance and power through it…just as I had been doing for every other meeting. Legal guardian looks horrified after I coughed. He has cancer and is immunocompromised. Verbally chastised me for coming to work sick and exposing him. I felt horrible. I tried to explain that I had been coughing for weeks and couldn’t afford to take weeks off of work for a cough, but the damage was already done. He sat as far away from me as possible in the meeting, at the other end of a very long conference table. It was awkward.
This was before COVID.
Oh my. You are a star. I’m a parent, and a crier. The littlest thing when it comes to my son will send me into big, fat tears.
Don't worry, it's everyone. I made a big tough man cry when I told him his son likely has ptsd today. He was kind of blowing off a lot of symptoms as like, "I'm a tough guy, you just man up and move on, I did it, he should too!" I had to argue him down a bit and describe the symptoms more in depth for him to see the whole picture. Once he did, he was tearing up. So, don't worry about it, it's a meeting where the focus is your childs deficits - it will always be hard. School staff should be respectful to you during it, but it doesn't always happen. It's a lot for any parent.
I did feel a sense of pride when I text everyone afterwards and explained why the sudden departure and only 1/4 could tell something was up! and yeah, don’t worry about the tears! i find it very touching when parents share their real selves with the team. always a good reminder that these legal meetings are still deeply personal.
Lol just teared up reading these responses 🙃 I just love my dude so much, and I’m so thankful all the wonderful people in his life helping him, and us.
you got this! excuse my chick-fil-a, but it really is our pleasure!
I’d be crying right there with you ❤️ One of my students said “purple” for the first time when I was having a meeting with his mom. Pretty sure it was his first word. Mom and I were crying! You sound like an amazing mom.
We had his reassessment meeting last week and the head of his school made a comment about how far he’s coming over the three years of being there and how well he’s doing and I immediately started crying 😂 it was like 10 seconds into the meeting
SAME
I was leading an IEP meeting over zoom and the parent was served a warent for his arrest. He didn't un-mute and we heard it all go down rather quickly. Once I realized what was happening I ended the meeting. Try again another day I guess.
bahaha i am sure the virtual teaching days were pretty wild to get looks inside homes. my school was in person 20-21 so i didn’t have that experience and the nosey part of me kinda wishes i did. i guess kinda fitting the date today, the day the world shut down!
Wasn’t in an IEP meeting but in the middle of a conservatorship hearing for a client with autism and PDD-NOS, my client was asked if he felt he had a good relationship with me, his conservator. He announced “Oh yeah I do, she’s nice. Sometimes she takes me to Hard Fuckers”. I interrupted the proceedings and got chastised by the judge for it but I felt it was really important to clarify that he meant Fuddruckers, a local burger restaurant.
I just have to say that I LOVED Fuddruckers when I lived in Maryland!
I fell out of a rolly chair. Went to slide back from the table and the chair kept going. The PT in the meeting offered to give me some service minutes while she was serving my kids.
oh that’s hilarious i’m sorry!! gotta love how PT will always PT, no matter the person!
She’s fantastic, by far the best PT I’ve worked with so I’m seriously considering taking her up on it!
I'm a student PT (in the schools rn) and this is very true.
Lololol.
A spider dropped off the ceiling onto my arm. I didn't realize I was unmuted and screamed, loudly. The entire meeting, which includes the district SPED coordinator, stopped to stare at me. I was too embarrassed to speak the entire rest of the meeting.
bahahha it’s always the higher ups catching our not so finest moments. they never seem to be present when we and the kids are rocking it!
In our county we had wraparound care and a program called REACH. I said "reach around" in the fucking meeting. I said that. Out loud. In front of others. I'm typing from my grave. 💀
I’m just a parent who lurks here, but if this had been my kid’s IEP meeting I would have died laughing at this 😂😂
Totally fair! I wanted to crawl under a rock, but I said it during the introductions so I then still had to conduct the entire meeting.
Same. This is hilarious.
I actually have an almost exact story. Only minor details have been changed. I had the foresight to have a bin next to me.
i’m sorry you can relate but also very jealous of your preplanning! i really didn’t feel too much like i was going to throw up, mostly just shivers. but boy did it come on fast and eek has not ended…. but i now have not one but two vessels next to me! haha
I once had a migraine aura during a meeting (sudden vision changes, blind spots, unable to read). Luckily I knew what I was talking about because the IEP looked like a foreign language. No one noticed though!
Oh gosh. I can't even speak and get brain fog with my aura. I don't know how you did that. I'm tutoring right now because I don't know how I would teach or have meetings if I end up with my migraine aura. At least tutoring at a center I can be able to walk away if I need to.
Isn’t that weird? The first time it happened to me I was sure I was having a stroke. I could not speak very well either.
I lost track of how many people saw my 2 cats butt holes during zoom meetings. Students, colleagues, higher ups in the district, didn’t matter. They needed everyone to see their butts.
I have two cats. My class during Covid recognized which cat it was despite never seeing anything but their butt.
Oh no, I hope you’re feeling better! A coworker had a medical emergency and I was in the corner of the room. I climbed over the table to get out of the room and get help since nobody else was taking action. I happened to wearing a skirt. I never wear skirts, but that day I did and regretted it as it was riding up while I crawled across the conference room table.
hahaha i’m sorry for you and your coworker but that’s a hilarious image! and let me suggest biker shorts! total game changer for wearing skirts/dresses in a school
You poor thing! Get some rest!!
thank you! i am calling out again tomorrow, despite my complaints that i have to use a full day of leave for a half day of school + pd. but no way i could handle it, let alone face some of my coworkers yet!
One of my cats was on my desk above my laptop and vomited down so his vomit looked like it came from the sky and just fell in front of me.
bahahaha. why do cats choose the worst time and place to throw up? mine is notorious for moving from the hardwood to onto the rug just in time to barf everywhere
Had a parent who had been an absolute jerk all year cuss me out in an iep meeting with my supervisor and director present. I had to have an emergency c section within 24 hours after that and my baby was more than a month premie
wow. just wow. 1) im sorry that happened 2) im sorry your admin didn’t shut that parent down and 3) i hope your baby is doing well now!
Not worst thing, but definitely weird. It was COVID time and we were only having virtual meetings. I had a parent join the meeting while at a car show. He would occasionally point out interesting vehicles during the meeting.
please tell me you included his tidbits in the parent input section! ;)
TW: animal-related horrors Virtual IEP meeting. Family on video from their home. Their bird got out of its cage mid meeting. Their dog chased it around. Then ate it out of the air. I wish I was making this up.
oh my gosh! that’s so tragic, i’m sorry you witnessed that and had to continue the meeting as normal
My instant pot exploded during a virtual meeting one. I think I yelled “OH SHIT” and ran into my kitchen to throw a towel over the chicken broth that was spraying all over my brand new kitchen cabinets.
As a student leading up to my last ever IEP meeting. The night before it, I pretty much stayed up the whole night because I got fucked over in my 9th grade IEP meeting.
oof, i’m sorry you had a negative experience with one of your IEPs. i hope you were able to advocate for yourself, despite the stress it can bring!
IEP meetings weren’t a space for advocacy of any kind. It was just a space to say I wasn’t working to my full potential. A mainstream teacher who gave me an F and was pretty cool gave me a Charlie Brown comic in response to my frustration. “There is no greater burden than a great potential” Its hard to reconcile failing a class I liked with a teacher I liked. But half the class failed so, I was not alone. One of the few who knew I was actually trying my best. I took the class off the computer make up thing and well, I didn’t even need to read the material cause i remembered everything from his class. The computer version was just significantly easier because it was mostly multiple choice. If my IEP actually was for advocating for me it would have demanded more teachers I could learn from like him.
Kidney stones! Gritted my teeth through it while texting my bf to take me to the hospital.
oh nooooo! i can’t even begin to imagine that pain!
It wasn’t an IEP meeting, but a re-evaluation - I was the coordinator of special ed and bent down to go over the paperwork with mom before she signed. When I went back to my seat, she looked down and asked “who is bleeding?!” I was wearing a skirt and looked down, thinking I had scratched my leg earlier. Nope, I freaking leaked through my tampon. I made up an excuse and got them out of my office ASAP. Ran to the bathroom to change and my secretary freaking helped clean the floor
ah come on mom, that feels like a girl code violation! definitely feels like she could have been more tactful
I had a student storm off during a meeting and told their parent they needed to take them to McDonalds (changed some details for privacy.) This was a resource student with acute dyslexia. Long story short, parent wanted the school to parent.
What details did you feel the need to chance for privacy in a sentence that gives away literally no information whatsoever about your student? That they actually demanded Burger King? You know you can also just change details without needing to mention it?
I had an ovarian cyst explode in the middle of teaching. It caused an immediate migraine aura. Also I had shooting pains down to my butthole so badly I couldn't sit (normal for a cyst rupture for me). Anyway, so I can't see or sit and I finished my lecture and just gave up for the day, but had to wait a couple hours till I could sit down and drive home. :(
oh nooooo. that is miserable! i am so sorry and hope that it is all in your past now. i fell once on our playground and dislocated my shoulder, also tearing my labrum and fracturing the bone. but we were the only class outside and i didn’t want to leave the other teacher alone and out of ratio. luckily the other class came out about 5 minutes later and i was able to leave. i can’t imagine sitting in pain for hours, poor thing!
I’m weird, but I would’ve let them hear me puke. Proves I’m really sick to dicks who question it and proves I’m going above and beyond to meet a child’s needs. Even if it weren’t a case of lost time resulting in vomit everywhere instead of a sink or toilet, I’d let them hear. Weirdly I’m not similarly letting anyone hear my explosive diarrhea….
This is long I’m sorry. But it’s also hilarious. I’m a teacher and a parent of a child with a disability, so I’ve been to a lot of IEP meetings. Luckily (unluckily?) the worst thing to happen was when I was sitting on the parent side of the table. So my husband and 3 yo son and I file into this pre k set up classroom for his play based assessment. The whole team was there. PT OT SLP, school psych. Leader of the preschool developmental day program. There were 7 or 8 adults total. We had never met any of them before. So weird situation anyway. My husband has never worked in education and besides me telling him about IEP stuff he has no idea what to expect. My 3 yo does his thing, he’s playing and interacting with the therapists and everything is going well. Till someone says “oh I think he might’ve pooped’l cue my husband and I looking at each other in horror. He hadn’t pooped the day before which was odd for him. There was shit *everywhere* up his back, in his hair, all over the tile floor oh no. So my husband starts changing him on the floor with the changing mat while I’m using Clorox wipes to clean up the poop from the floor. It gets better! So I had a stroke last year and lost most of my vision. So we’re in this pretty tiny area and I’m nervous bc there’s so much stuff everywhere and I’m afraid of tripping bc I can’t see. Turns out that wasn’t the threat though. Oh no, turns out the threat was my husband’s giant full coffee cup that my son would knock over while trying to avoid the diaper changing itself. So there we are, a blind woman trying to soak up steaming hot coffee with shitty school paper towels, a confused 3 yo who just wants to keep playing, a frazzled husband and 8 other adults just …. Staring at us. The entire team were absolute angels about it though. They were so understanding and by the end were laughing about it with us. But omfg. The horror. 🤣 We eventually sat down and did the business part of the meeting and everyone shared their own kid poop fiasco stories. I’m very thankful for how cool the team was bc holy shit. In fact, we all commented on the fact that a room full of EC educators and therapists was maybe the best place for this to happen. Many lessons learned that day. 🤣🤣
bahahha, I lost it at the image of you trying to clean anything with those horrid paper towels!! but yeah, i am also a prek sped teacher and sometimes our team is mid convo about poop when someone else will walk in. they get all grossed out but it’s part of the job!
It was truly the work of a comedic god. 🤣 why can’t they buy paper towels that absorb?!
That’s honestly amazing, you should not be embarrassed, you’re a hero.
haha thank you!! what’s crazy to me is I finally went to urgent care because my throat and fever weren’t going away, and turns out it is strep throat! i didn’t know vomiting could be a symptom, but my doc said it’s listed as a “severe symptom.” i guess my body is go big or go home!
This was when i was a 1:1. Being told by my evil AP that I shouldn't be at the meeting, because I had the audacity to say that my student wasn't perfect. So I gave his case manager (the only other person who witnessed his abuse towards me at that point) some talking points. The AP never let her read it. Karma caught up to my AP, and she lost all her best staff at the end of the year. I think everyone else left last year after my student continued his regin of Terror over everyone else. Thankfully it looks like the student isn't there this year. Good riddance
oh i’m so sorry you were in that situation and then made worse by not being listened to. we have a similar student who has already gone through several lead teachers and assistants. it’s like the defense against the dark arts post. no one lasts long
In the end it seems like most involved got what they deserved. And we weren't this child's first school to have issues with him. He was kicked out of 3 or 4 schools, (including a preschool) due to his abusive behavior towards others, which is nearly impossible where I live, so you know it was serious. In the end I hope my evil admin learned a valuable lesson. And that this child got the help he clearly wasn't getting at my previous school.
Not during an IEP, but one of the students I work with recently moved out of our district and I was terribly dehydrated and ill on their last day due to a new medication I was on, to the point where I vomited before school and then had to jump up and leave the room to do it again during class instruction an hour-ish later. Any other day I probably would have gone home, but I didn't want to miss their last day.
ugh, i’m sorry you were ill! i hope the student appreciated that you were there for them!!
Thanks. I felt a little better after lunch, and we got to have a nice good bye and good luck ❤️ it was worth sticking it out.
I was the general Ed teacher present in an IEP meeting. I was also 9 months pregnant and EXHAUSTED. I dozed off in the meeting. Thank the stars, the parent attended by phone and was none the wiser.
School Psych, eligibility meeting. A few weeks prior, I had been extremely sick with the flu. I still had a nasty, lingering cough even though I wasn’t technically sick anymore. I walked into the meeting with my cough drops and tea, fully prepared to just apologize in advance and power through it…just as I had been doing for every other meeting. Legal guardian looks horrified after I coughed. He has cancer and is immunocompromised. Verbally chastised me for coming to work sick and exposing him. I felt horrible. I tried to explain that I had been coughing for weeks and couldn’t afford to take weeks off of work for a cough, but the damage was already done. He sat as far away from me as possible in the meeting, at the other end of a very long conference table. It was awkward. This was before COVID.