And how did that happen?

In science, we are working on research projects. Each ecosystem we are studying, each child has a specific thing they have to research and create a presentation for. Last week, almost every kid made a PowerPoint presentation and I saved them on our school's shared folder. This is where my kids would save any future presentations as well.

(Please remember that all anecdotes were not recorded and I can't always remember wording exactly.)
As kids were working on their presentations today, a few of the kids were working on the laptops. William came over, "Ms. L., there is no ecosystems folder."
Me: "Hmmm. It was there yesterday. Let me log off and see if it shows up when we log back on."
William: "I tried that."
Me: "Let me check on my log in name."
William: (waiting patiently, not saying a word)
Me: (walking across the room and saying semi-loudly) "I still can't find the folder. I don't know what happened to it."
Randall: (walks up to me) "I think William and I accidentally deleted it."
Me: "Accidentally deleted it? How does that happen?"
Randall: "I was trying to help him and we were clicking around and then it was gone."
Me: "Well, the only way it would disappear is if you clicked on it and then pressed the delete button and then clicked okay that it would be deleted forever."
Randall: "We didn't mean to."
Me: "I understand that, I just don't understand how it could have even happened."
William: "I didn't do it!!!!!!!"
Me: "Well, that's not what I heard and I'm very upset now. All the work that your friends did last week on their presentations is now GONE! Everything they had done is gone. They all worked so hard on their presentations."
William: "I didn't mean to!!!!!!" (began crying hysterically and covering his head with his hoodie)
Juan: "It's okay William. We know you didn't mean to. We won't be mad at you." (and he continued on with some other kind words that I could not have even pulled out of my mouth)
Me: (walked away for a while and then called William over on our walk to specials) "Please come here, I would like to talk to you." (this was after I had to order him into line with us, he thought he could just sit angrily at his desk instead of going to specials)
William: "WHAT?!" (said as a yell and with a grunt)
Me: "Excuse me? Is that a respectful way to answer?"
William: (while giving me mean looks) "I am mad that Randall helped me and I didn't even want his help and he's the one who deleted it."
Me: "Okay. I understand that. I will talk to Randall as well. For right now, we can't do anything about what happened. I am upset, but there is nothing I can do about it. So we will have to just get over and go to specials."
William: (grunts)
Me: "I also need you to speak respectfully. It doesn't matter how mad you are at your friend or me, but it is never appropriate to be disrespectful to a teacher. Do you understand that?"
William: "NO!"
Me: "I need to know what you do not understand. What I just said is that speaking to me the way you JUST did is not okay and will not be tolerated." (I realized how far in front of us the class is...) "Let's walk just a little faster, the class is really far ahead."
William: (sprints forward to catch up to the class while I am asking him in a calm voice to please stop so we can continue talking)
Me: "Please stop. I need to talk to you and it's not okay to not follow directions."
William: (ignoring me)
Me: "William! Not following directions will get you consequences." (still ignoring me, I slowly catch up to him) "Not following directions and being disrespectful has earned you lunch detention. Do you understand?"
William: "YES!!" (said with a yell and a grunt)
Me: "And being disrespectful again will 'earn' you recess. Disrespect is not tolerated in this class." (earn as in lose; and I walked away)

WOW!!!! I can't believe all of this was because he and his friend somehow deleted our file. I was very upset and there might have been smoke coming from my head, but what I was more upset about was how William was dealing with it. I was also feeling upset for the other kids and remember the time they had spent working on those projects. I was able to forget about it and try to figure it out later, but he was not. He was holding a grudge and resented me for asking him how it happened and placing some of the blame on him.

On the other hand, at the beginning of social studies, I noticed a note on my desk. It was from Randall. He apologized for doing whatever he did to cause the file to be deleted and said that he would spend every drop of his recess trying to figure out how to recover the file. It felt very sincere and I appreciated the thought he took to write the note on his own.

Again, I reminded both Randall and William that I was not as upset about the file being deleted but about the way William handled the aftermath. This was not how a fourth grader should respond, but if you've read previous blogs, you've found out that this is how William responds to most of his problems.