I'm Just a Big Puffy Marshmallow

A few weeks ago, one of my students lied to me. A big lie, too. It affected another teacher and that teacher in turn wrote a referral for her and instructed me to do the same. As I am a sub, I am not privy to the proper channels of writing up a student with a referral, so Diana had to e-mail one of our assistant principals to figure out what to do. We had not yet heard back from the principal, and I became unsure if this is even worth looking into anymore since the time had kind of passed, and she was already getting in trouble for it.

Since the student lied to me, she hasn't spoken to me at all and has avoided all eye contact with me. Today, the student came up to me and said "Miss Nguyen, I need to talk to you." Picture a student about 8 inches taller than me, looking at me like I might shoot daggers from my eyes. She was looking uber sheepish. I just nodded and said, "Okay, what's up?" And then she said, "I just wanted to say I'm really sorry for that day, and it's all been taken care of, and... I'm just really sorry I did that to you." And then she leaned down and gave me a hug. I feel like I could've been a hardass and said something "I hope you learned your lesson"-y, but instead, I just went with, "Well, I really appreciate that." Because I did. She didn't have to say anything to me ever again, but she came to me on her own volition and apologized.