When middle schoolers go wild

There's a boy on our team who's... well, let's just say that he's quite overweight. In fact, the other teachers on the team and I refer to him as "the big one" (kind-heartedly of course!). Anyhow, "the big one" is not very well respected by his peers, probably due to his weight. However, in the Bronx, it's not uncommon to see students 10-20 pounds heavier than they should be due to the sparse access to farmer's markets/healthier food options and high presence of bodega food (ex: chips, candy, gum, soda, etc.).

We all knew he was.. ahem.. *big*, but today he broke a new record even for himself. HE BROKE A DESK. IN MY CLASS. IN THE MIDDLE OF A LESSON. All the teachers this morning were a little stressed out because the discipline AP announced that he will be doing a special evaluation on our classroom management strategy/style/technique this week and will have a follow up meeting about classroom & behavior management soon. This is especially stressful for non-tenured teachers because this evaluation is one of many that will go in our tenure portfolios. (I'm up for tenure next year, and so far I've been exceeding expectations, but with the difficulty level of this year's students, I'm a little bit nervous about this upcoming evaluation.) Because this incident was so unexpected, I had no idea whatsoever about how I was going to begin to deal with this situation.

First off, my thoughts ran a little like this:

1. How can someone as big as him even fit in one of those desks? (We were considering getting him a special desk to avoid an incident like this, but felt that doing so would isolate him and make his "situation" more obvious.)
2. How in the world do you BREAK a desk?
3. I wonder if he will ever live this down...
4. Am I supposed to go and get help? From who? The custodian? Mrs. Brown (our team's science teacher next door)? Mr. O'Klay? (the discipline AP)
5. This is definitely not one of the things they teach you at NYU Steinhardt School of Education. And Steinhardt has one of the top undergraduate teaching programs.
6. Okay, the kids are laughing/taking pictures/whispering/taunting right now. Time to take action.

I ended up taking control of my class - silencing them, asking for all pictures/messages on their phones regarding this matter to be deleted, sent "big kid" to my desk for the rest of the period and mandated a "what happened in room 203 today stays in room 203" policy.

But all in all, it was a crazy day. The students never fully got back on task, and when I gave them their groupwork for the period and left the room to report the incident to the custodial office, Mrs. Brown had to come into my room and discipline the students for their (not excactly uncalled for) rowdiness: they RECREATED THE SCENE, continued taunting "big kid" for his accident, mocked his weight and well, did not do any of their groupwork.

Saved by the bell. Not long after I returned, the bell rang. Not too much learning happened the second half of seventh period. However, all teachers have those crazy days... just not many have crazy days like my South Bronx crazy days.

Teachers, any stories about your wild days? :)