Dad on Duty #102

So, here’s a fun fact.  Turns out there’s a huge difference between pre-K and kindergarten.  Especially when you add a language barrier.

Huge.

I had no idea.

Until today.

I’ve spent six years working with first-day kindergarteners, so I felt really well prepared for this new gig.  I was all like “puhleeze…..done this a million times….bring it on” <eye roll>.

I. Was. Wrong.

Wow….is pretty much the only word to describe this experience.

******

I’m at my new job today.  New school for me, this year.  Cooper Elementary.

A much older building.  And a much tougher demographic.  But a heart, and soul, and grit, that you cannot imagine.  Beautiful to behold.

This is one of the few schools with both pre-K and Spanish-only classes.  I happen to spend most of this first morning with that group; Spanish-only pre-K.

Now, here’s the thing.  I speak very little Spanish.  I can order drinks (like a rock star), and that’s really about it.  And I quickly learned that being able to get a jalapeño margarita on the rocks (with salt) at the pool bar is not terribly helpful when trying to manage 4 and 5 year olds at school.

But within a few minutes I realized our conversations were not terribly sophisticated.  It was pretty much “come here”, “wash your hands”, “stop” and “very good”.  Well, ok, I can do that.  A teacher asks “you speak Spanish?”  I reply “poco….muy poco”.   She answers in Spanish “you’re doing good, keep at it.  They {motioning to the kids} like it”.

So I help the teachers get the kids to and from the bathroom and out to the playground.  And it was challenging.  But it worked, and it was pretty fun, actually.

******

Then….there was lunch.

Lunch is just nuts at any level in school.  But for 4 and 5 year olds, who have literally never seen a lunch line, or any of these people, before in their lives….and half of them don’t speak English….well, lemme just tell you this; it is something every one of you should experience once in your life.  But just once.

You start by having to separate the lunchboxes kids (who go straight to the table) and the tray lunch kids, who need to go through the line and get a school lunch.  Out of 40 kids, we ended up with only two or three that sat at the table sans lunch, or who waited through the entire lunch line while holding their lunch.  So, not bad.

Then, you spend a huge amount of time and effort opening various food and drink packages.  Who thought this was a good way to provide juice to a kid?  There are three adults struggling to get the damn straw in the juice pouch; the kid is just watching, like he’s gonna have to testify in court later (“your honor, there’s a perfectly good reason she went apes&^% and drove to the Juicebox factory and stabbed somebody….”).

But wait.  That’s not the fun part.

Now we have to dismiss them.  This operation requires several steps.  Now take a moment and ruminate on that; it consists of several different actions.  So, yeah, as you can imagine….that went well.

First, they have to get up, take their trash, utensils and trays to the disposal/cleaning area(s) (yes, there are multiple locations and decision points in just that part alone).  Then they have to move back across the cafeteria to the other end, a really long way, counter-flowing against kindergarten (that is now entering)……and the KG-ers also don’t know what to do.

All hell broke loose.

Half in English and half in really bad Spanish, I try to bark orders at the kids to keep them moving in the right (general) direction.  Honestly, at this point, I’m just trying to get anybody that has finished eating out of the damn cafeteria without losing them out the back door.

And then that happened.

I’m pinned by 25 pre-K’s against the wall, trying to get them to at least face the same direction (unsuccessfully btw), when I watch a kid walk out the cafeteria door and appear to head toward outside.  I can’t get to him, and I can’t get anyone’s attention (I only know the names of like 5 people here, and “hey you teacher lady!” Doesn’t seem to be working).

Oh s&^*.  DEFCON 1.  Kid out.

I point to some random lady that I’m pretty sure works here and tell her “can you take these kids?  They need to go to the playground” and without even waiting for her to answer, I bolt toward the door out which I saw the kid go.

I can’t see him.

I stop two KG teachers in the hallway as they are walking their kids down the hall.  “Do you have everybody?” I ask.  They stop “I dunno, good question”.  They count. Oh boy, we are short one.

I fly out the back door to the playground and quickly lap it.  Nobody.  I run, literally run, around the periphery of the entire school.  No kids.  Back inside, to the nurse’s station and office.  Nope, not here.  I head back to the teacher’s room (who was missing the kid), and she intercepts me in the hallway “we’ve got him.  Another teacher thought he was a 1st grader and sent him back through the lunch line.  He’s fine.  He has a really full tummy, but he’s fine”.

Oh.  My.  Lord.  I lean against the wall and breathe.  “So sorry….we about killed you…” the teacher said.

Yeah.  Not the first time.  And I bet, not the last.

********

There’s a lot of crying on the first few days of school.  It’s just part of the background noise of the building.

There’s a couple kids (all boys, interestingly…..) who just cry at a low level ALL DAY. For both the first two days.  That’s like 16 hours of crying.  Their teacher is just holding their hands, trying to operate as normally as one can while holding a crying child.  Everyone that walks by pats the kid on the head, or says a word of encouragement.  But you’re also acutely aware of the fact that the kid needs to make it through this stage, this step.  And for him, crying might just be part of it.

One little boy just keeps calling “Papa!  Papa!”,  It breaks my heart to hear.  I rub on his head as he goes by, and talk briefly to him.  His (female) teacher is holding his hand the whole day, while he calls for “papa”.

I think; he needs a Dad.  Nothing else will work right now.

So at morning recess, I follow him out.  And I stick to him, largely.  Helping him on and off the monkey bars, challenging him to try the big slide.

At first, he is very reticent.  But within 10 minutes, it changes.  He’s now running around on his own, showing off a bit.  He has stopped crying, and stopped calling for papa.

Every time he runs past me, I tell him “muy bien!”.  He doesn’t acknowledge my praise, or interact with me other than allowing me to help him on the bigger, higher or more difficult playground components.

But for the first time ALL DAY, he’s not crying.  He lines up to go back in school, and just falls right in place, like he’s been doing this for weeks.  So I’ll take that as a victory.

*******

Now it’s time for our first ever dismissal as a new team.  The Cooper folks have a totally different process than we had at McCoy, in part because of the design of the driveway, in part just by choice.

There’s another guy here from McCoy.  Nick, the PE aide, transferred here to Cooper too.

Nick and I were very involved in dismissal at our old school.  For six years.  Together.

And we had it down.  It was a well-oiled machine.

So we both step out there, here at our new gig, ready to do our thing.  We’re going to go all McCoy on these people.  Watch this.

And the folks who have actually worked here for a gazillion years proceed to tell us; “no, we don’t do that.  We load all five spots first, then release those, and then move on to the next five….”

I have to admit, the first few rounds didn’t seem to go well.  And Nick and I exchanged glances.  And some words.  “They don’t know what they’re doing”, was basically our take.

But they stuck to their story, and insisted that we do too.  The lead dismissal staffer actually came up and told the two of us; “follow our process”.

Yes ma’am.

Begrudgingly, Nick and I did it.  And it worked a little better.  And then the next wave came through, and it went pretty well.

By the second day, we both lamented and did what they told us to do.  And it went really, really well.

Maybe…..just maybe…..they know better than us what works *here*.

*******

I already love this place.  It’s weird not seeing my kid.  But….she….and her friends….need me…. less.  I know they still need me, and I will help over there at her school occasionally.  And I will always be there for both my kids, and their friends.  But these kids here, at my new school, really need a Dad.

And that matters so very, very much to me.

It was what I was meant to be.