Dad on Duty #106

My new school has a lot more guys as teachers and aids than my prior assignment.

It’s good to see.

And these are not little guys either; most of them are pretty impressive presences in the hallway or classroom.

And with every one of them, I have been amazed and impressed with their gentleness, caring demeanors and the ease with which they interact with the kids.

Having said that, I want to call out two in particular. The coaches.

Coach Lane and Coach Nick are perfect examples of what I hope our kids see in men. In every single school, every single day.

They are strong and plenty tough. But they always interact with the kids with the most upbeat and positive affect possible. Welcoming, encouraging, helping……calling each kid by name, and knowing what each kid needs from them (and the rest of us).

They create innovative and super fun activities, every single day. If I could, I would just spend the whole day in the gym; they do really fun stuff. (Of course, because of them, that’s not where I am needed…..).

When I do occasionally stick my head in there, I often find one of them having an individual session with a scholar; pulled aside, talking. And it’s rarely about PE.

These men are providing invaluable guidance and a beautiful example for our kids.

We need more of these guys.

Kudos gentlemen.

*******

One little fellow really likes to hang out in the barroom.

It seems to be his version of Cheers bar.

His teacher, new to the job, sticks her head out in the hallway as I walk by and asks “can you get <<name>> outta the bathroom? I have no idea what he’s doing, but I’m about to promote him to first grade from there”.

So I head to the bathroom and sure enough, there are two little feet visible under the stall walls. He’s chatting it up with every other kid that comes in, and the other kids are not entirely comfortable with this.

“Whatcha doin?” I ask. “Are you going potty?”   He pauses, a bit too long, and finally says “….um…..yeah…..”.

“You got 2 minutes dude”. “Ok”, he replies.

At the 1:45 mark, I tell him “OK, that’s it. You’re not doing anything. Come out”. It takes me about 10 of those orders to get him to actually leave the stall.

I’m a little worried that he is really struggling to relax enough to go to the bathroom at school. I’ve had kids before who confided to me that they couldn’t get any privacy at home, and this was the only place they could go. And if *this* is your private/quiet place, it must be pretty bad at home.

So I’m trying to be sensitive to that.

When he finally comes out, I crouch down and get in his face. “Tell me the truth; do you need that much time to go? Because that’s ok if you do. Sometimes it’s hard to go at school. So be honest with me; if you need time, I’ll make sure you get it. Or are you just messing around”.

And then the most amazing thing happened.

He was honest.

“No, I’m fine. I’m just messing around. I like it in there”.

Well, there ya go.

**********

Today we’re doing more State required hearing and vision tests. It is extremely important; unrecognized hearing or vision problems will profoundly affect a kid’s success in school….and in life. And for many kids, this is the only reliable source for such a diagnosis.

It is simplistic and rudimentary; almost binary. Either your hearing and vision are normal, or they ain’t. We can’t determine much past that with the resources we have.

Certain grades must have it, and new kids must have it. For other kids, its optional. That’s an important logistical hurdle, as I’ll explain in a moment.

The school nurse is responsible for the successful execution of this testing.

So nurse Rocio is running around trying to get the right kids to the right testing station, and manage the movement so that they all get done before dismissal, while also doing her real job of taking care of what amounts, on a daily basis, to be about 100 kids with some sort of malfunction.

After about an hour of that nonsense, she asks me if I can take a scholar from her office to the hearing test, and she’ll run and go check on the vision testing and be right back to take care of the FOUR kids who are now waiting on her for medical care.

I say “maybe let me move the kids around, to the testing? I can’t do your real job, but I can move kids pretty well”. She looks at me for a moment, then hands me the check sheet. “Here’s who needs what. Make it so.”

Got. It.

And I got the required classes through the testing, all of them and all of it, with 12 minutes to spare.

She had to redirect me once; I figured Pre-K had to get done first, since they leave an hour before the other kids. So I had teed up a Pre-K class (that had a new teacher…..bless her heart….) to launch, and Rocio checked in with me on progress. I told her “I’m sending this Pre-K class next since we have less time”. She replied “great, except it’s not required for them. It’s only required for <<pointing to the check sheet>> these guys, them, and…them”.

Crap.

So I haul buns back to the Pre-K room, to find the teacher had gotten all her cats lined up at the door. Now mind you, getting 5 year olds organized and in line to do something….anything at all….is truly the equivalent of invading Normandy from a logistics standpoint. The teacher looks exhausted, as I swing her door open and say “um…..never mind. Sorry, I was wrong, you don’t hafta go.”

She *almost* reached over to the pencil cup, grabbed one, and stabbed me in the head.

And she’d have been justified.

Other than that, it went pretty darn good.

*******

One of our subs gets assigned to the Pre-K Spanish class.

And I don’t think he speaks Spanish.

So this should be fun…..

I help him and the aid (who does speak Spanish, fluently) move their kids several times. He mostly just points and motions.

Apparently I know about 500% more Spanish than him, and I know about five words. But I help as much as I can, and engage the kids in what little Spanish I have.

After one such conversation in the hall, he looks at me and shrugs; “just trying to keep them between the lines here….”. Yep. And doing really good at that, in truth.

But he’s gentle and caring and kind to the kids.

And they understand that, perfectly.

*******

One little, a beautiful girl who is always dressed impeccably and has just the right bow in her hair, responds to every correction, every hurdle, every challenge by having a melt-down, all-out cry.

Literally, if you just tell her “let’s get back in line, please”, she starts wailing.

So we are all trying to be firm about changing that behavior. It’s hard, because she’s so damn cute.

The challenge, which is profound and omnipresent in the school experience, is this; how much of her reaction is learned, and how much is biological? Does she have chemical or structural changes that cause this reaction? Or did she learn it and it can be un-taught?

Or is it some of….both?

And how do we know?

It matters, a lot. And it is a question with which we are faced, hundreds of times per day, hundreds of kids per day.