Dad on Duty #120
The first few days of the new school year are done.
I have complied a lot of stuff to talk about, but in the interest of your attention span, I will compress the volumes of material into a one (maybe two) glass-of-wine reading session.
Part 1, for your consideration
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This is my second year at Cooper. I am a little more settled in, a bit more familiar.
We are experiencing a couple of changes this year. A lot of new kids, some new teachers and a new Boss. One of the changes is that my friend and co-ex-McCoy conspirator, Nick, is leaving us.
On Day 1, Nick seeks me out in the morning car line and tells me “I want to tell you before you hear. They haven’t announced it yet. But I’m going back to McCoy to work with behavioral students”. Our school will miss him, and I personally certainly will. But he is a gifted teacher and mentor, and the kids he will now work with every day will benefit greatly from him. It is a great choice. Godspeed, good man.
The first few days are always full of adventure. New kids unfamiliar with anything here; returning students who have moved to a new hall, new teachers and new times for everything; and new staff who don’t know the processes or geography of the school.
We are also steadily growing. Starting this year, we have right at 600 kids; slightly more than McCoy in a building that is 20 years older, and about 80% of the size. You can tell; it’s snug in here. If you turn around, you bump into somebody.
And for those unfamiliar with our building, we have babies. We operate Pre-K and PPCD, which means we have kids as young as 3, some with significant disabilities, who have never been to school and have no idea how this whole thing works. So, that’s super easy to navigate.
To give you an idea just how small these kids really are:
This girl was attempting to open the door to go back out to recess after using the bathroom. Um, no way she’s moving that. That door might as well be this door:
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Staff and parents came up a few days before school started to “chalk the walk”. There were lots of uplifting and inspirational things written on the sidewalks as the kids came in for the first day.
We even had a yard sign up to help welcome them.
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Almost all the teachers moved rooms over the summer. We had to make more space for additional students and classes, while trying to maintain some level of continuity within grades. This required a large scale operation that rivaled the Great Westward Migration.
One teacher was moved to a room without windows, and she’s somewhat claustrophobic. So her solution? Create your own window, complete with wildlife:
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Moving the littler kids around in and outside the building is arduous and requires a lot of manpower, especially when 1) they’re really little and 2) they are new to the routines.
These photos belie the actual level of challenge; I assure you, in real life, those kids do not stay in that line more than about 10 steps at a time. It is a constant game of whack-a-mole.
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As I prepared to help shuttle some of our littler kids from their practice-lunch run to the playground for recess, I see a teacher dispatching a kid from her room and shouting “go….run!”, motioning toward the bathroom. The kid has his hand over his mouth.
I move to intercept him and help him, and just as I get to him I ask “are you sick?”. His answer? You remember that scene from “Parenthood” where Steve Martin’s character asks his young daughter if she feels sick? That’s what happened.
I get him to the bathroom and stay with him a bit, clean him up, and escort him to the nurse’s station.
By now the really little kids are out on the playground, so I head out there to help. One tiny girl is doing the pee-pee dance, and her teacher asks if I can get her to the bathroom. We start heading that way…..and both realize it’s a really long way when you’re that little. So I scoop her up and carry her in the hopes that we’ll make it.
We *almost* did.
After we get back to the playground, teachers point out a couple of lunch boxes that were left from yesterday, in the sun and grass, with food still in them. Of course, ants have discovered them, so the teachers are trying to make sure the little kids don’t get tangled up with that. As we are departing the playground, I grab the lunchboxes and knock as many ants off as I can, and bring them in to clean them.
As I’m standing at the sink, hunting down ants who are still on me (I am largely finding them by waiting for them to bite me…), I realize:
- It’s 8:50 am. Not even 9 o’clock yet.
- I have pee on my arm, barf on my shorts and I am covered with ants.
- This is gonna be an awesome day, ‘cause it’s gotta get better from here.
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For the kids who are new to school, it is important to make it fun and engaging and welcoming. Every teacher does that in different ways, and I am always amazed by what they do.
For these KG-ers, their teacher decided a station of shaving cream would do the trick. And the kids were very, very happy with that plan.
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This is Mo. Mo is a plushy that comes to school with one of our kids, everyday. When it is time to do something that causes the kid anxiety, his teacher encourages him to go get Mo and bring Mo with him.
Mo helps.
I wish I had a Mo. Everybody needs a Mo.
Oh, and also a thoughtful teacher who finds a way to make her kids feel better, because she thinks about them individually and personally.
That too.
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