Thursday was an amazing day.
I was a substitute teacher for kindergarten students. They're really cute and they're small and cuddly. And they don't sit still. Not even in school. And they can't read or write.
What in the world is a person supposed to do with that?
I had a teacher's aide there to help me. I thanked my lucky stars that I had her there. What in the world would I have done?
There were lesson plans, but these are intense lesson plans. No flash cards, no plus or minus. This is number concept action. When I clap three times, that makes the number three. See? Three things happen, that translates into a number that we use when we're buying food or counting cars. And then we'll learn about things that are more than ten. I have ten fingers. What if I want to make sixteen? So we're teaching them base ten math.
Okay, I could handle that stuff, but they can't sit still. At all. And they have to pee all the time. Three boys went to the bathroom and two came back to say that the third was doing bad things. Of course my mind was racing to disgusting primate at the zoo kind of things. In fact, one kid was wagging his butt around and singing some song about making the other two look at his butt.
So here's where my child handling skills weaken. Instead of scolding little butt boy, to the other two who were victimized by this gluteal exposition I said, "Well, it's his butt, right? You didn't want to see it. And he stuck it right out, right? So we don't really have to worry about it, right?" What was I supposed to say to butt boy anyway? "Okay, you know you have to keep your bottom covered, don't you?"
They're silly and they giggle and wiggle and laugh at everything. I read to them and they sat at my feet. On them, if I'd let them. The girls at my feet were playing with my skirt. It was down to my ankles and pleated. They held the edge up to see through to the person sitting next to them. Then they plucked at my tights over and over. Then they touched my shoes and said, "They're soft. Oooo." They were flannel shoes. Out of fashion, but I like them anyway.
The teacher's aide said, "You're used to high school students, aren't you?"
Oh yes, I most certainly am.
On Friday I had middle school students, who will ever and always be a mystery, although an increasingly funny mystery.
How happy was I to have middle school kids! After the kindergarten day, I went home and fell asleep at 7:30. I woke up at 10, had some yogurt or something and went back to bed until 6:30, when I got the call for the middle schoolian hooligans.
I'm old and cranky. Just like the teachers I thought were so old and cranky when I was in school. The world's a big circle. You're little and then you grow up. When you're grown up you look back at kids who are little. Then you realize that you are the person who delighted or persecuted the kid who was little. And they're going to grow up to realize the same thing. Something like this will happen when I'm older still, but I don't know what it is yet. A big circle. But you only realize it's curling back on itself until much later.
Posted by dotty at October 31, 2005 12:27 AM