Yesterday was my first day of working in an elementary school. For the last two decades, I have taught college-aged students or tutored, so working with littles is a massive shift. I have school-aged children of my own, but groups are still a challenge. The veteran kindergarten teacher said it was like herding cats and I did not disagree.
My task of instructional assistant was to spend about an hour helping each grade with whatever the teachers needed. My first class was helping kinders with an art project involving construction paper, sticks and scissors. The last two items have improved since we were kids—replacing drippy elmers and dull scissors with a neat glue sticks that go on purple and dry clear, and ergonomic scissors that can actually cut paper.
After that, I put tape on Chromebooks for fifth graders to color-code their charging station and wires. It was tedious, but satisfying.
Finally, I was a lunch and recess monitor for first and second graders. Lots of the children brought home-made lunches in cute bento-styled boxes in colorful fabric satchels. Some of them even had encouraging, handwritten notes, one had a post-it that just said “eat.” It was different than the metal lunchboxes we had with a PB&J, but the tiny, hard-to-open paper milk cartons from the cafeteria have not had an update since the last century. The playground was stocked with kickballs and hopscotch.
One thing that has changed is the building. The office was double-glassed with electronic keypads. My ID was a key card and all the doors automatically locked behind me with metallic clicks. It felt like jail.
Of course, Wednesday’s school shooting in Georgia laid heavily on my mind as I electronically booped my way in and out of rooms. The threat does not come from the outside. It was a fourteen-year-old boy who carried a war weapon to school this week. It is an unfathomable tragedy, and yet it keeps happening again and again and again. The axiom that expecting different results without changing is still proving to be true, and our children are paying the cost.
