Skip to main content

One week down

J survived her first week of fourth grade at her kind-of-new school (two other schools merged with hers). And I survived a week of lunch duty, which I can now smile about.

Change is hard for most of us (I am looking right at you, self!). And when many people have to do something completely different, with dozens upon dozens of new faces, in a place they are not used to, well, you should not expect sunshine and lollipops. At least not every day.

After my first day of lunch duty this week, I wanted to cry. It was chaotic at times. There are 140 more students than there were last year, and of those students, probably 160 are new to me. So I cannot call many of them by name to get their attention or correct them. In the case of the last lunch (there are three), I have no idea who is in what grade since they can sit wherever they want, which means I often don't know if the correct kids are heading out to recess (we call them a grade at a time).

Throughout this week, I saw some kids sitting alone, kids completely ignoring me and other lunch monitors, kids getting up and walking pretty much whenever they felt like it, and kids practically anywhere but in the line they were supposed to be at the end of recess.

But by the end of the week, I saw a lot of good things: Some kids from different (original) schools sitting together when they had not before. Kids sitting back down when I called them on their trying to sneak out to recess before I called their grade. A group of young kids enthusiastically playing along to my impromptu game of Simon Says and following the directions very well.  A young kid who just yesterday tried to run away from the adults when recess was over who today let me take his hand and walk him into line, where he stayed until his teacher collected the class. Fewer kids getting up and wandering around during lunch (and some of the wanderers sitting right back down when we made eye contact). And almost every single kid getting into the correct line at the end of the recess, so they were ready to be picked up by their teachers.

Ladies and gentlemen, we made it through one of the most difficult weeks at the school, and we came out better than we went in. And I feel hopeful.

And I want to leave it at that.

Have a great weekend. Hopefully you get to rest from your labors on Labor Day. If only everyone did!

Comments

LaLa said…
Oh my goodness. Lunch duty sounds like an adventure. I hope YOUR HOPE continues.
Facie said…
LaLa: Yes, yes, it is an adventure. And here's to optimism. I am goin to need a lot of that this week. Thanks!

Popular posts from this blog

What a year 2021 has been (Day 7)

I have almost no words for what happened yesterday at the Capitol. Protesting is one thing (though I truly think it is and has been time to move on). But to storm the Capitol? A friend on Facebook said, quite simply, " Almost 20 years ago a group of people on an airplane sacrificed themselves to protect the Capitol. How far we have fallen!" Indeed. And, yes, it IS storming the Capitol. I have seen numerous videos of people knocking down barricades/fences, pushing police officers, and breaking windows and climbing through them. That is beyond protesting. And even if a protestor did not do those things, if they followed those seditionists past those barricades and into the building, they are just as guilty. I did not support the violent protests this summer that resulted in damages to businesses and public property (I was in full support of the actual protests). But I also acknowledged as a white person, I cannot truly put myself in the position of a black person who is angry a

Melancholy and Gratitude

 A few days ago, I decided to do gratitude posts on FB. I was good the first two days. Day 3 I got a little snarky as I posted about "doing the right thing" in regards to Covid. The Covid cases in Allegheny County have been on the rise. For a while, we had daily counts between 50 and 100. After July 4, we saw a spike for a few weeks, and then cases were back below 100. Unfortunately, other than one "low" day this week, where "only" 288 cases were reported, we have had between 500 and 620 daily cases. Fortunately, only a few people have died this week. But of course, any death is too many. I started to keep track of cases, deaths, and hospitalizations on 6/12/20. On that day, since 3/12, Allegheny County had had 2,034 cases, 352 people had been hospitalized, and 172 people had died. On 11/19/20, the county has seen a total of 22,042 cases, 1,724 people have been hospitalized, and 465 people have died from Covid since 3/12. In just over 8 months, we have had

Hug your loved ones!

I hate to say that I am still working through my grief. I mean, in some ways I can imagine I will always be grieving. But I feel pretty confident it will get easier, and I will cry less and less. But, yeah, I guess I am still working through it. Yesterday, a thought occurred to me: I had not hugged my dad since the end of February, and that will now be the last time I ever did. I did not see him for almost three months because of COVID, and then at the end of May, he started his series of hospital visits with skilled nursing stints in between. I was always afraid to hug him then. What if I gave him COVID? And yet when my dad had really bad ICU delirium during a few different hospital stays, I fed him. If I could do that, why not hug him? So I cried a bit last night thinking about that. I am not necessarily a big hugger; I used to hate it, and then probably before Jordan was born, I got back to doing it again. Before COVID, I hugged my friends goodbye (and sometimes hello). I always wou