"These tough bikers have a soft spot: aiding child-abuse victims. Anytime, anywhere, for as long as it takes the child to feel safe, these leather-clad guardians will stand tall and strong against the dark, and the fear, and those who seek to harm."
This is a beautiful story. It might make you cry. It will be worth it.
The fifth-graders in the "rough" part of the city have been waiting for this all year: the dash to the rock on the hill and back. This is their chance to make their mark, to be legends before moving on to middle school.
The gym teacher dramatically announces the all-time record and waves the flag. Dozens of feet pound across the field and up the hill, they reach for the rock, and they're back already.
"We have a new record!" announces the gym teacher, and congratulates the new champion, who seems proud but stunned.
The other kids move on to tug-of-war, but the champion stays behind, talking to a friend. "I knew I could do it," he says, in awe of his own power. "I had a feeling I could do it, but I wasn't sure I really could."
"A frog!" someone calls out, and all the kids gather around to see.
A teacher on the scene has them all sit down in a circle and pass the frog around. Tug-of-war can wait.
"Does anyone know what frogs are called when they're born?" she asks. The frog is passed from one set of little hands to the next, the kids beaming in delight and a little squeamishness.
"Tadpoles!" someone calls.
"That's right," she says. "Watch how it breathes. Right now it's breathing in air, you can see how its throat expands. But it can also breathe underwater. Because it can breathe both in air and water, it's called an amphibian."
Even the few kids afraid to hold the frog are grinning ear-to-ear. But eventually tug-of-war calls, and we release the frog to the woods. The teacher guides them to their next activity, but I spend the rest of my afternoon chasing kids back from frog-hunting in the woods. It's a beautiful day.
I seem to keep missing you on my dash lately, so came directly to the source to get the fix/updates. And while I'm here, just wanted to drop a line and remind you that I think you're awesome. #theend
Aw, thanks! One reason you may not have been seeing my posts as frequently is that I have not been posting as frequently...I've been keeping really busy with a lot of really good things. But I am making an effort to increase the updates! More soon!
Running late for a 7 am start time, I grab a bag of nuts and an apple and plan to eat breakfast before class starts. I'm setting up for the day, reading the lesson plan, when the school nurse walks in.
"Have you ever been here before?" she asks, looking worried.
"No."
"We have some students with SEVERE allergies," she tells me. "Make sure you look through your folder."
Normally when I sub in an elementary school, I might see one or two medical plans about students with allergies in the folder. But in this folder they just keep coming. To be fair, the art teacher during the week has every student in the school. But even so, there are at least three students in every class that have what are labeled LIFE-THREATENING ALLERGIES. Fifty, sixty, seventy plans.
What is going on? I wonder. Is this school some kind of magnet for kids with severe allergies?
"I guess I should put these nuts away," I say sheepishly.
The nurse nods. "And the apple," she adds severely. "We have some students with raw fruit allergies."
I never, ever teach without eating breakfast. But I put my food away.
"If you see a student coughing," she says, "don't hesitate to call 911."
"If they're COUGHING?" I repeat.
"Well, not if it seems like a normal cough. But if they're coughing too much."
I hesitate.
"They'll know," she tells me.
When I have a chance to look through the plans more thoroughly, I see that some of the students have life-threatening allergies, and some of them break into rashes. It's just that they all seem to have the same emergency plan for any experienced symptoms: call 911 and report an allergic child on your hands.
My sister has some pretty bad nut allergies, so I've always taken allergies really seriously. And I don't want to give any child any kind of allergic reaction, life-threatening or not. But to call all allergies life-threatening diminishes the seriousness of those that actually are, and teaches kids they can't take care of themselves in a dangerous world.
Usually as a sub it's hard to make connections in the buildings where you come and go, but I've been getting along great with my colleagues in the ESL classroom where I've been working. It's Teacher Appreciation Week, and they are getting paraded with candy and T-shirts and who knows what else.
"Probably the reason there isn't a Substitute Teacher Appreciation Day is that everybody figures that substitute teachers are appreciated enough already," I muse.
Many of these teachers have been subs themselves and think this is hilarious. "Yeah," agrees one spunky young teacher my age. "We don't want you guys to get narcissistic."
The spunky young teacher and I head to the office to cash in on the cookies the teachers' union has brought us. There's a nice note there about how teachers are unsung heroes but everything they do matters and will be appreciated someday. We walk down the hall contentedly munching our cookies.
"It was nice of the teachers' union to bring us cookies," I say.
"Yeah!" agrees my new friend.
"I would prefer collective bargaining rights," I add.
She nearly spits out her cookie in laughter. "But cookies are nice," she chortles.
And we spend the rest of our break at a coffeeshop sharing our life stories.
When the school you're subbing at is right next to a gourmet dog food deli, the kids all ride bicycles during gym class, and half the fourth graders are gone first hour because they have orchestra rehearsal, it's easy to infer that you're in a pretty ritzy neighborhood.
The kids are disappointed we won't be doing their Micro City program today because I don't know the rules, but they are well-behaved and get to work. In social studies we learn about Community Involvement, focusing on a man in a low-income neighborhood in Philly who helped his neighbors buy vacant houses.
"This is a big problem right now," I tell the class. "Right now there are a lot of empty houses. Has anyone ever heard the word foreclosure?"
A few kids raise their hands, but no one can define it. How can I explain this to kids this young?
"So," I begin, "it's very expensive to buy a house. It usually costs at least $100,000. And almost nobody has that much money, so they have to go to the bank and borrow some, and every month pay some back. That's called a mortgage."
They nod.
"But the banks were making bad deals with these mortgages," I tell them. "They were making plans they didn't think people would be able to pay back. And when they couldn't pay them back, the economy crashed. And when the economy crashed, even more people couldn't pay their mortgages. And when people can't pay back their mortgages, the bank comes and takes away their houses."
A little girl raises her hand. "In Micro City," she says, "we have to use our points to make payments on our desks. But Lindsey didn't pay for hers, so the teacher turned her desk around, and now she has to put her stuff in a bin on the floor."
I have to laugh at that. "So your teacher foreclosed on Lindsey's desk," I say. "But if it were a house, she would have to leave. She couldn't keep her stuff there."
Another girl raises her hand. "My mom got a letter in the mail saying they were going to take our house away. And it was really scary because we didn't know if we could find another place. But then we moved to another house."
She's young enough that there's no shame in telling this story. Because gourmet dog food deli or no, these kids are not insulated from the economic crisis.
"Thanks for sharing that," I tell her, genuinely moved. "Has anyone else heard of something like that happening?"
More hands go up. Kids want to share their stories and ask more questions.
At the end of class we haven't even come close to answering the questions about Community Involvement, but it doesn't matter anymore. We're exploring current events that affect my students--and I'm helping them understand these events in ways they haven't been able to before.
It's moments like these that I think I could actually do this with my life.
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