Basic Math

Summer School begins next month, and last week I had the opportunity to meet the principal for the summer school program where I will be teaching. Because I lack anything at all resembling a backbone, I was talked into agreeing to her throwing the entire preschool program into one room, one windowless room with a steel door and a pile of crap at one end belonging to the regular teacher who has the unfortunate experience of being held hostage in that classroom all school year long. Now I may not have been a math major, but I know that by adding up the following numbers we reach a disturbing conclusion:

Total number of preschool children: 17 and rising
Total number of adults: 5 (2 teachers, 2 assistants, 1 high school student)
Total number of children using wheelchairs: 4
Total number of children who are medically fragile: 3 for sure
Total number of children who are known to run/escape: 5 for sure
Size of classroom: 10' X 20' absolute maximum (I am so bad at visual spatial tasks)
Total number of nonverbal children: 6 and rising
Distance to Cafeteria: 50+ yards down a hallway with a fire alarm
Distance to playground: well over 200 yards along a paved trail and as of now it is forbidden

Grand Total: We are so screwed!!

Is it really worth the extra money? The summer school principal seems to think this is a great idea to throw us all in one room together and me, Little Miss Keep Everyone Happy, had no backbone to tell her that such a plan would work as well as the Hindenberg. I can't wait to talk to the other preschool teacher on Thursday - Lord, I pray she has a backbone and a good strong voice!! Just call me chicken little!

Virgin?

Yesterday after packing the last box, slapping on the last label, wrapping up seven files (one of which the school had never even entered into the system - nice!), and carting three vehicle loads of stuff to summer school I had my paper signed and turned in my key. My first year as a teacher is signed, sealed, and completed. I can not yet process that, so instead I decided to celebrate by taking my mom out to dinner as she is visiting from home. We went to a local bar-b-que restaurant that has good food and decent prices and I decided to have a drink because it had been quite the day, week, month, year. So I ordered a strawberry-pina colada and no questions were asked. My drink arrived and I was surprised by how incredibly sweet it was and how cheap they were with the alcohol because I could not taste any but decided that it was not necessarily bad tasting. Our food then arrived and I decided to not say anything because I had not eaten all day and just wanted to enjoy a good meal. I did notice that there were no effects from the drink and, well, I would be a cheap date in terms of drinks because while I have never been drunk I can tell that I have had a drink after just one. So the bill arrived and printed neatly on it was "Virgin strwbry colada". The manager who took our drink order assumed that I not only was underage but so underage that it was not even worth askng for my ID to check and plaed the order for a virgin drink. I did not know whether to laugh or to be offended. So I informed our waitress, who looked barely legal herself, and let the offended side explain the situation. My virgin drink was free but I received no apology. So now I look so young that they do not even think to card me? Nice! I made sure to save the receipt because it is a classic and once we were in the car the laughter exploded. I am almost 26 and I still do not pass for 21 yet - or apparently anything near 21. Ugh! And everyone who reassures me that I will love it when I am 60 - that so does not help anything! And when I am 60 and want senior citizen discounts I am sure it will piss me off to have to drag out my ID each time then too! :) Lord help me if I try to go somewhere truly forbidden, like a Casino or a night club! Sixteen year old highschool kids can get drinks with fake IDs easier than I can when I am honestly 5 years older than is required. So the moral of the story is just because the drinker is a virgin does not mean the drink must be a virgin as well.

It Procreates in the Dark

Wednesday was the last day for my little ones at school. I will write about that soon because it was an awesome day that was so much fun and so bitter-sweet. They are ready to go take on the world, or at least 4-year-old preschool. However, in their wake they have left a year’s worth of stuff that had to be sorted, cleaned, and packed for the great migration northward. We are being relocated to a new school for next year and so every single item that we want to appear at the new school (or that we really hope to see again some day) must be boxed or tagged clearly with our program name and destination. We are taking bets on how many items are lost or “misplaced” in the great migration. So the packing began. Let me rephrase that to make it more accurate. So I began packing. And I continued packing. And packing, and packing, and packing. I ran around like some deranged person with OCD writing my label (preschool new school) on EVERYTHING that I could get my hands on that was too big to fit into a box – shelves, chairs, our huge and HEAVY wooden kitchen center, our swing frame, the changing table, and I think I may have labeled a few people who stood in one place too long. Then I began to try to fit everything into boxes and sort everything and figure out just what the heck we really had and needed. The classroom next to us benefited greatly because we had a lot of things that were totally bizarre for a preschool program – like materials for teaching fractions and the concept of mathematical equality. Um, okay, we will get to that as soon as my children understand the concepts of numbers and can count to ten. We also had board games that were a little too demanding – like Chutes and Ladders (our attention span ranges from nothing to nada to zilch) and this weird one where it was like memory but with random cards that did not match anything and with a board you had to move around (sure, we can follow all those rules, right after we learn not to pull the fire alarm). We had a lot of weird stuff like that. We also had things that I did not know we had in strange boxes hidden away in the closet. I think that over the year toys snuck away to the dark corners of the closet and procreated to make new toy hybrids and clones because I have no idea where all this came from. Once it was finally all sorted, packed, and stacked I was amazed. Where did we keep all of this? How did we have room for anything else – like children? And where on earth will I put it all next year? And might I mention again that I packed 99% of the entire classroom even though I worked with 3 other people in the same room? Go Team! I thought of many creative uses for the packing tape I wore like a bracelet and many interesting places to store toys but kept them to myself. Next year when I unpack, there will be a stern lecture about safe closet behavior and perhaps a video presentation before I shut the door lest the toys become frisky in the dark and I end up in this situation again!

Brought to You By The Letters AA

There are days when I feel like I have screwed up. There are days when it seems like I have brought my body with me to work but left my brain behind at home. However, even on my worst days I look pretty darn good compared to the workers at a restaurant who managed to get a three year old drunk on Margauritas. Someone, somewhere, had the brilliant idea to keep the apple juice and the marguirita mix in identical containers without labels. After all, nothing bad could ever come from that mix up! No one would ever pour liquor into a child's sippy cup and give it to them with their little child-friendly meal, never noticing the distinctly different smell of apple juice and alcohol. I must say that this child, he has a future in some fraternity somewhere in about 15 years. Most children I know when given a cup full of marguerita would have spit and sputtered and refused to drink it. He chugged with apparently speed and skill to make even the most beer-hardened frat brother proud. It did not occur to anyone that something may be wrong until the child began to lose his child-friendly meal. Congratulations Junior, you have been drunk and had your first hangover by the age of three! I can only imagine what the future will bring. As for the genius who made the executive decision to put apple juice and liquor in identical, unmarked containers - he's at home practicing the phrase "do you want fries with that?". And yet he will still make more money than I do and be more respected. I know companies are targeting a younger audience but I think this is a bit much. At least wait until the child can reach the bar without needing a booster seat...or until he can drink from an open cup!

Rose Angel

I came across this angel while exploring outside a really funky antique store in old town Leesburg. She seems the fitting image to post one week after my little one left.
Life is moving forward as it always seems to do, but even in the chaos that always is the end of a school year she is not forgotten. I know that I will never forget her because knowing her, caring about her, learning from her, and having to let her go has changed me. Little one, thank you for the honor of being your teacher and the gifts you gave me.

Road Side Attraction

I am still trying to figure out which way is up after losing my precious student on Monday. Each day has gotten a little easier, or at least a little easier to pretend. I am not sleeping well at night because it is then when everything is still and silent that I can not keep the thoughts away. Guilt is a terrible and horrible thing. This little one required a lot of individualized and constant care to keep her safe at school and to meet her health needs. I can easily remember on days when she was absent almost feeling relieved because it meant that we could better meet the needs of all of the kids and not have to worry about if we could keep her safe that day. Now I am feeling terribly, horribly, awfully guilty for ever being thankful that she was not at school because she is never going to be at school again. I feel like I am taking the easy road by not attenind her funeral bt it is in another state that is a 4 hour drive away and I simply can not afford to go.
At school everyone has been supportive. I have had teachers that I can only recognize as failiar to the school come up to me to offer condolences and support any way possible. One of the special education teachers even offered to take my class for a while on Wednesday if it got to be too much for me. I am so appreciative, but it is weird too because there is an underlying current. People seem to stare a little longer in the hallways. There is a sense of relief that it was not them and almost a desire to stare to see what it is like. It is sort of like when you drive past a horrendous accident on the expressway, you first thank the Lord that it was not you but then some instinct compels you to want to stare and gawk as you pass. I am the accident on the side of the expressway, I am the roadside attraction. I feel like I am a case study of some sort and everything I do or say is being noted. Ugh! The support is wonderful but suddenly having all eyes on you is creepy.
The school has been helpful as well in trying to support the family. The school helped me to obtain a yearbook, which my children placed their thumbprints in on the signature page and in which all of us who worked with her wrote notes about her. They also arranged to send flowers to the funeral home. The special education team raised enough money to send a significant amoutn of money on a gas card and a separate american express card to assist with travel expenses and other expenses. I also know that the preschool and Child Find groups are raising money as well and so I may be able to send even more to the family.
I still have no words to justify, to explain, to comprehend how five years can ever be the sum of a lifetime. I will never understand the justice in a child being born with so much against her, to know so much pain and suffering, to die so young. I will never understand why, it will never make sense, and I will never believe that she and her family were "chosen" for this. No God I believe in selects people for great suffering and bestows upon them agony. Our world sucks, things that are horrific and unjust and painful and devestating things happen. I do believe that she is finally free of tubes, of braces, of equipment and treatments that she hated. It just hurts being left behind with the questions and nothng but memories.

Speechless

I just found out that one of my students has died. There are no words that I can find for this. I was aware that she would most likely have a shortened life expectancy due to her genetic conditions, but no one expected it to be this short. And even understanding in concept that she would not live long is different than knowing that she is no longer living. Five years is not a lifetime. I do not know how to try to make this make sense when just about two weeks ago I held a "healthy" child and cheered as she showed off her growing physical skills. My only peace comes from knowing that she is free now from the tubes that she hated so much, from the braces and confining equipment that she always wanted to escape, and from the treatments that she would fight. I can not imagine how much her family is hurting because just as her teacher, just as someone who was honored to know her and care for her, my heart is breaking. Little One, fly free and learn what it is to dance.