I arrived early at the Capitol campus and was surprised by the number of geese out on the playground. Even later, when they had a fire drill, there were still some geese remaining. "I'm going out to wait with the dinosaurs," I heard one boy tell a friend.
I was pleased when the teacher announced to her class that I would be substitute TA for the day. I could hear a ripple of approval pass through the class. I had interacted with some of these students before, and they thought I was a good egg.
At the end of the day, waiting in car line, a boy came up to me and said, "Let's dab!" I understood dabbing as a dance move, but he understood it as a ritual handshake, something I wasn't particularly good at in the Seventies, the decade of ritual handshakes. When he succeeded with me he announced to everyone, "I dabbed with an old man!"
Montessori attracts parents with kids that have special needs. I was curious about one in particular, Anxiety Girl, hiding under her desk and shrinking into her hoodie. She avoided people and they avoided her too. At lunchtime she sat near, but apart from, her class. I hope the best for her - it's hard to be so anxious at such a young age.
The Carmichael campus is larger than the Capitol campus and has different customs and ways. It was my first sojourn working there. I was baffled by the playground, which is partly under reconstruction. I entered the playground in confusion and wonderment and a girl leaped out in front of and said, "You're new! Let me show you around!" That was observant and nice of her.
I found myself helping acclimate a new student to the school. The New Kid had been homeschooled in previous years and so this was his first day of school - EVER! I think it was stressful - as bad as his worst fears, he said. Still, I could sense determination. He rolled around on the floor and pitched his voice to a high squeak, which was charmingly nerdy and totally inappropriate for classroom silence. Not surprisingly, he got in trouble at lunch, when he got on top of the metal picnic table outside the classroom. A no-nonsense PE teacher dressed him down. It was a baffling experience. "I KNOW how to fall," he said, and illustrated by falling in a controlled way onto the concrete floor. I explained, "It's like the PE teacher was saying, you could fall onto other people. You could be okay but they could get hurt." So, he had to suffer for other people's incompetence.
Science in the afternoon covered the subject of caves, and the life forms therein. I told one of my stock stories about going into a New Mexico cave, and finding a pool of water with white balls lying at the bottom of the pool. When we touched the balls the white surface of the balls popped, leaving dark central cores off of which streamed some kind of gas. It took us a long time to understand what these were. They were the remains of dead bats, wings having long ago rotted away. The kids looked at me with big eyes. "When did that happen?" one boy asked. "That was back when I was in high school," I said. The boy's eyes got even bigger, and he said, "That was a LONG, L-O-N-G time ago!!!" I wanted to explain that it was just a short time ago, but I let the matter drop.
I could tell the afterschool Club M experience was different at Carmichael than at Capitol. Still, some of the kids were willing to play outside in the heat. I watched a kid running towards a tree; almost like towards a base in some kind of ball game. The kid's eyes stretched upwards into the tree. Suddenly, a blonde waif, about 9-years-old, fell out of the tree and flat on her back in a cloud of dust. She was fine; it was just a surprise. Who knew she was there?
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