The kindergartners already knew that I was less-concerned about playground rules than younger TAs. I was more interested in playing with the kids than in controlling them. The younger TAs would interrupt my gentle corrections and implore the kids to listen to and obey me and please don't walk up the slide, although I had never asked the kids not to walk up the slide, and in fact had quietly encouraged it. In the week leading up to Halloween, someone had placed a skull-shaped pillow in one of the kindergarten classrooms, with eyeballs strapped to the eye sockets. The kids had apparently pondered this apparition, so when I showed up on the playground they called me Mr. Eyeball.
It's sobering to realize that some of these kindergartners were born AFTER the pandemic. It's strange to have conversations with people who have such shortened time horizons. I notice that a particular TK kindergartner from last year, who struck me as deviant in some sense, seemed to be adjusting well to kindergarten. In contrast to last year's rampage, this 5-year-old dropped only one f-bomb in my hearing.
I was also a TA in classrooms with older students. The kids would get fascinated by random things. For example, there was a pile of polished rocks by the fence, likely left by another group of students some months before. The students called the pile of rocks Sea Glass - maybe it was! - and tried to collect every variety and color of rock and trade amongst themselves.
Recess means keeping kids from running around with sticks in their hands. Because, like a Chekhov Gun in a play, a stick in the hand of a kid will get used, likely in a way you don't like.
Lunchtime in the cafeteria with the kids is fun - the most social activity of the day. I help open resistant plastic packages for the little kids, pick up food dropped on the floor, and gobble like a turkey. It's amazing how much kids talk - basically, they talk all the time.
There was a very disruptive and very insistent seven-year-old boy who loved to snatch my cap at lunchtime and play keep-away with it. I have to fight to get my cap back, and I'm pleased that some of the girls-who-follow-rules take my side and help me get the cap back.
One day, I was TA in a classroom with seven-year-olds, and, lo and behold, here was this disruptive kid from the cafeteria again, who immediately resumed the keep-away game, in the most-inconvenient place, during class. Soon the struggle evolved into a wrestling match, but as long as I could keep the wrestling silent, the teacher was able to read to the students without interruption. Then I noticed the kid was bleeding on me from a cut on his knee. Oh joy - a disease vector! Every year the TAs are required to watch a video on what to do with bodily fluids, and as the video says, there is no better way to spread disease than direct contact with blood. Then another student pointed out that that I was bleeding too, from a cut on my arm. I was likely to produce much more blood, since I take a blood thinner. If I lean just so, we two can become Blood Brothers for life! I resisted that impulse.
Then, two weeks later, I saw the same kid on the playground. The kid had his arm in a sling. He had apparently injured himself at some point. That didn't stop him from resuming the keep-away game with my cap, but he was now much weaker. Poor kid!
After school comes Club M - taking care of the kids as they await their parents. The kids pile into appointed classrooms, relax, and do what they want. As the kids gathered at one such classroom I became a focus for alarm. A spider had parachuted onto the brim of my cap and was quickly climbing up to become a worry for them too.
Then I saw a particular first grader. (She seems precocious; she may have musical talent, and likes singing). I had annoyed her last year because I like to use formal titles with people, even kids. I call her Miss P.
I think of overabundant use of titles as a Southern thing - florid, polite extravagance. Think Foghorn Leghorn. To her, however, the use of titles for little kids like her is just an error. Women teachers and other adults are addressed as Miss; kids are not. So, I could see the determined look on her face as I, the Teacher-Who-Always-Gets-Everything-Wrong, approached.
"Hello, Miss P., how are you today?" I asked. "You just call me that because of my driver's license," she replied. What? Did I hear that right? Was that sarcasm? I didn't even know that first graders were capable of sarcasm. Touché, Miss P! Quoting Foghorn Leghorn, "I say, that's a joke, son!"
Then the kids enter Club M. They look at all the pillows accumulated in the Peace Corner and transform them into what they really want - a Fort! They bury themselves in pillows, to the point that the roaming adults don't even realize that the kids are there and - thrillingly! - ask others where the buried kids are. Since Club M was overmanned I decided to busy myself with a specific task - picking Legos up off the floor, and scooping them from tables as kids go outside to play. I did not realize that this was an endless task, since the kids would soon return from outside and dump the Legos on the tables and floor again. Sisyphus, that is who I am at Club M.
