Classroom helper

Today I had my first volunteer experience at Drake’s elementary school! It was a little crazy, and I have to say that I now have a new appreciation and respect for Drake’s kindergarten teacher. It’s a difficult thing to be in charge of 21 little people who are often loud and distracted and excitable. Yikes!

My first "job" was making copies. I did this for almost an hour, and still didn’t finish all the copies I was supposed to be making. But eventually, two out of the three copy machines were being uncooperative, and I was almost out of paper anyway, so I decided to call it quits.

During that time, I went through almost two full reams of copy paper! Elementary schools must be a very disturbing place for those who are concerned about killing trees. (Tree slaughter was definitely in full swing.) Be thankful for paper recycling - they do a lot of that too, it looked like.

When the kids were at P.E. and Library, Mrs. Gardner told me that Drake was very intelligent and inquisitive. "You obviously read to him a lot at home, and expose him to a lot of speech," she said. Ha ha, that kid talks more than the rest of the house combined! I told her he had always been a talker, and she said that his vocabulary and pronunciation were exceptional. She did seem to agree about him talking a lot though - she said that when he answers a question, he goes way around the answer first and then finally says what she’s expecting to hear. That doesn’t surprise me.

(But I wonder if telling every volunteer parent that their child is "intelligent" is just a ploy to keep them coming back to make more copies!)

After that, I got to do a project outside with the kids - sponge painting, two at a time. That’s two kids, not two sponges each, praise the Lord! To their credit, some were very neat and careful, but there was an awful lot of paint on skin by the time we were through!

Then I got to take them outside again, individually, and "make" a little book with them. Then they "read" it to me. ("Make" and "read" are in quotes, because they didn’t really do either one, but something similar.) They folded a page from their reading workbooks in half, to make a sort of brochure-type book. Then, on each page, they read the sight words I can and identified a picture of a child doing some type of activity. ("I can eat. I can brush. I can read. I can sleep." Wow, I have the book memorized!)

I had the joy of spending a little time with a very sweet and intelligent non-English speaking girl. When I called her name to come outside for the painting project, Mrs. Gardner said, "Oh, she doesn’t speak English." Perfect! At least her language of choice was Spanish and not German or French or something else, because then we would have had a bit more difficulty. But as it was, we got along just fine. I greeted her in Spanish and asked her how she was doing. She looked surprised and asked me if I spoke Spanish. Just a little bit, I told her. She was the only child in the class who wrote her first and last name when asked to "write your name," and her penmanship was amazing for a kindergartner. I did not hear a word of English out of her mouth, and I spoke to her almost exclusively in Spanish; I have the feeling that she indeed speaks almost no English.

When it was time for her to come out again to fold the little book and read it to me, I couldn’t remember the Spanish verb "to fold," so I asked her and she told me. We "read" her book in Spanish and in English, and I felt good that she could see the similarities in the sentence structures. I am looking forward to coming back in two more weeks to talk with her again! At that age, and being in a completely English-speaking classroom for 6-1/2 hours every day, I imagine she will learn English pretty quickly.

Drake was so excited that I was there, and so very sad when I had to leave. We had talked ahead of time about how he should behave when I was in his classroom (and he did that very well!), and I also made sure he understood that I had to leave when his class went to the cafeteria for lunch. But when lunchtime came, he looked shocked as he realized that it was "already" time for me to go home. He was brokenhearted, and he cried, wanting me to hold him on my lap.

It was so hard to see him so sad, and to make him stand in line at the door. I told him I would come sit with him for a couple of minutes in the cafeteria, and then I would leave after he calmed down. So he sniffled his way down the hall in his line, and Mrs. Gardner walked next to him with her arm around him. While he was getting his food in the hot lunch line, she came over to me and expressed her surprise at how upset he was! She said he’d never acted sad before, but that it was understandable that he would miss me when I had to leave.

Once Drake and I sat down together at a separate table from all the kids, and got to talk one on one, he calmed down pretty easily. Food always makes a big difference in his mood, and I think he really just needed to eat something. We had fun being a little silly - I spread some of his mashed potatoes and gravy on his roll, since there was no butter. (He said it was very tasty that way!) After about ten minutes, I helped him get situated in his regular spot at the lunch table with his class, and I left. He was totally fine with it! (Big sigh of relief!)

Then I went and picked up Levi from our neighbor, Jennifer's, house. She will watch him every other week for me to go in and volunteer, and I will watch her son, Andrew (age 3), every other week so she can go in. It seems like a good plan, so hopefully it will work out well. Her older son, Tyler, is in the same class as Drake.

Jennifer said Levi did really well this morning; no big surprise, I guess. But he sure was happy to see me when I came in the door to pick him up! And he was so tired that he fell asleep in his highchair eating lunch when we got home!