I work as an aide in a second grade classroom where the teacher once asked for examples of words with the “short i” sound and one of the kids raised his hand and said, “Tit”. I always felt he deserved partial credit.
So it shouldn’t have been any surprise when I was grading papers yesterday and more than a few of them took the word “start” and rhymed it with “fart”. For that, they each earned a big, red happy face.
Some days, I really love my job.
Each day in the second grade class in which I work, the teacher goes around the room and asks the students if there is anything they are concerned about. The hands quickly shoot up and they begin talking about their problems.
Here is an example of some of the things they’ve mentioned lately:
“My arm is scratched, because I was playing basketball with my sister and ran into a brick wall.”
“My puppy is sick.”
“We’re moving to a new house.”
“I had a hard time waking up this morning.”
“My brother has a swim-meet this weekend and I hope he does well.”
Then the teacher calls on me and here are some of the things I have said (okay, wanted to say…I don’t want to traumatize anyone) in the last couple of weeks:
“Out of my sister’s four best friends, three of them have been diagnosed with breast cancer. The third one just got the news.”
“My mom is being sued for money which is rightfully hers and was left for her in the will of a man with sound mind, who she nursed through his sickness and death for 12 years. Who’s suing? The daughter who never came to visit him.”
“I am in a continuing battle with health insurance and our county over medications and therapy that my son needs, but no one seems to want to pay for.”
“My husband is working 16 hour days to support us and we never see him anymore.”
“I haven’t slept well in over 10 years.”
And what I’ve learned from this little exercise in reflection and sharing, is that I really wish I was seven again.
I work at my children’s school as a second grade teacher’s aide. I took the job to earn a little money, but another benefit is being near my six year old son. He is in kindergarten and could function without me there, but there are still things I help him with because the school allows it.
My son gets sick a lot, sometimes with weird bacterial infections and one of those was antibiotic resistant. It seems it takes longer courses of more potent drugs to make his illnesses go away, so in order to keep him as healthy as possible we take some precautions.
He is the only one in his class who keeps hand sanitizer in his cubby, he takes a bottle of water to school instead of using the drinking fountain, and I help him when he has to go to the bathroom.
My son is the size of a three year old, which means that when he has to use the facilities it entails climbing and clambering all over said facilities. Being that elementary school children aren’t the most hygienic, it’s much better for me to hoist him on the toilet in the nurse’s office and make sure he gets a proper hand washing because he can barely reach the sink.
Yesterday, I was leading a group of students downstairs when we ran into my boy in the hallway where he announced to the whole lot of us, “I need to go poop!”
I said, “Well I can’t take you right now, because I can’t leave these students. You’ll have to go by yourself.”
Just then, I looked up and saw the school nurse and asked her if she would help him, which she was happy to do.
After school, we were driving home and I asked him, “Hey, did Mrs. C help you in the bathroom?”
He said, “Yes.”
Knowing he had pooped, I wondered if he had been bold enough to ask her to wipe him, so I further questioned, “Did she just help you wash your hands? What did you ask her to do?”
But instead I found he was bold in a totally guy kind of way when he replied, “I asked her to get me a book.”
One of the best things about working as an aide in a second grade classroom is being with kids who are, for the most part, too young to be corrupt. When they say something inappropriate, it comes from a pure and innocent place.
So, when the teacher asked for an example of a word with the “short i” sound, and a student raised his hand and said, “Tit”…shouldn’t he get partial credit?
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