Thursday, September 17, 2009

How About Matching Shirts?


It was supposed to be an easy sub day; half a day, actually, because of an early dismissal for Roundup. Around here, the world almost stops turning during the week of roundup. Yep, partner, we’re talking cowboys and rodeo queens, calliopes and broncs. The barbecues, nighttime dances and main street entertainment can only be outdone by the underground tour complete with speakeasy and saloon girls (actresses, of course). It is all fun to do once or twice in your life, but then it just becomes too much of a pain-in-the-neck rerun.

Anyway, I left the house yesterday feeling pretty confident because I was fairly sure I would be teaching a great class that I substitute taught last week. That meant a comfortable morning and then lunch and a DVD date at home with Mom. The surprise came when I walked into the office of the school district where I was to substitute and found out the whole school was going on a field trip. That should be fun, right?

Needless to say, the field trip was to the Roundup; or a children’s version of it. The Children’s Roundup is actually a cool idea and I was glad to be able to experience it. Neighboring school districts are invited to bus their students in to walk around the teepee village, go through the Hall of Fame Museum, bring a picnic lunch, and watch the adult roundup trials followed by the Children’s Roundup, in which special education students and their parents participate. So, what’s the big deal, you ask? None, except that doing this as a sub creates some interesting challenges.

Imagine the responsibility of taking a group of children you barely know on a field trip in which you must negotiate through crowds and traffic as you walk from one sightseeing activity to another. Add to that the uncomfortable fact that, although you kind of recognize their faces from subbing once before and have a list of their names in your hand, you have yet to reconcile the two. So, when a couple of preteens separate from the group (uncannily, always at least five yards out of your reach) and nearly get sucked into a passing crowd, you are reduced to futilely waving your arms and demanding in a stern but apparently ignorable tone, “Hey! Get back here! Hey! You guys!”

There are yet more catalysts in this recipe for disaster. The first is the fact that once children have been still awhile in the grandstands, they get restless and begin slipping in with other groups of students for social purposes. Now the faces tend to blur together when you try to count noses. Parents add another twist by showing up to take their child away to share lunch with them or to claim their children early rather than let them ride back on the bus. The complication in both of these centers on whether or not they stop to tell you what they are doing first. All I can say is God bless the parent who wrote a note to let me know ahead of time!

I must have counted and recounted my ducklings at least fifteen times throughout the morning. The kids were great, but I couldn’t discount how easily we could have lost someone. I feel fortunate to have brought back the same children with whom I started out, minus the four who were picked up by parents and the two who rode in another bus without telling me. Yikes. Next time, I will seriously consider tattooing their foreheads in red and attaching leashes to their belts. As two of the regular teachers sympathetically said to me upon our return, “I looked at you today and thought, what a day to sub.” You're telling me.

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