In all honesty, this isn’t really fair.  After all, most parents are going to get one to maybe five kids tops for the summer.  Today alone, I had close to 90 kids, 20-26 at a time.  The comparison isn’t even close.  And yes, while all of the kids were beyond excited for the last day of school, I have begin by sharing my 50 minute marathon with Kindergarten today.

As they came to the door, I was quietly warned by their teacher that they were really wound up and that one child was doing things she had never seen before.  Never a good thing to hear but always nice to have a bit of a heads up.  As they walked in to sit on a dot on the floor, something they had done every day of the school year, they wandered around the room, asking why the risers had moved and trying to walk/hide between them.  Like a herd of cats, I guided them away from the risers and encouraged them to again, find their dot.

Almost immediately one of the girls comes to complain about a couple of other girls and how she doesn’t want to sit by them.  So I try to get one of them to move, to which she responds with a resounding “no”.  I ask her to move again with the same response.  Then comes the decision.  She has said no twice, it’s the last day of school, I really don’t want to call for someone to come get her.  Then she grabs a pointer and decides to be my official assistant for our singing.  Great, she’s distracted, but now all of the kids are saying they can’t see because of her.  Not true because as I walk around, I can see everything, but they’re yelling at her now.  I shift her and now she’s playing with my markers and erasers.  In the meantime, I have a boy punching at another boy and have to move him.

I have several girls who are making a career of tattling on each other and every other minute they’re walking up to me to complain about something.  During that other minute, someone is coming up and asking to use the bathroom, holding themselves as they do it for emphasis.  We finally get through the songs I want to do and now I have something on long/short sounds and we’re going to use scarves and beanbags.  Who was the crazy person who decided that would be a good idea?

Again, we’ve worked on procedures for how to handle these things all year, but apparently the last day of school means all of that goes out the window.  Scarves start on laps but end up on heads and tied around arms and made into skirts.  Beanbags can’t seen to stay in their hands and they keep popping up and down like popcorn.  When I finally get them to be still for a millisecond, we begin moving to the music, using our scarves and beanbags to interpret long and short.  They do pretty well until we have to trade them.  Some interpret trade as trading places, some interpret it as trading equipment and some interpret as both.  So now they’re all barking orders at others who didn’t do things the way THEY did and the kids they’re barking at are responding loudly.  I’m pretty sure I just stood there and looked at them for a little bit, not even knowing where to begin.

Enough with those, let’s put them away and play a game where we get to sing, play a couple of instruments and throw a beanbag into a drum.  It’s organized, it only has four elements to it, how hard could it be?  Well, before we started, I had five students sitting out, one crying because I moved her for continuing to talk over me and tell others what to do, another one for making fun of her crying, another for pushing someone, and I can’t even remember why I moved the other two.  So for the last 10 minutes we tried to play the game, but again, they were all yelling at each other anything they did that was even slightly different from the rules I gave them.  Having completely lost patience with them, I took everything away from them and had them just sit on the dots until their teacher came back.  I was done.  They had beaten me today and quite honestly, it wasn’t worth fighting.  I had survived the 50 minutes and would be praying in earnest for their teacher for the rest of the afternoon.

So, back to that “tag you’re it” thing.  It would only be true if parents got to experience this every day of the summer while we got to rest.  The ones I’m really feeling for are those parents who are teachers.  I’ve been there.  To all of my teacher colleagues, I’m wishing you a restful, rejuvenating summer.  We’ve certainly earned it.