February 10th 2011:
So I’ve been teaching a craft class at a local elementary school on Thursday afternoons. I started teaching it last fall through Ornamentea and since it was deemed a success by my boss and the school, and I quite enjoy teaching it, it has continued into the spring.
Let me say first of all that these kids are adorable. They range from 8-12 in age and will shock you with their distinct personalities, strict personal styles and sweet but brutal honesty.
Let me now say that they are absolutely crazy. After 6 hours of school and a stuffy classroom, I walk through the door and they are doing back flips and running circles around the “CRAFT LADY!!”
Actually they call me "Miss Lauren," which sounds super sweet, but quickly loses its charm when its being screeched at you from 12 different directions and followed up by a verbal list of demands to be executed immediately (upon punishment of aggressive arm tugging)
Today, while wrapped in 3 yards of glitter gymp cord, attaching jump-rings to multiple shrink plastic charms and consoling a girl who was sobbing mercilessly over her inability to draw the perfect giraffe’s tail (not an exaggeration) another seemingly sweet 8 year old girl who needed help had the nerve to ask me “Can’t you multi-task?” 3 seconds of jaw dropping shock later, and I was also punching holes in her charms. Don’t ask me where the third arm came from, I was too distracted to tell.
But really I do love those little creatures. They seem to honestly enjoy our time together and seeing their excitement upon learning something new is quite magical. Today was actually a relatively calm day.. which I attribute completely to the presence of the toaster oven. We were making Poly-shrink charms (glorified shrinky-dinks) and whenever I slid a batch in the oven, everything got quiet as 12 little bodies crammed their enraptured faces around the glowing glass door of the miniature oven to watch the shrinking magic. Ah, 2 minute intervals of sweet bliss.
Between these intervals however, I found myself doing mainly two things. 1. burning myself on hot plastic as I shuffled rapidly from child to oven to child and attempted to remove the shrunken plastic from the hot pan in time with their commands anddd 2. marveling at how easily I was able to physically observe the mass transfer of germs from their bodies to mine in mere seconds. One girl actually sneezed directly into my hands as I was helping cut her plastic. I'm talking mouth 6 inches away and tangible spray on my palms. 7 minutes of hand washing and 14 pumps of antibacterial later and I was tying a knot in a cord that was handed to me directly from the mouth of another child. As in, she tried to tie it with her teeth...gave up...then handed it to me to finish the job. "Here you go Miss Lauren" …Mmm thank you sweetie.
I should also mention that these are the same kids that sweetly explained to me the week before that they might be absent for the next class because everyone in school is sick and they will probably get sick too…I'm starting to think I might be lucky to be alive.
There's no craft class this week due to parent teacher conferences. I think I may use the time to devise some sort of "divide and conquer" technique for next week. We will be decoupaging treasure chests… which most likely means I'll leave with a lovely assortment of glue and paper stubbornly adhered to half my hair and completely coating my hands. ...Till then
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