No matter how long I work with children there is always something that surprises me or even just amuses me that I never expected to see. Thank you letters are pretty normal in this line of work. You're sort of a celebrity when you only interact with children once or twice during the year and do all the "cool" experiments. This "celebrity" affords you many things in the form of child adoration, hugs, smiles, the awkward half leg hugs, fan mail, squeaky shouts of your name, and the teacher forced thank you letters. All of these things make me love my job and generally outweigh any negatives. This week is definitely tipped in the positive favor even though I've put in extra hours and been out of the office more than I've been in the office.
I started the week with two assemblies at a kindergarten center. Kids are still cute at this age. Their innocent and sometimes sweet. If some anger slips out, it does just that, it slips. They're not premeditating jerks. I always enjoy working with this age group because everything you do is amazing and wonderful. These kindergartners were no different. The entire show was a joy for them even though the Electro-Static Generator wasn't at peak performance. I even got loud cheering and hugs. However, the best part of the day was when I asked the kids if they had any questions. This can be a double edged sword, you get to show the adults you care about the students minds and thoughts, but you also have to wade through all the "stories" before you get a real question. These kids were on top of it though, questions from the very beginning, but the best are those kids you're sure were listening to something else while you were presenting. Case in point, my favorite question from this group "How does water get in the ocean to begin with?"....ummm, color me shocked that this was so important to the little girl. I was there to talk about Electricity.
The next day I went out to a local school and did a program called Slime Time. Its always fun to make slime. Who doesn't enjoy sticky, slimy goo? Rarely is it the case that all the classes you work with are well behaved, listen and answer questions. I hit the kid jackpot and as an added bonus I left with the obligatory teacher forced thank you notes. Always entertaining and generally variants of the same letter the teacher wrote on the board for them to copy. Now most of these were the same form letters as always. "Thanks, you're nice. Can you come again? My slime was cool." and insert the random vocabulary words you taught while in the classroom. However, there were some outside the box thinkers in these classrooms and either the teachers didn't read the letters or were just excited that the kids put words on paper and let them slide through. There are two that stand out in my mind from the five minute or so read I had before handing them off to the marketing department. One of which was well thought out and very genuine in their enjoyment of the program. I know this because it included the phrase "I liked when we added the goop part. When it combined my slime looked like blue boogers. That was cool, but the girl next to me had green boogers and that was even better!" Then there was my favorite letter. It went a little something like this
"Dear The Works, (as you can see this child was paying so much attention that my wearing of a name tag and sharing my name with them 6 or so times didn't even matter)
Thank you for coming to my class. Slime time was cool.
I have a turtle. I feed him every day and clean his tank. He has grown since I got him. He is green and cute and you would like him. His name is Reggie (or some random name it really doesn't change the story if I got the turtle's name wrong). I love him. My mom says I am doing such a good job that someday she will get me another turtle too. Thanks for coming to my school.
Your friend,
Kid X."
The thing that made this letter even better is that it was spelled completely phonetically so "a" was actually "uh". This kid not only didn't give a crap about what I taught, but really wanted me to know about his new pet turtle. I know it should be something that peeves me off, but come on it took me way too long to read the letter because English is a crazy ass language and phonetics is super difficult because words "sound" different to everyone. I'm not sure if the thing that makes this the best is the spelling, the lack of even knowing my name, the fact that it has NOTHING to do with the program or the fact that the teacher either never read it or was just excited the kid wrote anything that it didn't matter to them.
Today was a cluster of insanity that started with teaching polymers at work and then rushing to a school to shock small children. While at the school I remembered just how jaded and bratty 5th graders can be, but got to enjoy the undying love of 1st and 2nd graders. Fun from today was the Indian child that will be spending the summer in India whose name is "Raul". I couldn't pronounce his real name if I were forced, but I find it funny that his parents or the school or whomever decided that Raul was a good substitute for the real name...I don't even think his real name started with an R. Other than that I can't remember anything major other than the disappointment one child had when he realized that not every presenter had brought a pig with them. Sorry, pigs are part of my other show. Whatever.
All in all, the week has been crazy, but definitely more ups than downs and though I'm tired I wouldn't trade it for the world.
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