Moments in the day

One of my favorite things about being a specialist is that I know most of the kids in the school. Part of my job is to go into classrooms, grades K-2, and do little thinking activities with them a few times a year. Since I see most of them for three years, I get to know their names and they get to know me. I love this because I can chat with most students and a lot of the little ones give me free and random hugs.

Sometimes, I will just say “Hello!” while they are waiting in line and I will get a response like this:

Student (whispering): I’m walking like a crab.

Me: How do you walk like a crab?

Student: I’m walking like this. (Demonstrates for me - legs in a squat, standing sideways, hands opening and closing like claws). Sideways down the hall

Or sometimes, I will see a student waiting for a parent to pick them up after school, and I will take a seat next to them to keep them company for a bit. My brief check on how the student is doing will end up being a very heartfelt conversation about how the student is having a hard time because her mom wasn’t at home as expected, how her dad just died in the summer, and her mom works nights, so she has to go to a family friend overnight to sleep while her mom is at work. Tears appear, so I tell her how my dad died two years ago and, yes, it is hard. And I wait with her until her mom shows up a few minutes later.

Moments like this make all the stressful meetings worth it.