Today was my first day as a substitute teacher's aide. It took three months of bureaucratic baloney to get here.
Jodhi is the afternoon teacher. She's a fit, middle aged, black woman with her hair tied back tight, wearing camo pants and a fitted henley. She's worked as a teacher for 28 years, she went to graduate school for early education and specialized in teaching math to preschoolers, she taught adult school on early education, and she raised three sons. Jodhi speaks to the kids like they are adults and is not afraid to raise her voice. I think that's my favorite thing, she can command the room without being angry or scary.
An older sister took her younger sister down the double slide, where they were side-by-side on separate slides, holding hands. When they went down, the younger sister immediately face plants into the slide, holding her sister's hand as she continues down. The other aide, Lia, and I spring up to run over. Jodhi told us to wait, they do this every day with the same consequence, they need to work it out on their own first. We watched the sisters cry, console, comfort each other, and then they walked over to Jodhi. Jodhi said mom parents react so quickly, they don't give the kids a chance to address the problems themselves.
Three girls were fighting over a hose, they were pushing and arguing over who can have it. Jodhi had them take their hands off the hose, she removed what they wanted. They continued crying about wanting to play and whose turn it was, and she told them they had to go play with something else, cool off and then we can come back to it. She deescalates and disperses them. One of the girls, Emma, wanted to change her pants because they got wet from the hose and asked if I could take her inside. Jodhi said that she will have to wait until we all go inside (like 5 minutes) to change, she can't get a special trip because she knew what she was doing when she was playing with the water, it's not Emma's world. Shortly after, all the girls went inside to change.
The little girls told me my braid was like Elsa. One of the girls would put my braid to the side and said to leave it there so I look like Elsa. I sat on the rug and four girls basically climbed into my lap. Another was trying to put blocks with holes through my hair. One girl put two holed blocks up to her eyes and made me laugh, then all the kids tried different blocks for their eyes.
When Emma left for the day, she ran back to me and gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. So sweet and unexpected. She's the kid who has to be warned that her name is going to be written down on a list. She's strong willed, but Jodhi pointed out to me how empathetic she is too. One of the girls was hurt and Jodhi asked Emma to see how she's doing, and Emma turned into a nurse asking questions and concerned about the hurt girl. SO MANY FACETS to a three year old!
Something I love about the teachers, they are so frank about the kids. We had to wake them up from their naps, and different teachers warned me about different kids being stubborn. Jodhi is trying to nip that behavior in the bud. We talked about how toddlers are testing boundaries and they aren't getting them from their scared parents, and what does that result in? Adults who are crazy, impatient drivers.
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