Friday, June 01, 2007

Squishing.


I don't think I've ever been really clear about my "dayjob" (while I blather on about my nights-and-weekends-and-school-holidays job at the Fabric Hole). I am a para-educator (which is nothing more than a fancy Iowa word for teacher's aide, I think, just like "guest teacher" which is Davenportese for SUB) at an elementary school and I work with behaviorally disturbed kids K-2. It's the hardest goddamn thing I have ever done in my life. But you get to love the kids so much, even when they're being A W F U L. The classroom teacher I work with is a doll and one of the things she does is first thing in the moring, they draw a name out of the basket and that person is the Warm Fuzzy. The Warm Fuzzy gets to be the line leader all day, and go first at whatever, and everyone has to give them a compliment (A WARM FUZZY, PERHAPS?), and then we go do the calendar. So the Fuzzy is denoted by the sticker he wears on his shirt (all five of our kids are boys) but the problem is that the stickers keep falling off and getting lost. And that can be pretty disasterous to a seven year-old. So with five days left 'til the end of the year, I had a Stroke of Genius and I made a little badge out of wool felt and DMC and a safety pin. How hopelessly nerdy can you get?

2 comments:

jenna said...

That is the sweetest nerdy thing I ever saw. You are the best parateacherguestaideeducator.

And you're a good disciplinarian, too, because I updated my blog right after you yelled at me.

Anonymous said...

that's wonderful- i'm sure it will make them feel very special.