Thursday, March 4, 2010

Ms. O-yee

I spent the last two days herding preschoolers, reminding them to keep their fingers out of their noses (and to wipe those boogers off their cheeks), gently encouraging them to reconsider whether or not the color brown is really called "pink," asking kids to keep their hands out of their pants and their shirts pulled down over their bellies, and praying their glitter and glue filled hands didn't touch my denim trousers.

Not only did my pants have glitter and glue on them, I also had really stink homemade play dough on my butt and probably every shade of marker imaginable on my legs. Preschoolers are cute, but they have no sense of boundaries and they frequently become distracted by almost anything and forget they need to maintain control of their arms. Ms. O-yee! Ms. O-yee! Jordan has a booger on face! Look, it's right there by his eyeball! This - and many other distracting statements - will invariably involve not only the child making the observation, but every other child within earshot, running over to examine said booger, arms flailing around, knocking things over, transferring glitter and glue to anything within arm's reach, as they struggle to get their face as close to the booger as possible. I also had a little girl come up to me, say Ms. O-yee, I think you're earrings are beautiful, only to discover she wasn't really complementing my earrings, she was just distracting my attention so she could wipe her dirty little hands on my pants. I know this because I asked her to stop using my pants as a towel, she gave me a little smirk that said "I fooled you."

Preschoolers.

And yes, the did call me Ms. O-yee. It probably didn't help that after introducing myself to the kids after I first arrived, the preschool teacher responded with (to the entire classroom): "Boy, that certainly is a strange, excuse me, different, last name, isn't it?" I told them they could call me Ms. K, but the teacher refused to allow that to happen, and so Ms. O-yee I was. It worked, and they were so cute when they said it. So cute.

2 comments:

  1. Go with your gut. I think it's better to potentially make someone temporarily upset than see something bad happen after the fact knowing that you might have been able to help. Can you talk to the school's social worker directly?
    jabm

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  2. WHOA! If I were you, I wouldn't be able to let that story slide, either. You should talk to the other teacher you know and ask whether this child or the older sibling has ever mentioned anything like this before--especially if there were some details that seemed suspicious. I mean, sometimes kids just repeat everything that happens because they don't have much of a filter, but sometimes they say things because there's something really bothering them. It could be nothing, but you never know.

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