I had no idea I was working today until I got a 10:45am phone call, a last-minute, desperate call from the main office. I was dressed in my garden finest ( dirty jeans, stained shirt and unkempt hair). The voice on the other end frantically asked me if I could come in by noon to take over for a teacher who suddenly got sick.
That gave me 15 minutes to spare. “OK, I can make it!”
The school had had a Veteran’s Flag ceremony earlier that morning.
“Oh, I wish I had known about that, I could have come in to witness it!” and as soon as I admitted to being an army veteran, little exuberant hands went up with other stories of great-great-great grandfathers having served in World War I and II, grandfathers serving in Vietnam, fathers serving now.
All the kids who had relatives in the military wanted to share their comments with me.
“My uncle was a master jumper but lost a leg!”
“My grandfather lost a brother in Vietnam”
“My stepdad served in the Air Force, and before that he lived in a car and ate dog food!”
“My dad’s in the air force but I have no idea where he’s at; he hasn’t spoken to me in over a month…”
One little girl wanted to write all the names of the students’ relatives who had served in the military. Despite veering from the day’s lesson plan, I let her write down all the names
Luckily I had a good lesson for the day. The students were learning how to read an analog clock. Some students already knew how to read time, others were struggling. I spent that first hour explaining X times how the “big hand” and the “little hand” work separately but together tell time.
One hyperactive boy, Michael, wanted none of it and ran around as much as he could. But other than him, I had a good class of young, alert minds.
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