Perks of My Job

Tonight was our school's "Harvest Festival"--the big fall PTO fundraiser. It is an elaborate affair, and it is worth all the hoo-hah because we usually make a great deal of money. All the staff members have a job, which we volunteer to do-I've been face-painting for four years now.
1) It is easy and I stay busy
2) I can sit the entire time.

I make a poster with about 8 drawings that we can do and so the kids don't sit down and say, "Paint the Lakers' logo on my face." Well, some of them still ask for extravagant things, but we just point to our poster and say, "Sorry, that's all we can do!" We offer choices like the peace sign, or a spider or a bat or a jack-o-lantern, and we increased our repertoire to include a kitty face with a newly recruited teacher. We always have a long line and everyone goes away happy. They get their money's worth--we charge nothing! (A little money is earned through food sales, but the big bucks are made at the auction where themed baskets centered around a story book are sold--one went for $400 tonight.) (How nice are some of our families? Guess where all the cool stuff in the baskets comes from--yes, donations from them.)

But, the real fun is the casual atmosphere where parents and grandparents get to come to school and meet the teachers and everyone is just having a good time. Students who've moved on to middle school always come to see their old teachers and to bring their little brothers and sisters. Grandparents who barely speak English get introduced by our students. I meet non-custodial dads, and mothers who otherwise would never be at school because of their schedules. Tonight was another night that made it worth staying until 8:00 P.M. when our day started at 8:00 A.M.

I have a boy who is on the autism spectrum. He isn't misbehaved, he is just stand-offish. His parents had a business trip back to their home in Trinidad last week, so he went with them--and they visited relatives, too. When he returned on Monday, he brought me gift. He just plucked it out of his backpack, and thrust it at me, without saying anything. I opened it and found a little dolphin statue, with "Trinidad" painted on it and a water globe with a bit of sand and teeny shells balanced in the curve of the dolphin's tail. I smiled and thanked him and said how much I love the ocean, and put it on my shelf where my family pictures are. He didn't say anything.

But, tonight, when the brothers sat down for their face painting, Mom leaned in to tell me how much her son loves me and my class. (Seriously---I would never have suspected that he had any reaction whatsoever to me or my class.) She pointed out that during the entire trip, he was looking for a gift for me. In a market, he hurried up to her with the dolphin souvenir and told her that I love dolphins and the ocean and that this was just perfect for me and he had to buy it. I assured her that he was right, I do love the ocean, and I did love his gift.

Really, I had been quite impressed that he gave me a gift. He also talked to me about his trip a little later that day--it was new for him to speak to me at all. But to find out that he planned it all himself, and shopped for me--wow! So sweet!

This is why I'm a teacher. I just love working with children and being their friend. I get thanked for oddly shaped bat drawings painted on their cheeks, and they bring me ceramic dolphins because they remember a story I wrote in class about my summer trip at the beach.