Wow

Last night when I got home I told Adam I felt like I'd been through something.

It was parent engagement night, which we have because we are a Title 1 school.  Matt needed volunteer teachers to help.  They would get paid a small stipend.  I didn't sign up, because 8-9 hours at that place is usually enough for me.

Then Matt emailed that he needed more people and I reasoned that the parent engagement nights later in the school year are going to be a lot more involved and if I volunteered this time, I would have goodwill stored up and wouldn't have to sign up later.

Matt sent this email.

He wasn't wrong.  It did feel like I was maybe in the Hunger Games and fighting for survival.  It was crazy.

The gym had chairs set up but more and more families kept coming and the other teachers and I frantically set up more and more chairs.  Then I tried to corral two toddlers who were being really wild, but didn't speak any English so my efforts were ignored by them and their mother.  I told two boys to get off the top of the chair rack where they had climbed.  Their parents were sitting right next to them and had to be aware that their boys were six feet in the air on top of a wheeled chair rack, but they didn't seem to care.

Sometimes meeting the parents explains an awful lot.

After the presentation in the gym, my job was to go to the library.  I had pages of stickers and bags full of some literacy and math games.  One for each family.  I needed to stick the sticker onto the bag after they told me their last name.  They wanted to keep track so that the families who hadn't attended could get their games later.  On each sticker was the youngest member in each family and that student's teacher's name.  Not all the families have the same last name and I kept getting confused alphabetically with the teachers names and sometimes I couldn't understand the Spanish speakers so well and it was intense.  I also had to give them this packet of explanation for the games and I forgot to give the packet to the first several families.  I told Noemi, the assistant principal, that I was going to get fired.

After that, we served pizza to everyone.  I was dealing paper plates onto a table as fast as I could and Matt was slapping a piece of pizza on each one and people came along and grabbed the pizza just as fast.

It was dizzying, but we survived it.    

When I took the bins of leftover games to the office, Noemi told me I wouldn't get fired because I had returned them so nicely.  So there's that.  I helped take down some chairs and my last job was to help heave the empty pizza boxes into the dumpster.

The good news was that I went home with a box of pizza and we didn't have to make dinner.

Another good piece of news is that my dad is healing pretty well.  I talked to both my parents last night and they were in good spirits and doing well.  Cancer, broken bones, they take it in stride!  My mom is uniquely prepared by her life of tackling challenges with gusto and a refusal to accept defeat.  

She emailed an update to everyone and she is taking care of the chickens while my dad heals.  She said they got four eggs and have five chickens so they have a slacker.

The slacker will never be my mom!