PB & J's

This is a break in my 30 day blogging challenge to acknowledge the first week of school. If you have never been in an elementary school during the first week of school, you don't know the chaos you are missing! Elementary teachers are amazing (with a special award given to kindergarten teachers). The goal for the first day of school is to get all children to the right classroom, feed all the children lunch and get all the children home in the afternoon. After the first day, teaching can occur! It's an exciting and exhausting time of year. Rules, rules, procedures, procedures.

All "extra" people in the school (those of us who are not classroom teachers) GET to help with kindergarten lunch during the first few days of school. Picture it: huge cafeteria, 200+ 5 year olds being shuffled through the cafeteria looking at a food line they have never seen before, being told to pick one (often unidentifiable) entree and 2 sides (pinto beans or spinach anyone?) and then have to tell the loud talking lunch lady what their name is (believe me, some 5 year olds don't know their names) so their account can be appropriately charged and then to carry the tray all the way across the cafeteria, without dumping the whole thing on the floor or running into another clueless 5 year old and listening to 3 adults telling them where to go and where to sit, and then figure out how to eat all the stuff on their tray and open their milk and apple packages and squeeze the ketchup out without dropping it on the floor and stepping all in it and being told to stay in your seat until its time to go and then being told it's time to go and figure out how to stand up and wait your turn to walk back across the huge cafeteria with your tray again and not let all the paper and plastic blow away and not let your milk spill on the floor, on a friend or down your clothes and dump your tray in the trash and be expected to stand in one line while the rest of the class does the same thing! Us extra people help with all of the above, plus mop spills and take kids to the bathroom when they can't hold it anymore even though they just went before lunch. Believe me, it's an exhausting 45 minutes for all 10 kindergarten classes to get through the cafeteria!

And I'm happy to be a part of it because there are many rewards. I see and hear many heartwarming things. Today, a boy saw the pbj on the lunch line and his face lit up because he eats pbj at home too and it's his favorite sandwich. He said, "I'm excited!" He could hardly contain himself. I couldn't help but smile.

Shouldn't we get excited about the simple things in life too? Take some time to look for the "pbj's on the lunch line" in your life. It will do you some good.