Today is Monday, the hardest day of the week for any profession, but somehow I think most difficult for teachers!  You see, we not only have to deal with getting ourselves in the swing of the work week, especially after a ‘fun’ weekend, but we have to deal with a multitude of youngsters who too would probably preferred to roll over and go back to sleep.  Yes, we can all agree, Monday’s are tough.  But by the end of the day, we’ve quickly forgotten, and are ready to face Tuesday, with just a little more energy than we had on Monday. 

This week is a tough week for me, the dreaded weeklong bus duty week!  About every 5 weeks, a team of teachers descend onto the school grounds to monitor the buses, the walkers, the children who get chauffeured each day, the handful of bicyclists and the multitude of parents and siblings that must spend their early mornings and late afternoons watching for their children.  I mean, really, what happened to walking to school with the neighborhood children and greeting the crossing guards each day or waving to your children as they walked down the driveway, hurrying to catch the bus.  Yes, many parents do have a difficult time ‘letting go’ but I guess there are worse things in life.  At least these parents care.  So my duty every morning this week will be to monitor the K-3 group of children sitting for 10 minutes in the cafeteria until the bell rings and the teachers pick up their classes.  All children must be seated on the floor, no rough housing allowed, and safety first!  About a handful of parents of these young children actually walk their children to the cafeteria and stand around with the other straggling parents until the teachers appear.  At the end of the day, our secretary makes an announcement at exactly 3:05 that ‘all teachers on bus duty are to report to their locations with their walkie talkies!’  Thank goodness after teaching in my building for over 20 years, I have finally been given a walkie talkie, but please, don’t tell anyone, but I haven’t even ever spoken in it yet!  My location at the end of the day is to stand by the outdoor classroom, several benches are posted in a gravel patio, and wait for the 10 or so children that are waiting for the Kidco or Kindercare buses, the afterschool daycare.  I really like this location, easily I can handle 10 children at the end of the day.   This is really one of the easier locations to cover, fine with me!   When their bus arrives, they line up behind me and we march to their bus, saying our goodbyes.  Our team consists of 6 teachers, and god forbid I should forget.  When this has happened, a note in my mailbox gently reminding me that I missed my duty would be sufficient, but no, I instead receive a visit from the Principal and she makes sure to tell me personally that I should try and remember.  She really is a lovely principal to work for and gently nods with me as I apologize, but really is a visit necessary?

Today one of the teachers on my team, a 5^th grade seasoned teacher,  told all of us that she would be not be teaching for the next two days and that the permanent substitute, yes, there is such a thing now, was covering her classes.  She furthered explained that her husband was going in for disc surgery tomorrow, very early in the morning.  Her plans were to drop him off, get him settled and then come back to school to wait until his surgery was over.  She said ‘I will be back in the building, but I won’t be teaching.  I’ll be getting my materials organized because I’ll be too stressed to hang out at the hospital while my husband has back surgery.’  I said ‘why don’t you bring a good book and use this time to relax while you wait?’  Her response was ‘no, I’d rather be in school.’

Wow!  Is that dedication or is that insanity? Your husband, a man in his late 50’s is having disc surgery for the 2^nd time and you think it is your duty to be hanging out in school, not waiting in the hospital for your husband to enter recovery?  What if something goes wrong? What if they need to speak to you immediately?  My principal said today ‘that’s dedication’. 

I just shook my head and thought, I really can’t agree!  Work is work, but family is everything!