Teacher

So at the kids' school they do these occasional after school classes/courses called Creative Knights, where kids get to do, I don't know, projects, science stuff, languages, learning about cars ....whatever volunteers are able to teach. So because last year I had done these Paper plate turkeys with the kids around Thanksgiving, Emily signed me up to lead a Thanksgiving crafts class. And that was today.

The plan was to do two projects, maybe three. We would do the paper plate turkeys, and then we would do these apple, marshmallow and raisin turkeys, and maybe some sort of tepee thing.  I had gone to the store and got the apples and everything, so it was all set. Thing I came to find was that doing projects with a couple of kids takes much less time than doing them with 23. We had all the stuff, and I had a couple of parents and nieces helping, but I was still running around stapling and folding and cutting and gluing googly eyes, because you have to have googly eyes, for all 23 kids.

I pretty much didn't stop to catch my breath for an hour and 20 minutes. There would be Kate saying "daddy! Daddy?" then an aside to her friend Brooke, "that's my daddy" before calling me again to help her out. There would be Jack asking for help before sharing a joke with one of his friends. Then another child needed a beak cut, and another a waddle. Or carbuncle? I have no idea. Whatever that red thing on a turkey's face is. And the glue sticks. Ah, the glue sticks. There were many. And lots of staples were used. I hope there are no barefoot kids there on Monday.

As I finished each turkey, all 23 a little different, I said, Hey, nice one! And it wasn't difficult to do, because they were all unique and all awesome. And then it was time to go and everyone said goodbye and a lot said Thank you and Kate named her turkey Siena or something and it was beautiful and they were happy.

In college or maybe after people sometimes said I should be a teacher. It was one of those things I briefly thought about but always figured I would do journalism and publishing of some sort, before one day drifting into a career that didn't even exist at the time and sounds fake even now. I don't know. I have a ton of respect for teachers anyway and probably even more after spending an hour in a room with 20 some odd kids. Because doing it every day, it would be pretty challenging. But doing it a little bit, here and there, every so often. That I could do.

And oh yeah we ran out of time for the apple turkeys. So when we got home, I got out all the stuff and Kate and Jack made them anyway.