My School Essay

This one's for you, Melinda!

Melinda's been nagging me to share some of my school stories since I began working as a substitute office employee, which is nearly a year ago now. I guess I should jot them down before they completely evaporate from my little haid.

My first assignment was at Chinook elementary school up on Muckleshoot Hill. I quickly took note of the kids coming in to the nurse with a tooth in their hand. It seems that kids losing teeth is a daily occurrence at elementary schools. At the end of the day we had a little girl waiting in the office to be picked up by her Grandma. Sitting there bored, she finally announces "I have to live with my Grandma - my mommy and daddy are in jail"!

My next assignment is on Lea Hill in a slightly more affluent neighborhood. It was snowy but everyone still went out to recess. The girls still play on the bars as they did when I was in school. There was a group of about 3 girls twirling and suddenly one pipes up "I'm a stripper!". Then another one, apparently a one-upper in the making, yells "I'M A PROSTITUTE!"

At that same school I notice one kid being addressed by another of the "playground police" constantly, being sent to "the wall" for numerous offenses. Just before recess ends a small group of boys come to me with one bleeding from the nose. The troublemaker is following close behind while the group is all telling me that he did "it". His defense? "He hit my foot with his face!" Um, yeah, right...

I overheard a pretty amusing conversation in the staff lounge at Cascade Middle School late last year. There were 2 other workers eating their lunches, both women in their 60s I'd say. They chitchat about the usual stuff then one asks the other where she got her tatoos! I know they're in vogue right now but it still seems odd to hear about Grandmas getting tatoos!

More recently I was working the attendance office at Auburn Mountainview High School. I get a call from a parent who's been online looking at their child's attendance and notices an absence from one or two periods has the excuse "doctor appointment". He says his daughter did NOT have a doctor appointment and that I need to correct it. I go to the student's file and find that she did have an appointment - at "Planned Parenthood". I assure him that she did have an appointment and he replies "I suppose it's one of those that you can't tell me about". Yes. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when that girl got home!

Most recently I worked a week at Olympic Middle School. The school has improved a lot since I worked there last year, much cleaner and more organized. Turns out they were getting ready for a move. This time I was there for most of the week just before winter break. It seems that there is an event of some sort nearly every day at every school. Pictures, assemblies, "reptile man", fire drills, field trips, etc. The last day before a 2 week break promised to be chaotic. And to make things worse there was a xmas assembly scheduled for the last couple hours before school let out. Thursday I overheard the principal being reminded that the school had not had their mandatory monthly fire drill yet, there was only one day left in the month. So I knew we'd be having a fire drill on Friday. We had the fire drill at 11AM. We got through lunch and were just getting ready to start sending classrooms to the gym for the assembly when we heard coming over the walkie-talkie that sits on the desk in the office someone asking whether Olympic had implemented a lockdown. It had not been addressed to anyone at the school, it was a conversation going on between 2 other people on our bandwidth. I think one was the school district's very own rent-a-cop, Officer McCluskey (she's actually a real cop). All ears perk up. "Are we under lockdown?" someone (probably the principal) asks. Yes. We had about 8 students and 2 parents in the office with us. One parent boogied before everything got actually LOCKED. And the kids were told that this was NOT a drill...

So I got to experience a lockdown. All windows are closed, blinds or curtains pulled shut, other glass covered with paper. Doors are locked. The kids in the office are instructed to sit on the floor behind the counter or in the hall. And we wait. About half an hour.

That's not a very long time unless you're locked in with a group of scared adolescents. The reason for the lockdown never even made it onto the news, apparently someone shot off a gun a couple blocks from Olympic and Pioneer schools and both had to go into lockdown.

I'm sure there were more stories that I've just forgotten. And there will be more to come. I'll just try to be more diligent in getting them out - in a more timely fashion!