Employed

One day a week.

On average, since the beginning of this month, I've been working one day a week.

One fourth grade class. One second grade class. Two days of kindergarten.

So far.

I work on Troy's day off. I call home during lunch because I find it hard to go eight hours without hearing how my son's school day was.

Today I took a kindergarten class to an assembly with tarantulas, monitor lizards, an alligator, tortoises, and pythons more than double my size. I spent most of my time trying to get a particularly challenging little girl to sit on her pockets, face forward, stop talking, stop taking off her shoes, sit still, STOP THAT NOW! But when I wasn't doing all of that, I absorbed information that I came home and spewed to my boys over tortellini, salad and breadsticks. During the entire assembly, I wanted my own kindergartner there to see it. "Garrett would love this!" I kept thinking. I have to admit, getting paid to learn about snakes is pretty cool.

What's not cool is seven pages of lesson plans for two three hour sessions of kindergarten. I have a college degree. I ran my own high school drama class. (I ASKED ANOTHER TEACHER, even!). And, still, I could not decipher an alarmingly large percentage of what this teacher wanted me to do.

"They get these if they complete their assignments, ask a show and tell question that matches the apron get the quiz right." That is a direct quote. Verbatim. I still have no idea what it meant.

It was a little bit frustrating. Mostly because I'm all about CONTROL and PERFECTION and GETTING IT ALL JUST RIGHT. It drives me crazy when I don't know how to match the apron to the right quiz. Or whatever. Still, I got paid to go to an assembly, read a book in my best yak voice, and stamp papers. So, I've had worse jobs, is what I'm saying.