"Turkey" day

Today was the annual Thanksgiving dinner day at my school. I work in the office of a VERY busy elementary school. Over 1000 students. The logistics of a regular day's lunch for all 42 classes is astounding, but when you add in the hundreds of parents we get on Turkey day...you can imagine.

I love watching the first classes of the youngest students walking down the hall to lunch wearing the head dressings they have made this week. I saw turkey hats, pilgrim hats, Native American Indian hats, you name it. The little kids generally have BOTH parents visit and everyone eats the turkey from the cafeteria. The Sixth grades send a few volunteers to serve and clean tables for everyone (a job they are usually loathe to do) and very little actual school work is done. They ask for teachers and staff to help serve the food, as the cafeteria staff simply helps keep the serving lines stocked. The teachers/staff who serve usually give out waaaaay too much food, so that the cafeteria manager said she always orders 500 extra meals that day. Otherwise, she says, the last classes would be getting Thanksgiving pizza! She says since the food for the children is subsidized, she only makes profit off of the adult meals. Interesting.

My job is to do attendance, so I am generally too busy to be able (ha!) to help out on the serving lines. I served my time working in food service while I was in college, so for me, the thrill is gone. One of my office colleagues came back from serving with a lunch for me to eat at my desk. That's where I eat anyway, so I was quite appreciative. Another colleague brought me another lunch later. I think I've had my fill of turkey for a while and we haven't even hit Thanksgiving!

Another activity the kids do in the weeks before Thanksgiving is decorate placemats. They have appropriate lessons all about the Pilgrims and lots of those placemats depict that. The office staff helps check to see that nothing inappropriate is drawn. Our office stopped four that we loved, but they weren't ready for prime time. One was a cartoon of Bugs Bunny flinging a pumpkin at a turkey. Another was a rather morbid story of a turkey's life. A third one was an empty ship asail in the ocean and it was entitled, "The Ghost of the Mayflower." The last one was a brightly colored platter with a turkey drawn on it. Its caption read, "The Last Turkey On Earth" and had holes punched in the turkey with the turkey exclaiming, "Oh, no! I'm dead!" See, nothing too awful, but just normal sixth grade boy humor. I laminated those and we'll use them in the office when we need placemats to protect the table. Or at least we'll use them until the administrators take the time to read them and throw them out.

One very nice thing happened today, too. One fifth grade teacher who is, to say the least, innovative, paraded his class throughout the office saying "Thank You!" to every person in the office. This teacher has a most unique academic history including dropping out of high school to travel around in Europe for a year and then coming home to finish his GED. I am sure he had to work very hard to get into a college after that even though he is brilliant and probably had good grades with little effort, but he finished college and spent a few years in the Peace Corps. Wouldn't it be nice if every kid had a chance to have a teacher like that? One day when his fiancee was undergoing medical treatments, I went to stay with his class while he left to take a phone call. He gave them some order and took off. I watched in amazement as they carried on by themselves. One student took over leadership and directed the exercise and the entire class participated the way they would had the teacher been there himself. I think the fact that this is a Gifted and Talented class helped. Anyone who has seen a GT class can attest to the natural competitive nature of these rooms. When my daughter was in General Education classes, she and one or two other kids were the only ones who attempted to answer questions and seemed engaged in the subject. Once she moved to GT, it was a very different atmosphere.

Next week is a short week. And the real Turkey Day!