Month: April 2016

Michael’s mother asked for an inspection to be made of our playground by a third party.  Linda is in a tizzy, which then brought Cate down on us in a tizzy.  I don’t see a need for the tizzy.  Our playground couldn’t be safer.  It has the latest equipment.  It’s been inspected regularly by the Department of Children’s Health and Safety.  Crystal and I were doing our jobs.  (That will be the next item for scrutiny once they exhaust the playground investigation.)

Do Michael’s parents have any idea how hard they’re about to make things for Crystal and me?  I don’t even want to know what kind of “heat” we’re going to take from the school administration if his parents pursue this any further.  If there had been any wrongdoing, that would be another matter, but this was a simple accident by a careful four-year-old boy doing his best to play.

I don’t know what Michael’s mother is trying to do, but I’m starting to be suspicious and a little uneasy.  His father has always seemed a reasonable man, but his mother is a bit of a nervous Nelly, always hovering and fussing over Michael excessively.  As a preschool teacher and a mother, I expect some hovering and fussing.  I did plenty of it when my own children were this age.  These are little bitty, precious people, and this is the first time many of them have been away from mom and dad for any length of time, but there are a few parents who go overboard, and she is one of them.

Lydia White, one of the teachers with the most longevity here at Pemberton, is hopping mad.  I’ve heard rumors and snippets of conversations, but it wasn’t until today that I pieced it all together.  In the previous years, Pemberton paid its part-time teachers for their preparation work at the beginning of each school year.  Most of the teachers who have been here for a few years, like Janie and Lydia, have it down to a science and don’t spend one minute more than necessary to get ready, but it still takes at least a full day to get everything in place for the new crop of preschool students each fall.

This year, however, the owners decided not to pay the teachers for prep time, but they didn’t bother to tell anyone.  They just shorted everyone’s paycheck hoping, I guess, that no one would notice.  It seems this was the last straw for Lydia.  They had changed the time her class meets without consulting her.  They subtracted more time in between her morning and afternoon classes from her paycheck, even though she was working during those times.  Not paying her for her prep time and not having the guts to tell her they weren’t going to pay her for it, though, was the thing that sent her over the edge.

Although I believe she thought she was at first, Lydia was not being singled out.  The Martins are treating everyone this way.  They’re finding every way they can to cheat their employees out of their pay. With the full-time staffers, they’ve been having Linda mark “lunch hours” for employees on their time sheets even though the teachers didn’t take that time off.  The upper administrators have told the directors that they aren’t going to pay the assistant teachers for “mandatory” meetings.  With the salaried directors, the Martins take advantage every chance they get, because it doesn’t cost them a dime extra.  They’ve been known to say, “Salaried people owe us at least 45 hours per week” (and no breaks…maybe that’s where they get the extra 5 hours?)   I don’t treat people this way, and I am VERY uncomfortable with the idea that they are going to ask me to steal money from my employees like this when it’s my turn to direct a school on my own.  I just can’t do it.  It’s not right.

The result of their conniving is that Lydia has threatened to quit.  That seems to be what has upper management in the biggest snit.  They’re waiting to see if she actually follows through on her threat.  They are not remorseful in any way.  They don’t intend to right their wrong.  They’re not going to pay her, even if she threatens to take legal action.  They’re just planning their next move if she quits.

“Who can we get to take over Lydia’s classes when she quits?”  Guess who.  It’s almost as if they have a Magic 8 Ball with only one answer inside of it: my name.  On whom can we dump extra work when we have it?  Annie!

            As if I didn’t have enough to do teaching classes every day, and giving the kindergarten teacher and other teachers their lunch breaks, and performing office duties like taking a head count in the mornings, substituting for a sick teacher, answering the phones, answering the door, filling out endless reports, scheduling teachers, watching the head count in the afternoons and sending teachers home as soon as possible, fixing office equipment, etc., etc., etc., now Cate has decided that I should take over Marjorie’s duties while she is on a six- to eight-week leave of absence to have surgery.  I’ve worked at the school only about a month, and now they’re heaping this on me, too.  I’m surprised they even trust me with it, but I guess I’m the lesser of two evils, the other evil being to find a person from outside the school to come in temporarily to handle the money.

Of course, I am the logical person to do this.  I have to agree.  I have a Master’s degree in Business Administration and have performed Marjorie’s duties in previous jobs I’ve held, collecting payments and recording and depositing them, keeping the financial records, sending out billing statements.  It’s all very familiar to me, and I actually like this kind of work.  I’m also hoping that since I’m generously sitting in for Marjorie, which reassures her of still having a job when she gets back and keeps the upper management from having to hire (and more importantly pay) someone else from outside the school, that they will lessen some of my other duties.  They can’t possibly expect me to do Marjorie’s job and mine, two full-time jobs, at the same time, right?  Wrong.

Marjorie has been teaching me the financial part of the school’s computer system.  I’m not actually allowed to work on it yet.  Marjorie doesn’t want me using her password.  I guess she doesn’t want to be blamed if I make a mistake.  I can understand that, but I’m not an idiot.

Hopefully, I will be given a password of my own soon that will give me access to the financial reports.  My current password only allows me into the director’s functions of reporting staffing and head counts.  I don’t even have e-mail.  God forbid we should actually communicate with each other!  There is also no internet connection.  We’re not allowed to have it.  Apparently, we can’t be trusted.

I am taking copious notes as Marjorie shows me around the computer software.  It’s very logical, not terribly complicated, and if I have notes, I’ll easily remember what to do.  Marjorie keeps treating this as if it were rocket science.  It’s not that hard.  I know why she feels she has to keep her job shrouded in mystery, though.  She needs the job security.  We’re all made to feel early on in our employment here that we are completely expendable.  We can easily be replaced tomorrow.  If she makes her job seem complicated, she feels fewer people can step in to replace her.  However, I’m getting irritated at being treated as if I’m an imbecile incapable of competently taking over her duties.  I’m surprised she hasn’t made me sign in blood never to reveal any of the top secret mysteries she is about to share with me.  Maybe if she tells me her secrets, she’ll have to kill me later like a good top operative in the espionage business would.

They added to my duties today…again.  Crystal was asked to show me how to do kindergarten lunch.  Evidently, the kindergarten teacher gets a lunch break.  How nice for her!  Okay, don’t be catty, Annie; just because you thought you were applying for her job and because you’d actually like to eat lunch someday does not give you the right to be jealous of her.

She’s a cute thing; blonde and straight, shoulder-length hair, medium height, straightforward.  Kelly seems to do a good job when I’ve been in and out of her room taking the head count for the morning.  (I have to go around and get a physical count of the number of children in the building and make sure it matches the number the computer system thinks we have.  It usually doesn’t, because almost always one or more parents forget to clock in their child when they drop the child off in the morning.)  Kelly is one of the few young teachers who is already married.  She’s just a little more mature and professional than the others in the building.  I think I’d like her even better if I got to know her better.

Anyway, Crystal and I went down to relieve Kelly for lunch duty.  Lunch is always hot at Pemberton and is rolled out of the kitchen on carts.  The carts are parked in four general areas within the building and contain plastic tubs, one for each classroom.  The tubs contain everything the classroom needs for the lunch from plates and cutlery to the food itself.

The food has been prepared by Linda today.  The cook quit without giving notice the week before I arrived, and Linda and another teacher have been taking turns in the kitchen each day.  The smell of burnt grilled cheese is wafting through the school, but it must have been a minor casualty because the sandwiches that arrive in the kindergarten classroom look fine.  I would never complain to her anyway.  I’m in awe.  Linda does a much better job than I could.  In fact, I’m terrified I’ll be assigned the kitchen duty next.

To begin the lunch routine, the children are allowed to choose a book from the room’s library and read quietly anywhere in the room that they’d like.  When their table is called, they put their book back in the library and line up at the bathroom sink to wash their hands.  In the meantime, Crystal and I are scrambling to wipe down the tables with sanitizing Quats solution and set them with the plates, cutlery, cups, and napkins.  Once the children wash their hands, they are expected to sit politely at the table until all of the children are ready to be served.  We sing a sort of thanksgiving grace, but nothing too religious that would offend any of the vast array of religious beliefs represented by the children in the room.

When everyone is in place, Crystal and I go around to each table and ask the children to raise their hand if they would like whatever food we happen to be serving at the moment.  We pass out food as quickly as we can, but it’s not fast enough.  Demands come pouring in.  The first to be served want seconds before the last to be served have even seen food on their plates.  The talk flows freely and gets louder as lunch progresses.  Crystal reminds them to be quiet.

The one benefit to lunch duty is that the teacher serving it is actually allowed to have a plate herself, if there’s enough left and if there’s time.  Apparently, time has been an issue in this class, because Crystal automatically goes over to a timer conveniently placed on the counter and sets it for five minutes.  She announces that the class is to sit at their places at the table and finish eating for five minutes.  This seems to come as no surprise to them.  She reminds them they may talk quietly with their tablemates.  She and I sit down to a quick bite to eat.

When the five minutes are up, students who are finished and tired of sitting want to be allowed out of their chairs.  Students who are still hungry want to be served again.  The demands are endless and constant.  When a student is given permission to get up, they are supposed to go over to the trash can, scrape off any leftover food from their plates, and put their plates, cups, and utensils in the big plastic tub.  They may go back to reading a book from the library.  As a table empties of students, it’s my job to wipe it down again with Quats and clean up the spilled food left behind.

After lunch is over, which happens astoundingly quickly, it’s time to take the class to recess.  Today, the duty is easy because it’s a beautiful day (no need for coats and they can go outside).  We line them up and take them out; as soon as they reach the door, they run like wild animals being freed from a cage.

Michael’s dad came into school with him today.  He wanted to see the playground where Michael had chipped his tooth.  Michael and I took him outside, and Michael showed him the spot where he had hit the pole.  Michael’s dad asked me if there had been other toys out on the playground that day that might have caused Michael to trip.  Hmmm.  That was an interesting question that sounded very much like a fishing expedition.  However, I could answer him without reservation, “No.  Balls and other toys aren’t allowed in the area around the jungle gym.”  I then showed him the basketball court where the balls are kept, a good 20 yards away from the jungle gym across an open grassy yard.  The riding toys and shovels and buckets are even farther away in a sand pit at the other end of the yard, about 50 yards away.

“No, Dad,” Michael interrupted.  “I told you.  There wasn’t anything that tripped me.  There wasn’t anything on the wood chips.  I just let go of the bar and fell.”

Michael’s dad seemed satisfied, and we all went inside where he thanked me and left Michael and me at the classroom door.

I had my first “incident” at Pemberton today.  Actually, it happened at the end of the day yesterday, but I didn’t find out about it until today.  Crystal and I had our four-year-old class out on the playground.  I had been watching Michael and some of his other classmates playing at the chin-up bars very nicely when another student came up that needed his shoe tied.  I guess while my attention was on the shoe, Michael somehow lost his balance and banged his front tooth against one of the support poles for the chin-up bars, chipping it in the process.  It was sort of a freak accident, and Michael toughed it out and didn’t complain to either Crystal or me.  We lined the children up to go inside to get their school bags, took them to the front benches to wait for their ride, and put him into the car without ever seeing his tooth.

Today, his mother called to let us know what had happened and to ask if we knew anything about it.  Crystal and I were both genuinely shocked and apologetic, but we couldn’t add anything to her knowledge of the incident, because neither of us was aware it had even happened.  He’s such a tough little guy to take a hit like that and not cry or at least tell us about it!  We were amazed.  Most children would be screaming bloody murder if something like that had happened to them.  I feel badly about it, but I feel sure the children weren’t doing anything to cause the accident, because they had been playing well together, and Michael has already shown himself to be very good at following the safety rules.  He often reminds his classmates to obey them!  Plus, Michael’s mom shared that he told her no one had pushed him; he just fell.  I hope his tooth will be okay.

            Life is beginning to settle into a routine.  The students are adjusting to the rhythm of the classroom.  I’m adjusting to the routine of daily life in and out of the office and classroom.  My “perch” has become the broken chair in the back office, not one of the three desks in the office as I had imagined.  Oddly enough, the desk in the front office seems to be the would-be domain of my young little co-teacher, Crystal.  She appears to be quite ambitious and would rather spend time in the office for no apparent reason than in her classroom where she belongs.

An interesting chat with Marjorie one day revealed to me a possible reason for Linda’s lack of enthusiasm for my addition to her staff.  Marjorie said that every time she gets a new person broken in, the upper management transfers them away.  I imagine it’s difficult investing that much time in a person, and perhaps even becoming attached, only to have the person constantly ripped away from you, not getting to enjoy the benefits of your hard work training her, or enjoying the closeness of the friendship that might have developed.  Although, the ownership did make it clear that was what Linda was supposed to be doing with me, training me to take over the directorship of another Pemberton school.  What does she expect?

As if this week weren’t enough with the late night Wednesday and the parents flowing freely through our classrooms the last two days, the good teachers of Pemberton must attend the Pemberton School-Year-Kick-Off Meeting today…a Saturday.  First of all, I feel exhausted.  Second, I’ve hardly seen my family this week.  Third, I’m not getting paid extra for this because I’m a salaried employee.  Fourth and finally, Saturdays are “survival days.”

They are essential to every working mother’s week.  It is the day on which you catch up from all the things that you missed the previous week and make all the preparations you can to survive the coming week.  Never mind house cleaning….who has time to do that?  Besides, what’s a little dust, anyway?  Nobody ever died from dust that I know of.  But dying from embarrassment because your kids are wearing the same clothes to school unwashed for the bzillionth time, or from starvation because you haven’t had time to buy food at the grocery store?  Those are distinct possibilities.  Without my fabulous, supportive husband, I would never make it.  He’s taken over the full management of laundry duty and grocery shopping, God bless him, while I sit here through one presentation after another at the very first Pemberton school building.

Unfortunately, it was quite a hike to get here, but Linda had kindly arranged for me to ride with teachers from another Pemberton school closer to my home.  It was so far for them (and me), that the owners gave them permission to take the school’s small bus.  I met with them in the parking lot of their school and introduced myself, feeling like a proverbial and literal fifth wheel.  They were nice enough, though, and I was grateful not to have to drive through unfamiliar suburbs and highways.  I was also cognizant that these might be my future co-workers, although they were not aware of that fact.  It was interesting to be able to sit back like a fly on the wall and observe the different personalities.

After slightly less than an hour, we arrived at the quaint old building.  Beverly has a knack for picking out the picturesque.  It’s a much smaller school than any of the others I’ve seen, but the building, a previous church school, has been restored and maintained beautifully.  It sits on Pemberton Avenue, which is where the owners say they got the name.  It was not, as I assumed, just a snooty, British-sounding name picked out for the elitism of it.  However, it works well for them in that respect, too.

The day proceeded with endless meetings and presentations of curriculum.  I’m lucky.  I’m a “newbie.”  This was all fresh and somewhat interesting to me, but I looked around at the faces of the veteran teachers I know.  They’re bored and wishing they were somewhere else.  The highlight of the day came when we were served lunch: sandwiches from Panera.

At last as lunch was wrapped up, we were given permission to leave.  From what little I’ve learned already about the Pemberton upper management, I’m surprised they kept us through lunch.  They could have pushed the start time a little earlier in the morning and avoided feeding us and paying the hourly staff for an extra thirty minutes.  Maybe I’m being unfair, though.  At any rate, I was glad to be going home.

My four-year-old class met for the first time this afternoon.  This is the one that I co-teach with Crystal.  She finally got around to doing the prep work for this class this morning.  She came to get me to help with the preparations, mostly cutting out construction paper shapes for the art project, but she also went over the components of the class.

We meet our students at the front door.  It is our job, as their teachers, to get them out of their cars in the drive-through lane and walk them to the benches just inside the front door.  Usually one teacher does the unloading while the other one stays with the children on the benches.  Then we walk the children to our classroom.  Each session begins with a trip to the coat room to hang their coats and tote bags.  (Every student is given a Pemberton green canvas tote that coordinates with the carpet, of course, in which to carry their papers and belongings, and they’re assigned a hook in the coat room on which to hang them.  The teachers check the bags as they come in for special notes or instructions from home.)

After a student has hung his or her belongings, they are directed to the bathroom to wash their hands.  Everyone has to be instructed on using the lights (which come on automatically—nice!), the step stool, the faucet, the soap, and the paper towels (as well as the automatic-flush toilet and the toilet tissue for later reference).  As a teacher of this age group, especially my younger class, you can’t take anything for granted.  Every step must be explained and modeled…to each and every child…over and over again.  Parenthetically, as nice as the automatic-flush toilet sounds, it is actually a source of concern for some students.  Many of them are afraid of the flushing sound when it happens on its own, and we have had to “override” the system after we discovered that the toilet terrifies certain students.

Once the students have finished those two steps, the next stop is the tables, where they are free to take whatever “table toy” they choose from the shelves and play.  There are puzzles and wooden dress up dolls and pegs and building blocks of various kinds and toy cars and lacing toys and dominoes.  It is the teachers’ responsibility to rotate those toys between the classrooms to keep a fresh variety on hand.  At this point, the students play fairly nicely on their own with little direction from the teachers, which allow the teachers to continue helping late-arriving students with their coats and hand washing.

After table toys have been played with for about 10 to 15 minutes, the children are then taught to clean up their toys and put them back on the shelves.  Some need more encouragement than others.  Then they are directed to circle time.  Janie used carpet squares to give each student a special spot, but Crystal doesn’t use them.  I can see why it helps with the younger students, though, but this group is a year older and also has fewer students, and they seem to be very cooperative and good at following directions.  (Most students in this class didn’t sign up for it by choice; they had to accept this class when the earlier classes their parents really wanted were already full and this was the only way they could get into Pemberton, so it’s a little smaller than the average Pemberton class.)

Circle time differs slightly between classrooms in the presentation, but in all classrooms it contains the same basic components: the calendar, the weather, and the pledge of allegiance.  The calendar is a huge component in and of itself.  First there are the days of the week (presented in song), then there’s the calendar itself with the month and date and year.  With the date, we practice counting, and the numbers are presented on different colors and shapes, so we also practice pattern recognition and prediction.  Then there are the concepts of “yesterday,” “today,” and “tomorrow.”  Besides those elements, circle time is also used to introduce the craft of the day and any other curricular items, such as how to write a certain letter of the alphabet or an aspect of ethics we want to teach, like loyalty, or a particular country we’re studying.  Centers in the room are explained, books are read, poems are recited, finger plays are taught, and simple math and logic problems are shared.

Today, since it’s the first day of school for our students, we gave them a tour of the building, so they will feel more comfortable.  We took a look at the music area, the other classrooms, the office (and got a wave from Linda), the library, the enrichment room, the gym, the kitchen, and the “roundabout” (a circular, open area between classrooms at one end of the building) where we will go for our reading readiness program.  As we got back to our classroom, we had a guest today as well, who will be a regular visitor.  It’s the Spanish teacher.  She did a marvelous job keeping the children active and engaged while teaching them basic Spanish vocabulary.  (I’m learning along with the kids!)

Normally after circle time, we’ll go straight into free play.  This is where the children get to decide what they would like to play with in the room.  On the back side of the table toy shelves are more shelves with floor toys that they can use in the open area on one side of the room.  Every classroom has some sort of a climber, some have stairs and tunnels and slides, some are shaped like castles, others like boats. There’s a dress-up area with clothes, hats, and other accessories, and of course, an unbreakable mirror!  There’s a home area with a play kitchen, table, chairs, high chair, and doll cradle, complete with baby doll and clothes and blankets for the doll.  There are math and science centers with activities that change every month.  There’s a writing table with all sorts of papers, envelopes, pencils, crayons, markers, and stencils.  Then there’s a “pretend play” center that is rotated between classrooms each month.  Right now, we have the florist shop, complete with artificial flowers, plants, containers, cash register, and telephone.  Next month we might have the ice cream shop or the puppet stage.  When the teachers are feeling very brave (and energetic enough to clean up after it), there is a sensory table filled with anything from torn paper to sand to dirt to water to oatmeal to cotton balls.  The possibilities are endless, as are the possibilities of toys to use in those various media.  There is so much for the children to see and do!

While all of that is going on under the supervision of one teacher, the other teacher is working with a few students at a time on the other side of the room with the art project or handwriting.  Gluing, painting, stamping, coloring, cutting, it’s sure to be a messy, but fun time, although, some children don’t like getting their hands messy with the art and have to be coaxed a little more than the others.

Next is snack time!  The menu changes daily.  Today we have strawberry yogurt with graham crackers and juice.  When the students are finished, they may choose a book from the classroom library and look through it quietly while waiting for the rest of the class to finish and the teachers to wipe down the tables and clean up the mess.

Finally, it’s time to show the students the playground and give them a few minutes of free time outside before we pack up to go home.  They are so thrilled to go out the back glass doors and visit the playground equipment that they have been eyeing from the classroom.  It’s a welcome relief to Crystal and me, too.  It is a beautiful day, and although we have to watch them and make sure they follow the playground rules they’ve been given, it’s easier than directing them constantly inside.

Crystal makes her way over to a group of the teachers from another class standing out there already.  I circle the playground to check on some of the students that can’t be seen from the teachers’ vantage point.  All is well, so I work my way back to the teacher group.  Over the last few days as I’ve met more of the staff, I’ve come to realize almost all of the teachers at this school are significantly younger than I am.  In fact, if I were brutally honest, I’m old enough to be their mother.  They’re polite to me, but I don’t fit in.  They’re talking about boyfriends and what they’re all going to do this coming Friday night after work.  They wouldn’t be interested to hear about me going home to my husband and children, no matter how wonderful my family happens to be.

I circle back around and remind one of our students to go only down the slide, not up it.  I tie a shoelace and grant a request for help to reach the chin-up bar.  At last, it is time to go inside and get the students ready to go home.  Art projects, which thankfully are dry by this time, are put in their totes, and we all trudge down to the benches by the front door.  The process is reversed from the start of our class.  The teacher who was outside stays in and supervises the children, while the other teacher goes out and greets the cars in the drive-through lane, escorting the children to the appropriate car, getting the parent’s signature on the sign-out sheet, and chatting a bit about how their time went in class that day.  It’s 5:15 before we get them all in their cars and on their way home.  In 15 minutes I should have been able to go home.  I am ready.

Alas, however, it is New Parent Orientation night with programs at 6:00 and 7:30.  I would be lucky to be home before 10:00.  I certainly won’t be home before my son is fast asleep in bed.  So much for getting to spend time with him today!  Fortunately for me, his Back-to-School night was last Thursday, and my daughter’s in middle school is not until next week.  At least this did not conflict with either of those days.

The night drags on.  I smile a lot, but I suspect my eyes give away the secret of how incredibly tired I am and how much I’d like to be at home.  This meet-and-greet won’t be the end of it, either.  All of the parents are invited to “Meet the Teacher” days at Pemberton for the next two days.  It’s only just begun.

The next few days after my first on the job went progressively a little better.  I was getting used to the commute, which took between 45 and 60 minutes depending on how many of the 17 stoplights on Route 27 were green when I reached them.  I now knew not to expect a lunch break (although I still clung to the hope that I’d get to snatch a bite to eat and brought a little food each day).  I could let myself in the door.  I also met the two teachers with whom I would be working.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays in the late mornings to early afternoons, I was scheduled to teach a part-day class of three-year-olds with Janie Long.  Janie only taught that one class, and she’d been doing it for about eleven years.  She was slightly older than I and considerably shorter, with long, blonde hair and a feisty spirit.  She had more energy than most children I know!

She clocked in at Pemberton one day to get a little prep work done before our class began the following week.  That’s when Linda introduced us.  I asked her what I could do to help, and once again, was denied, but nicely.  She let me know that she had been doing this for a long time, had her own ideas about how to do things, and it would just be easier for her to go ahead and do them rather than try to explain it all.

On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, from 2:30 until 5:00, I am supposed to teach a part-day four-year-old class with a young woman named Crystal.  She’s a tiny, pale, freckled, little thing with long, straight, dark hair.  It turns out she was one of the teachers who helped assemble the prospective parent folders with me last week.  She was not happy about having to work on Fridays until 5:00.  Before this, she used to volunteer to go home early if Linda needed to reduce the number of staff when there were fewer children in the building than expected.  Now she won’t be able to do that.  She’d argued with Linda for another class assignment (I was trying not to take it personally), but Cate, the general area manager, was the ultimate authority, and this was the class Cate had assigned her, so apparently there was no use arguing.  Linda had given her the responsibility of teaching me “the Pemberton way.”  I’m to learn the proper way to run my classroom from Crystal.

I asked Crystal about what we needed to do to prepare for our first class, but she hasn’t found the time to work with me yet.  Our four-year-old students come tomorrow for the first time.  If she wants help getting ready for our class, she’d better find the time soon.  All of the teachers are supposed to present the same material to all of their classes at the same time, but I haven’t figured out how they know what to do yet.  From where do they get their direction?

I had my first three-year-old class today, all twenty of them.  My, they were a squirrelly bunch!  They are precious, though.  Even with this little contact, I can tell a lot about them.

Caden is a tow-headed little stinker, but he’s so doggone cute, you can’t stay aggravated with him for long.  He’s the tiniest (and possibly the youngest) of our group.  Ellen is quiet, but not necessarily shy.  Walker is our “tough guy.”  He’s not a bully; he just seems to be more mature than a lot of the others, and nothing is going to bother him.  Patty is used to getting her own way.  Anabelle is an absolute sweetheart.  Nancy is a forty-year-old woman in a three-year-old body.  Savir is a little ball of fire.  It’s going to take all the strength Janie and I have combined to keep up with him.  Anikait is quiet and gentle.  I suspect his mother dotes on him.  Allie is very strong-willed and stubborn.  Elianna likes to be a good helper.

Faith is painfully shy and frightened.  She clung to her mother and screamed when I had to pull her away.  I would be frightened, too, if I had been brought up in China all this time and could speak no English and my mother was leaving me with total strangers who didn’t understand a word I could say.  (Consequently, she didn’t say anything, just cried…a lot.)  I held her almost the entire time.  (My back is now killing me, but if it brought her any comfort, it was worth it.)

Working with Janie is like working with a whirlwind.  She whooshes here and there and everywhere; she makes me feel like a snail.  It’s difficult to keep up with her.  Fortunately, she doesn’t seem to expect me to.  I told her from the outset to feel free to tell me what to do.  I may not know what she needs when she needs it, but I’m always willing to help.  Just tell me what to do and how.  I think we’ll work well together once I get the hang of the routine.