Loving Hands

If you've been following along, you'll know that my family is in the midst of a big move, relocating our lives from a large house in the Seward Park neighborhood of Seattle, where we've been spreading out for the past 13 years, to a downtown apartment with about half the square footage. It's a major undertaking, one that has required my full-time attention this week. But school must go on and in a cooperative preschool, that means the "teacher assistants" are taking over.

It takes a real man to pull off the pointy princess hat. We tend

to have lots of dads in our classroom.

Each of the families in a co-op are required to not only provide an adult to work in the classroom as an assistant teacher once a week, but they also assume another job to help run the school, such as "maintenance," or "fundraising," or "field trip coordinator."  Teacher's assistant is one of those jobs. Ostensibly, the TA's are to help me out with day-to-day tasks like making play dough, preparing art projects, running minor errands, and sorting art into cubbies, but since I don't typically do a lot of advance planning I usually wind up doing these things myself. The biggest part of the TA job, then, is to take over for me when I have to be away. That's why when "selling" the job at our spring orientation meeting, I say, "It's the easiest job in the school until it's the hardest."

I like seeing the all those adults down on our knees 

amongst the children.

This week, the Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday TA's are earning their keep while I manage the big move and by all accounts it's running smoothly. The same thing happened back in November when I went to England for the Earlyarts International UnConference.

But naturally, sometimes our height advantage comes into play.

This is the beauty of co-op. It's why I chose it for my own daughter and it's why I continue to teach in one. Having a roomful of adults who love the children more than makes up for any lack they might have in formal education training, although I might add that several of our parents each year are former, or even current, teachers.

When we're doing it right (e.g., playing with the kids) it's

sometimes hard to tell the adults apart from the children.

It's not terribly disruptive when I'm away because by this time of the year, we're a well oiled machine, every one of the 7-10 parents in the room already having gone through our routines dozens of times. Everyone already knows how things run, what to do, where to find things. The TA's have been watching me do the things I do for months. Yes, they weren't able to open the garden yesterday because I forgot to tell them the trick for moving the sticky dead bolt (force), but that's a minor thing.

Each of us brings different energy, ideas and passions into the classroom

all within the context of how much we love our children. It

makes for an infinitely rich and varied experience.

Of course, it also helps that the children are by now the experts on all things school related. If the parents forget the words to a song or accidentally get the schedule out of order, the kids make sure to set them right. In fact, I usually tell the TA's, "When in doubt, ask one of the children."

Oh yeah, sometimes we're lucky enough to have grandparents in the room with us.

Oh, how I love having grandparents at school -- they really know how to play!

I can't wait to get back to the classroom next week, but I'm resting easy knowing that the children are in the best, most loving hands possible.