Done In A Day

"Done In A Day." This is the title of the program that our school is fortunate enough to have come and visit once each spring. It's a day in which our students are exposed to the wonderful world of business and opportunity. We talk about things like profit and loss. We learn about natural resources, and what kind of investment it takes to start your own company. Most of the teachers would confess, privately, that their favorite part of the day is the fact that they don't have to do the teaching.
We get a corporate-office-type whose company has made arrangements with Junior Achievement to spend the day sharing their wisdom and life lessons with youngsters in their community. As a classroom teacher, it's my job to keep the disruptions to a minimum, and to mete out any discipline that becomes necessary over what is generally a pretty low-key day. That is when the volunteer shows up prepared, and has some notion of what spending hours at a stretch with a roomful of kids will take out of you. Happily, after a few years of watching from the fence, I have become very familiar with the curriculum for fourth grade, and I can generally move things along with a little nudge when my students' eyes begin to glaze over.
Today was a minor challenge since my presenter switched with one of her co-workers at the last minute, and showed up without a clue about the program for our grade. That was easy enough to remedy, since I have found California on the map for years now, and figuring out how to make money selling little rubber race cars comes somewhat naturally to me. An hour into the day, after one activity, my volunteer was ready for "a little break." I told her that we were still an hour away from recess, and my kids would be fine going ahead to the next page.
And so it went. In no way am I ungrateful for the opportunity to sit at the back of my classroom and help out where needed. I was happy to have someone else do most of the talking. When it was over, however, I could see that the enthusiasm that had sparked our first sixty minutes had diminished to a faint glow. The reality of fourth grade in urban Oakland had left its mark on our Junior Achievement representative. I took over for the last fifteen minutes of class, asking review questions from the day, and handing out the J.A. play money as prizes for knowledge, while our volunteer signed her name on the certificates I had filled out for the kids before lunch. I asked her if she wanted to hand them out as a "last tag" on the group she had endured most of a minimum day (dismissal at 1:55). "No thanks," she said from behind tired eyes, "I don't really know their names."
I do, and so I did. My students settled down just long enough to give their obsequious unison "Thank you" and then it was over - Done In A Day.