Batting Cleanup

There was a work day at my son's school this past weekend. I have lost track of all the times I have shown up at various public schools, the one at which I work and the ones my son has attended, on a weekend. Sometimes I fix things. Sometimes I clean things. Sometimes I pull weeds. Most of the time I wonder what I'm doing there.
Five days a week, your traditional work week, I roll my bike into my classroom sometime around seven thirty in the morning. I don't tend to roll it back out until after four in the afternoon. These aren't the ten and twelve hour days that I used to put in when I used to run a book warehouse way back in the twentieth century, but they're full days. Those thirty-five minutes of "duty-free lunch" provide the only quiet moments in what can be best described as a marathon. When Friday afternoon comes, most of us teachers are headed for the door and not looking back.
But not all of us. There are those, myself included, who understand that schools don't magically reconstitute themselves over the weekend. Even the most dedicated custodial staff can't keep up with all the wear and tear that buildings and grounds take over the course of a school year. It takes a little extra help to keep things up and running. That's what parents do. That's what neighborhood volunteers do. That's what teachers do. On the odd weekend when you can round up enough dedicated hands, you can put your school back together again.
That's when my wondering stops. I know why I'm there. It's a public school, and I'm part of the public. Wouldn't Horace Mann be proud.