I'm pretty sure I have one of the most rewarding jobs on the planet. If you work with kids and you actually like kids, then every moment you spend with them isn't work. It's fun.
Today I attended "Mystery Day" at one of the local middle schools. Basically it's a critical thinking event. The teachers dress in 1950's garb for the 1957 class reunion. One of the classmates is dead and one of the people in attendance is responsible for his death. The kids have to use deductive reasoning to figure it out. At first, all was chaos. Kids were yelling, rushing to find a spot, trying to figure out what they were supposed to be doing. One teacher leaned over to me and said, "This is middle school. If there wasn't chaos, then we'd know something is wrong."
Middle school kids are great. They're bright, charming, silly, energetic, without guile, perceptive, positive, funny and hard working.
At one school I was taking pictures of a group shot outside. We had bright sun and it was right in the kids eyes. "What I really need is a sombrero," one boy whined.
At another school I was covering a middle school play of "Looking Glass Land" about Alice in the crazy alternate world. The girl who played the Red Queen said, "I like beating up my best friend, 'cause in real life I'm a really nice person and in the play I get to be really, really mean."
The kids love having their picture taken and their names in the paper. They beg you to interview them. Usually I comply. One boy at Mystery Day dragged me back to his table where he proceeded to force me to interview him and his friends. "We have a ton of clues," he said. "We think it's either Mark or Jenny. Or Linda. Or maybe, Maria. It could be Susan or Carl." He listed nearly the entire cast. It didn't matter. He was having a great time and he had thrown his whole heart into the task at hand.
The little kids in elementary want be, well, not kids. The High School kids are focused on being adults. But the Middle school kids are just kids.
Just like cookies, the good stuff is in the middle.
TARB
Lesser Journalists are a hard-working bunch, but we don't have the perks that some other journalists have. The "E" sticks on our keyboards; when we walk into a room of complete strangers, everyone knows our names because they see our faces in the paper when it comes out every week; "middle class" is relative. The community loves us, the community hates us. We love our jobs. We hate out jobs. We love our jobs, again.
About Me
- Tarb
- Three Things You Should Know: I think zombies are cool. I klat drawkcab. I am loyal to a fault.
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