egg drop.

i have a new job.

i now work at an elementary school as a paraeducator in the special ed class. it's pretty much the funnest job ever. i get to play with blocks and eat snacks and the kids i work with are absolutely adorable.
well, most of the time.

the other day the third graders had an activity they called the egg drop wherein they created these parcels for an egg that would be thrown off the roof of the school. the egg parcel was to be created to keep the egg from breaking when it hit the ground. i'd heard of such an activity before, and it sounded like fun. also, it gave our kids something new to do besides reading them a story or trying to teach them things they wouldn't pay attention to anyways.

but when we went outside and listened to the vice principal introduce the activity from the roof of the school, my view on the activity changed dramatically.

all the kids in the school sat in a horseshoe shape around where the vice principal stood on the roof of the school, shouting into a megaphone (which turned out to be extremely ineffective once the dropping of eggs began. not much can be heard over excitedly shouting children). She introduced the activity, reading a poem about how people come in all shapes and sizes, and how some are fragile while others are more sturdy. then she proceeded to tell the kids that the egg drop was a representation of people -- they come in all different packages and some look more durable than others, but some don't stand the test and they break. so we, she told us, at this elementary school, need to be sensitive to the people around us so that we don't inadvertantly...or, i suppose, deliberately...break them.

then she proceeded to drop each package from the roof one by one, shouting the name of its owner to the crowd of screaming children below.

and i began to liken the poem to the activity further than she probably intended:

in school, teachers just throw their students into the abyss in a ceremonious, yea, even cult-like manner, shouting their name to the world in a most apathetic tone, amongst the crowds of shrieking children, crowing their opinions about the individual as it hurtles to the ground to be shattered into a million pieces.

"that one will never last!!"
"now that is just plain ugly"
"that's awesome, but i know it won't work"
"BREAK! BREAK! BREAK! BREAK!!!!"



.....



...now the egg drop will never be the same to me.

...while it may be viewed as a chance to show off creativity...or display wealth...or an opportunity to measure a child's aptitude for engineering...or just yet another time for parents to do their child's homework....

...all i will see is yet another extremely fragile self-esteem plummet downward at an incredible velocity until it's shattered on the ground in a million pieces, all it's insides and fleeting hopes gushing outwards while everyone around cries in deafening delight at its demise.


and my parents wondered why i hated school.











boredom buster of the day: get some acquaintances together. have an egg drop from the top of something very high. be sure to make your packages look like you. or, perhaps, what you looked like in elementary school. preferrably third grade. or better yet, junior high. that's when my self-esteem fell the farthest. and, alas, i don't think it's recovered...


it's been a while.
and it's lovely to blog again.

:)