Yard Duty

When you are a kid, recess is THE BEST. For 25 glorious minutes, you are free of the teacher's watchful eye. You want to roll giant snowballs until they are too big to move or serve any purpose? Go for it. You want to dig a hole to China using only your fingernails and a pointy stick? Be my guest.

When you are a teacher on yard duty, recess is THE WORST. 25 minutes might not seem like very long when you are watching The Mindy Project, but those same 25 minutes are an eternity when your job is to walk aimlessly around a school yard on a frosty January day, eyes squinted against the glaring sun. Have you ever thought about how exceedingly boring yard duty must be for a supply teacher? I have literally counted out the seconds and the minutes during a 30 minute recess stint. You don't know anyone, there are no kids to talk to or joke with, and “Hey, you! The one climbing the fence!” doesn't tend to be a very effective reprimand.

In fact, there is maybe nothing worse as a supply teacher than trying to discipline a child who's name is unknown. Last winter, I found myself filling in for yard duty in a city school on the “Intermediate Field”, which happened to have a newly formed and very off-limits ice slide within its perimeter. After several attempts in my “nice teacher voice” asking a group of 13-year-old boys to please stay off the icy death trap, I eventually had to employ my “not-so-nice teacher voice” with some serious aplomb. Unfortunately, this group of boys happened to be of that particular breed that responds to neither type of teacher voice, and proceeded to take out little children as they defiantly slid across the icy field. I had just started walking in their direction for the 5^th time when the bell conveniently rang, sending them running in laughter towards the intermediate doors where they knew they would be freed from my nagging.

On a normal day, I would let it go. But after 30 minutes of bitingly cold January air, I was about as fired up as you could be in -20 weather. Upon entering the primary hall, I asked the teacher next door to watch my class for the next few minutes. I then proceeded to hunt the hallways, eyes peeled for two red hats and a camouflage coat. After several minutes of searching.....SUCCESS! I have never seen three children look less happy to see me than those boys did when I finally spotted them. I waited until they had finished getting out of their snow stuff, and followed them into their classroom where I gave their rather intimidating teacher the recess low-down. I won't say it pleases me to get students into trouble, but I will admit I felt a little shiver of happiness (or lingering cold) when their teacher turned his full wrath upon these three boys in the glorious way that only a regular classroom teacher can.

My duty done, I returned to my Grade 1 classroom where I was greeted by shining red cheeks, still-watery eyes and toothless smiles, and I thanked the Lord for primary students.