How Do YOU Spell Relief?

Caution: venting.

I don't blog about my job very much; at least not the office politics. I love my work and my co-workers. Really. There is more to my school, though, than just my adult English as a Second Language program. There's an infant/toddler program, a preschool, and grades K-3. The K-3 program is no longer going to be joined with a school district as it was in the past. Starting next week, it will be a state charter school - basically a district unto itself. This means there's a lot going on to get ready for the transition. Do I understand that it's stressful? Of course. Do I think it's OK for the people involved the transition to run around biting the heads off everyone else? There are people (I'll bet you know some) who think that they have cornered the market on stress. Because she is under the gun, Jane Doe (as we'll call my beloved but infuriating coworker) will ride rough-shod over everyone else, and expect to be forgiven, consoled, let out of jail free. The rest of us have to stay out of her way. "I have to ask Jane something. S***! What kind of mood is she in?" As far as Jane is concerned, I don't know what stress is. How tough can my little job be, after all?

I don't think my job is a lot more stressful than most. I do have a lot of responsibility and a long "to-do" list, but so do lots of people. Because of the educational model we use, there are times when it can be incredibly fast-paced. Sometimes, it can get a little crazy.

Thursday night class, from 7-9 PM, was one of those nights. In addition to the usual controlled madness that makes our program tick, I had emergencies. Nights like that, I wish someone else were in charge.

1. A student came running in, just as classes were starting and said, "I need complain you." Our students don't complain much, so I was all ears. Looking absolutely wild-eyed, she said, "Husband car here boy bicycle kill!!" I'm used to trying to understand things that are 90% incomprehensible, but...
"WHAT!?"
"Husband car here boy bicycle kill!!"
"KILL!?" (I clutch her arm.)
"Yes!"
"HERE?"
"Yes!" She is pointing out the door toward the parking lot. OMG. I head to the door. On the way, I switch to Spanish: "Your husband hit a boy on a bicycle here in the parking lot and killed him?"
"WHAT?!" (only she says, "Que?", since we're speaking Spanish.) "NO!"
Then comes the pantomime part, after which I understand that there are some neighborhood boys who, as a prank, are riding their bikes right up to people's cars as they pull into the parking lot. Then they fall to the ground, screaming in agony that they've been hit. This student's husband had been a victim of this prank and it had scared the crap out of him.
Oooohhhhh! I get it! I don't have to scrape a bleeding body off the sidewalk; I just have to yell at some boys! By this point, I was rather in the mood for that, but several other people had beat me to it. All righty, then. Back to our regular scheduled programming. For a few minutes.

2. The babysitter came running in from the playground, gasping, "We need an ambulance! M. fell off the monkey bars!" I know why she's frantic. This happened about a year and a half ago, and turned into a fairly big deal. Broken arm, resulting in a trip to the ER; uninsured single mother with no money; surgery for the little girl; a claim on the school's insurance; visits and calls from the adjusters, trying to find an "i" I hadn't dotted or a "t" I hadn't crossed; and a pile of bills that the mother couldn't understand because of her limited English. Neither could I, really. I was on the phone dealing with it almost every day. All this ran through my mind as I ran to the playground, to find that little M. had just had the wind knocked out of her. Found her mother, got her a bag of ice for her bruises, and back to our regular scheduled programming again.

3. Nine o'clock rolled around, and I was feeling that it had been what we call "a busy night". That means a lot of stuff happened unexpectedly. Then, the student who had reported the "husband car here boy bicycle kill" appeared again, looking even more frantic than before (if such a thing were possible). I guess that, during the hullabaloo earlier, her purse had been stolen from her car. Money, yes, but worse - all of the identification papers for everyone in the family were in there. Well, shiiiiit! Call the cops; no one at dispatch speaks Spanish and they don't understand her English; put her on speaker phone and interpret; she absently picks up the handset and sets it back down, cutting us off. Call the cops again and start over. Finally, I sent her home, because the cops are going to call her at that number to get a more complete report. I told the cops that it would help if they found someone who spoke Spanish... By this time, everyone else had gone home; I took my flashlight and started searching the parking lot. You know how it is: sometimes, thieves just take the cash and throw the rest away. I searched behind the dumpsters, along the chain link fence, under the bushes and the sleeping school buses. Nothing. I returned to my office and sat for a moment, staring straight ahead. There was a rapping on the window at about 10:15. Same student, coming to tell me that it was a huge misunderstanding. Her husband had had the purse the whole time. She's sorry to cause me trouble. Tempting as it would be to hop up and down like an angry Rumplestiltskin, I squeeze her hands and tell her that's great! It was - those documents would have been hell to replace.

A bit of a roller-coaster, really, but it's not much more stressful than a normal night. At the moment, we have 93 students, 73 volunteer tutors, 20 children in the babysitting and 12 staff, so there's always something interesting going on. I mean in addition to studying English.

Why am I describing this night? I'm expected to have a high tolerance for stress. If I started freaking out about things that happen, I'd scare away the students, the volunteers would all quit and the staff wouldn't like working with me any more. Then they'd stop launching screaming monkeys at me, no longer put plastic spiders on my keyboard. That's how the adult education staff deals with stress a lot of the time. Practical jokes and chocolate. Beats the hell out of screeching at each other. I'm glad I'm going on vacation next week. Maybe when I get back, "Jane Doe" will have removed the hissing cockroach from her ass.