Dad at School

Short post today because I spent the whole morning hanging out at school. Our school has a program called WatchDOGS which is a national organization that works to get more dads in schools. When my wife has a day off I can go spend the day in school reading stories to kids and playing in gym class and eating lunch with the kids and generally just being around. I thought I'd share a few of my observations on the day.
- Kindergartners think I'm awesome. They all want to be right by me and tell me everything that is cool in their lives. Correction, everything cool that has ever happened to them. Ever. They have an endless supply of things they could tell me. I'm a god among kindergartners. I know how movie stars feel now.
- Third graders still think I'm cool. Most of them still want to play with me. They're clearly more self conscious and would like me to like them. By this point it's pretty easy to tell who the cool kids are and who the shy kids are. I relate more with the shy kids because I was that kid. Some of them really really appreciate a simple gesture like passing a basketball back and forth with them for a few minutes. I sometimes forget that a lot of kids have very very little one on one adult interaction.
- Fourth graders are split on me. They either still want to talk to me or are starting to figure out that they might be too cool to talk to a grown up that they don't know. In the one year between third and fourth grade things are even more stratified between the cool kids and the not cool kids. The world hasn't changed much since I was there almost 30 years ago. Again, this makes me a little sad. All kids have trouble with adolescence, but I can see some kids that are having a hard time now and it's probably not going to get better in the next 8 years. I can see my awkward life repeated over and over. I guess nothing ever does change. I've got two, maybe three, years before I'm going to be lame. Well, I'm already lame, but soon these kids will know.
I had fun. I'm an introvert so having that much interaction with people, even little ones, tires me the hell out. I'll be back the next time I have a free day. 800 kids and so many of them know me and like to see me and say hi to me. High fives and smiles and something about today at school that was better than yesterday. Some days you wonder what good you're doing for the world, some days you know.