When Preppies Attack

Preppies are like white blood cells attacking a virus. The first and closest white blood cell recognises that a virus is alien and not supposed to be there, it immediately attaches and the battle is joined. At the same time other white blood cells converge en masse to smother the virus. Covering its entire surface area to control, suffocate and subdue the interloper. It's the same when you visit a Prep class...

Example Preppie Attack Modus Operandi, This women is in dire danger.

When I first left the corporate life to start career 3.0, I thought I'd aim for a better balance. Mixing parenting with part time roles, which would allow me to do a bit of corporate work, as well as working in the community.
 
Actually it's worked out pretty well. As well as my becoming THE parent and working as a Coach/Mentor, I'm also employed by my local primary school as a part time Teacher's Aide. I help out with science and maths, not because that's my background of course; it's just that I'm a terrible nerd.
 
This is how I found myself at centre of a Prep melee last week. I had to pick up some science equipment from a Prep classroom when I was spotted as an alien and intercepted by the preppie on point. "What are you doing here?", he asked innocently and in the moment it took me to answer, they had me in their clutches. There were now about 7 preppies attached to my legs and their leader, Osama Bin Preppie (name changed to protect the innocent) was asking me if I knew the password and was swinging a cardboard cylinder and slapping it into his hand!!! I was a downed teacher aide, deep behind enemy lines, my salvation (their classroom teacher) was outside communication range. All they were going to get out of me was name, rank and serial number.
 
I should have known better.¶
 
Earlier this term, after my first “Teacher Aide” experience in the classroom, my wife asked how it had all gone. “Um, I sort of made a bit of a strategic error” I admitted. "What did you do???" she asked excitedly, "Did you say F#ck in front of them, did you call someone an idiot like you used to at work? What did you do???". ¶
 
I had sat on the floor with them.
 
You know, there are plenty of psychological studies that say adults get it wrong when they talk "Down" to children in a learning setting. Well I wasn't going to do that. I was going to be a new brand of Teacher Aide, one that was on top of the latest learning philosophy, where there was no desk, no teacher & student, no us, no them, it was just going to be us - on the floor.
 
So there I was on the floor with the Year Two kids, having folded myself up like an origami me amongst the kids. I heard my knees click as I sat down and thought, "I hope I don't have to get up in a hurry".
 
From the floor I also notice that the actual classroom teacher looks a lot bigger. That's because she’s standing up. There’s a good reason for that, as I was about to learn. The floor is the natural habitat of the eight year old, not so the 45 year old.
 
I excitedly start my spiel about gravity, and the kids are all wide eyed and look like “WOW, this is so interesting”(that’s how I prefer to remember it anyway). I then turn to grab a prop from behind me. When I look back they seem spookily closer, “Hey guys – did you all move? I need some room to do my experiment and everyone needs to see”. No-one moves.
 
So I do my experiment and it goes fine and we move onto the next experiment. This time when I look back around they’ve moved in about a foot and cut off my left and right flanks. "Whoa guys, just give me a bit of room here, can everyone see?" I ask, "Oh yes", they all say in unison and move in some more!
 
So at this point I’m taking particular note of how inflexible the adult body becomes when sitting cross-legged at ground level, and I'm attempting to do a reverse arse walk to re establish some clear air around me. "Does anyone have any questions?" I ask. As the questions come, so to comes their final advance, they were now basically on top of me.
 
They were the pack of lions, I was the stupid well-meaning antelope who had got separated from the herd and had ventured onto their turf. The last thing I saw before a sea of year twos blotted out the horizon, was the sight of the classroom teacher with one pitying eyebrow raised in my direction, as if to say "He's not going to make it out of there?".
 
I may have briefly blacked out at that point, but the next thing I knew was there was light again, children were getting up and I could breathe again, I had been saved. The classroom teacher had told everyone to rotate to their next group.
 
I told myself, "Perhaps that group was just a bit over excited, I'll get the next group to sit back a bit further”. Three rotations - same result every time. If there had been a fourth rotation I would have had them sitting in the next building, and even then they still would have attempted to asphyxiate me!
 
I wouldn’t make that same mistake with my second class I said to myself. A wonderful invention the chair – who would have thought?
 
So my second class was going fine, I had a great spiel, I had a chair, the kids got the idea of gravity. We had a great time. The bell rang and the classroom teacher dismissed the kids, and I stood and turned to gather my gear when I noticed an odd pressure through and around my right leg. No, please not a heart attack now, not now that I’m bringing science to the kiddies. Nope, a young fella thought a quick hug was in order after that serious bit of Newtonian science.
 
But back to the Preppies. Just when I thought they would be filming a ransom video of me reading passages from The Hungry Caterpillar then posting it on You Tube, their teacher looks up and sees my stricken state. She called them off like a farmer calling sheepdogs, “Git-away-back, whit, whit, whit”. They released my legs and off they all ran, having topped up their hug reserves.
 
What I am learning is that the school years between Prep and Year Two are like moving from the Dark Ages to the Renaissance. There are elements of survival of the fittest, tribalism, witchcraft (one of our Year Twos is on record as having asked the Librarian in all seriousness “Miss, are you a witch?”) and then awakening and excitement about learning. But above all they still just love to get up close and avail themselves of a hug when they can. And just quietly, it’s pretty cool too.
 
This entry’s title “When Preppies attack” was inspired by a podcast “When patents attack”, by This American Life, one of the world’s best radio efforts.