Someone Cue the Fat Lady?

I think it may be time for her to start singing.

There are a few annual events at my school that are prime for high drama. These are days in which tempers run high and the bullshit is thick and deep. For example, Picture Day is a day filled with last minute schedule changes, angry lines and disgruntled parent volunteers…you know, things that are very ironically not worth smiling about.

Field day is another such day. As I found out today, Field Day, a day that should be filled with laughter, good natured competition and sportsmanship and well deserved fun, has the potential to render me a shrill, slightly hysterical…um, bitch.

Am I yelling at the kids you ask? Oh, no! No! Not at all…they are fabulous. And Field Day hasn’t even happened yet. No, no, no. All my angst and irritation is directed at the administration. So I am shrill and slightly hysterical with adults…not the kids, just to be clear. Today almost makes me miss the days when Field Day comprised of approximately 200 children literally sitting in a nearby field all day. Seriously.

However, after many years of lounging in fields, one colleague motivated and planned a real, honest-to-goodness Field Day complete with relay races, balloon tosses and fabulousness. Minus some of the odd sexual projections of some fellow staff members, it was a glorious day. This year, we anxiously set about preparing ourselves for another day of outdoor fun. With a somewhat-crazed smile plastered to our faces, we crawled through dirty storage closets, climbed over mountains of soccer balls and dug up old bean bags. We reworked master schedules, had the children create individual flags and made gorgeous banners for each of the stations. In short, we rocked out the Field Day preparations.

And then the weather man said that it was going to rain. That was when the shit began to hit the fan.

First of all, there is no rain date. We have an entire day of outdoor activities planned and the administration never thought to, you know, pick a rain date. Minor detail to them I guess. They don’t have to face a room full of disappointed and irritable children ready to run around with eggs on spoons.

As we anxiously awaited the indoor Rain Plan schedule to be made public, my colleagues and I (some Super and some not so super…but hellish circumstances can bring people together, right?) tried to come up with a few scenarios for a fun day. Emergency popcorn and a movie. Murals. Painting. Craft projects. Games. ANYTHING!

And then, at approximately 3:05 (aka – five minutes after the day had officially ended) we were emailed the schedule. And…

WTF???

All the children in grades preK through 2 (about 250 children ) were alloted one hour in the cafeteria. One hour for Field Day. 250 children running around the cafeteria. This is batshit crazy for many reasons.

1. One hour???
2. 250 kids in an enclosed space?
3. Why do we only get one hour, but each upper grade gets a block of several hours? (You know teachers are all about FAIR.)
4. Did I mention that our one precious hour was from 8am to 9am?? Meaning we were going to be running around small puddles of milk, muffin tops and other assorted breakfast debris. (Could we turn that into a relay??)

So this is where me being shrill comes in….

Long, gossipy and dramatic story short, I let the new administrator with the Big Master Plan have a piece of my mind. Probably too big of a piece.

We’ll see what happens tomorrow…