One of the dubious joys of my job is supervising the lunch period.... which means feeding 400 kids in an hour. It is a noisy... frantic.... hellish hour. And I dread it.
One of the other dubious joys of this lunch hour is trying to teach
For me lunch time is the one time of the day when the worst could conceivably happen.
I have been patting myself on the back that here I was down to the last 3 weeks of my career - and I had survived lunch time........... as had the kids. I should have held the congratulations till the last kid left the building on the last day !!!
Today at noon I was walking between the tables chatting with kids when I heard a shout from across the room. I looked up to see one of the lunch staff waving her arms like a mad woman and everyone standing up. I instantly became "super woman" and flew over kids and tables to the problem.
One of my children was choking.
It amazes me how quickly my mind goes into automatic........ I was accessing the situation before I even got to the child. I realized she was 1) breathing - good sign and 2) coughing - even better sign.
It turned out she had simply choked on her last bite of sandwich - it got stuck in her throat and after much coughing and crying - and back rubbing - she managed to unstick it!! A drink of milk washed the last of the sandwich all the way down.
It wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been - but boy oh boy did it teach me not to sign off on the job until the very last day !!!
Bloody awful indeed! I remember once I was writing on the blackboard when I heard the whole class gasp: a kid had just jumped out of the window...and we were on the first floor. You can imagine what might have been the consequences. Actually he was unhurt but I was considered as if I had pushed him myself.
ReplyDelete