Ya'll Make it Look So Simple

A few weeks ago, my boss stuck his head in the door to my office and asked, "You still up for going to 4-H out at West?" Despite the cackles coming from my co-workers, I heartily agreed. I love 4-H. I think all kids should have the opportunity to participate in 4-H if they so desire. I am convinced that the only reason I have this job today is because I was in 4-H as a kid. Obviously, I had to say yes.

Now, after school 4-H is not quite like regular 4-H; at least not here anyways. Instead of choosing individual projects, we take a STEM-based activity that was created by the 4-H educators in the state and let the kids play around with the experiment while they learn the math and science concepts behind it.

Yesterday was my second week of after school 4-H. The first week went wonderfully well- after all, we had a small group and an fun, yet simple experiment. The kids finished their activity and went off to play outside, all inside twenty minutes. "I can do this," I thought to myself. I still didn't know what my other co-workers were complaining about. Now I know.

The first sign of trouble was when ten little urchins ran into my room, all ready and eager to build "roller coasters" out of pipe insulation and tape. What happened next made me realize just how simple parents and teachers make their jobs look to people on the outside. Here are my top 5 "Ya'll Make it Look So Simple" moments:

1.) Teachers make it look so simple to keep twenty kids under control. I had eight (two ran out of the room before we even started), and between hearing "I NEED MORE TAPE!"  "Come watch my roller coaster," "Why won't my roller coaster work," and "Hey, can I go outside now?" I never stopped spinning.

2.) Parents make it look so simple to keep the peace. While 75% of my kids worked together to build their roller coaster, the other 25% tried to turn construction into a full-on political debate, complete with name calling and ridiculous facial expressions in response to the other kid's statements. Oh, and it's really hard to referee a debate when you have to keep getting people MORE TAPE.

3.) Teachers and parents make imparting knowledge look easy. The point of today's lesson was to get the kids to think about energy, inertia, friction, gravity- all those physics things on which I have a VERY, VERY loose grasp. So as I attempted to explain these terms on a second grade level, I was still met with blank stares. Of course, my explanations were interrupted with demands for MORE TAPE, so I could have left out a few key points, I'm not sure.  Thankfully, everyone knew what was happening by the end of the session.

4.) Parents and teachers make reasoning with young ones look easy. Let me just say that eight kids, marbles, pipe insulation, and MORE TAPE does not make for a small mess. Trying to convince eight kids that just because they didn't make that particular mess doesn't mean they can't clean up that mess seems to be next to impossible unless you have the ability to lock them in a room.

5.) Parents and teachers make patience look easy. Sometimes MORE TAPE doesn't mean that your roller coaster will work properly (especially when you try to construct the most complex track layout known to the pipe insulation roller coaster world and there's not one starting point to get your marble moving...) and you have to give just a little extra help to make everything okay again. After five minutes of trying to convince a student that MORE TAPE wasn't going to help the situation, we finally got the marble to roll through enough of the roller coaster for the project to be deemed a success. And then they left. And then I had MORE TAPE to clean off the counters and chairs and and and where are the marbles?!

The moral of this story is, I don't know how you all make it look so simple, and I am not eager to find out any time soon. WIC cured me of ever wanting to be pregnant and have babies under six months of age or anything with the designation of "toddler." After school 4-H has cured me of ever wanting a large family or being a grade school teacher. Also, I am cured of ever thinking tape is a viable solution for any problem. That includes duct tape. The end.