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20
School
Days and Preschool Days, Too:
A treasury of anecdotes culled from my work
and play as a preschool worker and an elementary school after- school
activities supervisor
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MONSTERS
The exploratory, power-testing
games in the play yard need to be monitored by teachers for a number
of reasons. In the frenzy that can accompany this kind of play, an aggressor
can start to hit or paw with nails, the way he imagines a real dinosaur
might. In addition, the victims can feel their space has been invaded
and hit back, even when there's been no physical assault.
Many children, just like adults, can
dish it out but they can't take it. A little girl may finish being a
"pterodactyl" terrorizing a village, only to cry when one
of the victims morphs into a dragon who roars and "breathes fire"
down her neck.
Sometimes the energy in our yard feels
truly wild, as one of our resident "monsters"—one of the
precocious actors with a real aptitude for fierceness—chases a whole
line of classmates from one end of the play yard to the other.
"Jack's a monster!" one
of the besieged pauses long enough to inform me before fleeing on. I
often use my response to try, without destoying everyone's fun, to tone
down the panic, since mock panic can so easily become real panic.
"We don't have any monsters at our
school," I point with one finger while trying to reassure my informant.
"The school for monsters is way over there, over the next
hill."
God Knows what the effect of these words
is—probably minimal, as the children are too involved in their game
to process them. Usually, the chasee insists, "No, Jack really
is a monster!" and runs on.
Hopefully, these children won't grow up
believing that there really is a school for monsters half a mile
away, nor, for that matter, that Jack really was a monster.
*****
continued back contents title
page
"What Remains Is
the Essence", the home pages of Max Reif:
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