Thursday, July 3, 2003

The principal at Jefferson is on a mission. He wants the students to wear uniforms to school. To accomplish that, he asked me to remind students, as they enter the school, that they must bring their uniforms. He also told me to separate students prior to being dismissed to recess: those who are wearing uniforms get to be dismissed first, and those who aren’t must be given a reminder, and then they can be dismissed.

I’ve followed his orders, and there have been results. On Wednesday, the first and only time I separated the students, those without uniform outnumbered those who wore them. Thursday morning, I stood at the entrance gate and I realized my new task would not be as tedious as I thought it would be: most students were wearing uniforms. For example, in a class of 20 students, there were only two not wearing uniforms. I also noticed that the man selling uniforms at Jefferson had plenty of customers!

There were complaints, however. A parent, a teacher, and my supervisor spoke to me. The parent stated that her daughter needs at least a day a week to wear the clothing of her choice, without being punished for it. The teacher said the principal could ask the students to bring uniforms, but he cannot mandate it, and so “The parents can tell him to go to hell!” And well, my supervisor said a parent had complained that I had put punished those who hadn’t worn uniforms by making them stand in the sun. (True, the students stood in the sun, but um, who didn’t?! That’s what comes with having a playground… there’s no roof.) My response was the same, “Talk to the principal.”

Fact of the matter is that the principal asked me to separate the students before releasing them to go to recess. He did not say do it only once, and the word “today” did not come out of his mouth. So I take that to mean that I must continue doing that until he tells me I can stop. I’m not going to wait that long, though. Instead, I will steal ten seconds from the students’ recess time to remind them to bring their uniforms to school. If I see that I’m not being taken seriously, I guess they like things rough, so I’ll do as the principal told me to.

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