The Power of a Fifth Grader

I'm training to be an art teacher for the Boise Art Museum which means I travel out to elementary schools that are too far away to visit the museum and bring slides and art projects to them. Yesterday I went to my first training (consisting of me sitting in the back of the class, staring at the backs of ten-year-old heads, and watching while one of the trained teachers gave the lesson). I wrote lots of notes, smiled whenever they turned around to sneak a look at me and cleaned up their markers.

While talking about procedures in the parking lot with the other art teacher the words "HI LINDSAY!!" come bouncing over. Initially I thought they were kids calling to a friend of theirs (I mean Lindsay is a common name and I only said my name once to the class). Just in case I look over and standing there--to my surprise--is a group of three or four girls standing at the edge of the playground smiling and waving at me. I almost looked behind me to see if they were calling to someone else but I smiled and waved back to which they grinned even wider, turned around, and ran/bounced back to the other kids. I think my heart melted.

Maybe it was the inner-loner child in me rearing its docile head. A group of fifth-grade girls said "Hi" to me. A group of popular fifth-grade girls. Well, maybe they weren't popular, maybe they were just normal. But for me, in my mind, they were the cool, skinny, hot-lunch-eating, baggy-jean-wearing, TLC-listening girls from my Joplin Elementary. Finally, I was validated. I was cool.

So what if my job is part-time? So what if it doesn't pay well? So what if it's going to make taxes not-so-dreamy come next year? I will take that validation of the popular girls and feed my inner anxiety-ridden fifth-grader. So what if it took thirteen years...I'm cool now.