Somedays, the things that happen around me border on the absurd. Today is one of those days.

For my wife and I, our morning routine is one where we set the alarm a little early to hit the snooze and just have a chance to talk a little bit before the day gets going. Sometimes it’s more personal things, sometimes about our daughters, and sometimes work. Today, my wife, who is a professional development specialist for Head Start, shared how they are having a safety inspector coming from out of state to look at all their classrooms.  This person is coming and will inspect all 16 classrooms in a two days.

I’ll digress from this for a moment, because as she’s talking about this silly notion of getting to all these classrooms, I’m in communication with a person from England living in Texas. We are emailing back and forth about a new web tool he’s creating, and one of his questions was if I’d be at an educational conference in Austin next week.  Well, I emailed back saying it was about 1,200 miles from my local to Austin and that I’d probably not be there (it’s actually only 938, but who’s counting!).  His reply: “I’m still trying to get a handle on the size of your country.” 🙂

As this person is thinking they’ll get to all these classrooms in a two day, I just laughed because it’s a good chunk of Northeast Iowa that will be covered.  Some days, I don’t think Americans have a good grasp of how big our own country is!

This isn’t even the good part! The good part of all this, the director of my wife’s group is having the classroom teachers on “poo patrol” (my wife’s words, not the directors) because if any animal poo is found on the playground, that classroom will be written up.  Apparently, poo is considered toxic in the eyes of our government, and even though after a couple of good spring rains, much of it disappears.  The spring thaw leaves this in the on the playground and it’s just not acceptable.

True, preschoolers are an inquisitive lot, and some deer scat might make something fun to throw at someone else. However, most preschoolers I’ve ever been around, if they’ve seen something like that will yell for their friends (“COME CHECK OUT WHAT I FOUND!!”), then give the stereotypical “EWWWWW POOP!!” and be done.  As my wife has moved from a teacher to doing professional development, the things she comes home with that Head Start classrooms are required to do, boggles my mind. I think her classrooms do a great job providing a free education for those families who truly need it, but the hoops they have to jump through…..crazy!

The Head Start teachers my wife works with have some interesting perks in their job, things I’ve been jealous about before (a week of educational leave?? Sign me up!!) However, when the Poo Patrol rolls through, I’ll just keep my mouth shut, smile, and enjoy my 8th graders and their teenaged angst.

Maybe the grass is a little greener on this side of the fence! 🙂