I Unpacked My Adjectives

"Hey, Ms. Wagner, is this your normal duty?"  my principal asked.
"Yes."
"Now you will be working with our homeless population in the science lab.  We'll let you know when their bus picks up!".

I haven't been feeling well.  I get sick all the time.  I know people would say that is because I work with young children, but this is ridiculous.  This has been happening for a few years, but since I started at my new school, I have been deathly ill twice within five weeks. Fever.  Exhaustion. Lost voice.  Dizziness. stumbling.  Haven't even mentioned weird tastes in mouth...And, I did get a flu shot this year.

"My mom said you called and said Adriana can't read." Veronica informed me.
"No, no.... that is not what I said at all.  Adriana reads really well... please tell your mom to call me if she has any questions about my message....".
I had to call about the accommodations we will be offering Adriana on her Georgia Milestones test.  She's been receiving them for years.  And yes, I've seen that they are threatening to hold her back if she doesn't "pass" that dumbass test.  And I think holding her back is wrong and destructive.  And I hate that her family is starting to think she's dumb.  Because she isn't.

"So, you drink the water here too?"  a fellow teacher asked, while I waited in line to fill up my water bottle at the drinking fountain.
"Yeah, what no one else does?" I answered.
She lowered her voice.
"We got lead."
"Really..." I answered, tightening the cap on my bottle.
"Yeah, but it's fixed now.  No one still wants to drink it!"

I was sitting with my second graders when the fire alarm went off.
"Let's go." I instructed.
We struggled to find a door to get outside and I realized that was my own dumb-assery.  But, we made it out and I lined up my little five person team next to the other full classes on some field I have never seen before.  My kids were good, they stayed quiet and we waited.  Then, we heard sirens.  At first I thought it was a coincidence, until multiple fire trucks pulled into the parking lot.  I put my hand on my mouth and looked down.  What more?  Would this asbestos and lead-filled environmental hazard burst into flames?  Why is this place so unsafe?
And then, I noticed Alberto.
He is a tough little dude.  And his eyes were filling with tears.
I stood behind him and put my hands on his shoulders.  He looked up high, toward the sky.   Multiple hawks were flying overhead.  His eyes widened and brightened as he watched them for several minutes.
"One of then fell-ed." he said, after several minutes, referring to the bird that was now below our sight-line.

I pulled the results from water tests of our school.  We did have several water sources well above the EPA "action" limit, some way above and most located in kindergarten classrooms.  Young children are the most vulnerable to lead.  They were repaired, but nearly every water source in the school is still registering lead content.  I wondered how much lead was safe to ingest, noticing again the telltale metallic taste in my mouth after only two months on that water.
"No level of lead ingestion is safe...." article after article informed me.
"Lead ingestion is cumulative...."
The EPA action limit is 15 ppb.  The average level of lead in the water in Flint, Michigan was 12 ppb.
I filled up a big Stanley thermos with water at my house and trucked it into school the next morning.  Along with my home computer because my work computer is worthless and several other survival supplies to make it through the days at work.  I felt like a camel.
And, I felt like an asshole.  I am an informed adult and I can adjust.  Every time I see a kid drink out of one of those fountains, I cringe.  They eat two out of three meals a day at that school, and the food is prepared with lead-water.  They drink out of those fountains for six years, and then go to another old school with lead pipes that poison their bodies more.  Most buildings built before 1986 will have lead pipes.  Old buildings are in impoverished communities.  This isn't just my school, it's national.  What other environmental issues are effecting poor communities?  I know about asbestos and lead.  What else?  The cycle continues.

"Girls are already beautiful," Gustavo informed me, looking across the table at the new member of our group, the strange girl from a different ethnicity that stutters when she speaks and often looks uncared for.
"They wear hearts on their clothes...." he continued, his own eyes transforming to heart shapes while he looked at her. 

And then, he got up and took a sip of water from the kindergarten fountain.