I remember in grade school walking to school in the morning and always having to wait for the crossing guard to get me across the street in front of the school. Bless their souls – they didn’t have the best of jobs; standing out in the rain/snow/sleet/heat, dealing with rude students (not me), but at least they had jobs right. But our crossing guards were typically women who, although they made sure we were safe, were not real enthusiastic about their jobs (or so it seemed).
Now flash forward to current times when I drop my child off at school. Alli goes to a school that has 12 kindergarten rooms alone; yes it’s a big school!!! So you can imagine the traffic that we encounter each morning. Thankfully they have devised a plan/layout to help the flow of traffic – including several “crossing guards” of which act more like traffic control officers. The “guards” all have additional duties once school starts but for the drop off and pick up times their main concern is the safety of our kids and making sure the traffic flows in an orderly fashion.
So here is my point to this post….in Cuba the crossing guards would wait for an opportune time to get the students across the street holding up a STOP sign as they walked to the middle of the road, wait for us to get across and then go back to their standing position on the side of the road. In Greenville….they take it to extreme and will stand in the middle of the road, whistle in hand (no stop sign) and direct the cars. Some of the “crossing guards” are very animated in their actions and others remind me of the Cuba crossing guards. Either way I get a big kick out of the staff every morning when I drop Alli off. But I give them kudos as well; I feel very safe dropping her off in the drop off lane and have not gotten into an accident on the main road all 5 ½ years that I have been traveling it to take Alli to daycare and now to Kindergarten as well.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Wholy Cow - 12 Kindgerarten rooms! wow.... It's funny you posted about "crossing guards" because we to have very differnt guards from those we had in Cuba. Being in the city and streets aren't very wide - yet people seem to think they can handle 4 lanes...our guards do the same (minus the whistles) - get in the middle of street and direct. We have one lady that I crack up over every morning. She's awesome! Sorry, I'm still stuck on 12 K rooms! All in the same building right? I guess Binghamton has at least that many but we have multiple elementary schools. What is the graduating class like?
I don't think I ever commented Kelly - but the 12 classrooms are for this school only. There are several elemenatry schools in the City and more in the county as well.
Post a Comment