A trash picker

One student noticed me picking trash in front of my classroom door and commented that the maintenance crew did that once a day. I did not need to bother, I was told, because maintenance had the job.

Whether it is at school, the pathway, or just normal house surrounding, there is “someone” else assigned to do the job, which is fine as far as that goes, but nothing is said about the casual and regular disposal of plastic bottles and containers that takes place frequently. Plastic takes ages to decompose.

I’ve noted earlier the plastic bottles and what picnickers leave behind on a holiday binge by the lagoon, or just a weekend grill cookout, and the piled and scattered trash is always a sight to behold, wondering how fast the maintenance crew would get around to picking it.

I got me two trash pickers, one I gave to someone’s farm not only for picking up trash but also to assist in getting fruits off trees to fill my tummy! But mostly, I got the trash picker for the trash.

My students were clear there is someone assigned to do the job. They were right. I was the self-appointed one.

There were the discarded fruit juice and milk containers. Fundamentally made of paper products, it is coated with plastic to make it water proof, and the straw is invariably made of plastic. So the discarded containers have longevity beyond the normal decomposing cycle, and the straw decomposes forever.

With three trash bins on my class sidewalk alone, the students still found it convenient to discard refuse casually because “someone” is assigned to pick it up! It is the perspective and the faithful adherence to the practice that grates, though students, when pointed out, will pick up the trash and dutifully consign it to the trash bin, because they are told to do so. It does not happen naturally!

What happens naturally is the disposal of fruit juice and milk containers, and refuse, widely thrown about. It may bother the sight but crumpled paper does disintegrate in a few days. The paper planes that children fly out into the air are numerous and often. It also frequently lands on the roof of the passageway, and invariably, someone tries to retrieve it with a shoe, which then gets the paper plane down but will remain on the roof. That’s when they come knocking on my class door and sheepishly wonder if I could assist them get the shoe down with the picker.

My term at the elementary School was that of a gap-filler, and perhaps, had I planned it right, I might have shown how faithful I was to the standard curriculum that was in place. The vice principal, when he received my playful design of “Come Play Learning with Me,” she commented that it looked like it was a curriculum for a whole year.

It wasn’t but that mirrors more my confidence that the grade 1 students could handle more than what was being offered. In one sense, I was right, and in another, I was deadly wrong.

Those who proved me right were there all along, from the beginning, willing to learn for as long as I had the patience to teach. What I did not anticipate was how strong already even at this fundamental level of education the children’s bias to compete, to want to be ahead of everyone, and more importantly, to be recognized as being there first, or, at the head of the class.

Just lining up, the question invariably ask is: “Who is going to be the leader?” My response was, the function of leading the line can be done by anyone, so they took turns, going alphabetically down the line. That did not sit well with the assertive ones, and watching the other classes, I understood why.

The assigned leader “bosses” it on everyone, getting them to line up straight, or else.

Accomplishing anything invites the rush for saying, “I am done.” I got to responding that they are not done yet because they are still alive; they would be dead if they were done. So they shifted quickly to, “I am finished.” There were those who claimed being “first” and the rest follows as if the numerical sequence becomes a pecking order of importance. The quality of the work takes a second seat to the speed by which something is done.

Then there is the “I knew that” or “I almost said that,” as if it made a difference. If they knew the answer to a question, well and good. If they claim that they knew the answer but did not say so, is a bit iffy. I had one in class who was always first to raise his hands when a question is asked, and when called upon, was hard put to give a response, let alone, a satisfactory one.

I lead, therefore, I am, seems to be the dictum of their education. That was one trash I would have gladly picked except it was a cognitive one rather than a concrete behavior. To be sure, the mindset influences behavior and that was how we reduced the mindset to the component images that makes it. Leading the line up was one; secured in stability and order was another. We made both an ordinary function rather than a sign of status. It was not popular.