Watch Your Back [10.24.08]

Today's observation occurred outside the campus walls. My one class required me to observe at a local day care, and I was excited to do so. When I arrived, I checked in at the front desk and found my way to the downstairs classroom. When I entered the room, I had a regular set of expectations; the children would be selfish and fight over toys, they would be egocentric and walk away from crying classmates. Apparently, my expectations were very wrong. In the first ten minutes of my arrival, I noticed an epic struggle take place. One of the boys was trying to put a puzzle together, and when his classmate noticed this, she was led to help. To any adult, this interaction would be quite self-explanatory. The second would offer to help the first, the first would oblige, and the puzzle would get done twice as fast. However, in the world of daycare, these social rules did not exist. The girl yanked the puzzle piece out of the boy's hand...
so he bit her in the back.
I was not too alarmed - until I saw blood. Since I had never seen someone draw blood from someone else's back before, I was taken aback. I did not know how to react, at which time I realized I did not have to do anything. In fact, I could not, for I was strictly instructed to simply observe. I could actually hear my professor's voice in my head saying "Now, try your best to be a fly on the wall. The children will behave normally if they do not know you are there." So there I sat while one teacher kept the little girl's back from bleeding, while another rushed to get the proper paperwork to report the incident. I could not help thinking that I was on the set of ER. "I've got a bleeder!" "Two tissues - STAT!" Whatever happened, I departed with a new thankfulness for those who serve our country like no other: the daycare workers.