The Buddy System, or System “Buddy”

The buddy system is alive and well, I’m pleased to report. How well it works, however, remains to be seen.

Chico, known to family and friends in CO as Buddy, is still transitioning to first grade. It’s been a little rough going, adjusting to full days, a new teacher that definitely isn’t Mrs. R, a mixture of new and old classmates, and being more responsible. (Blame the last on his mother because that’s been the most visible adjustment. Obviously he needs a younger sibling, if only that his mother would let him grow up!)

Turns out that recess is his favorite subject. Say what you will, and many others vehemently insist that it’s their favorite as well, but Chico has proven that he studies hard at recess. He concentrates so much on it that he tends to miss the call to other more sedentary subjects. Last week he went missing after recess time when everyone had returned to the classroom. After a call to the office and a search party formed, he was found, safe and sound, on the playground, still intently practicing ‘recess’ with the second graders. They returned him to his classroom, only 35 minutes late.

It gets better. This wasn’t his last attempt at extending recess. No, he has successfully avoided the subject after recess twice in only his first full week at school. Hopefully the second offense wasn’t as lengthy as the first. He mother was dutifully notified and as she attempted to come up with a viable excuse for her son’s behavior, the vice principal decreed that a buddy will be assigned to Chico. Buddy will now have his own buddy. His buddy will track him down when the whistle blows, advise him to join the fellow first graders on their trek back to the classroom, and will (hopefully) insist that he give up his shameful ways.

A buddy for Buddy…has it really come to this?

Now I know that it can be difficult to keep track of a classroom of students, and even more so when they are intermixed with other classes and grades on the playground. Add to that mix not only a playground but a field, and last but certainly not least, a child lacking good observation skills (or just really bad ears), and there you have a recipe for disaster. But to my rational mind, I have to wonder why it took 35 minutes to locate Chico. I’ve lost him in a supermarket for 20 minutes and that seemed like an eternity. After frantically searching the whole store I found him within 5 feet of where I had originally lost him. He hadn’t wandered; he had just sat down to admire some socks. And I learned that the best place to locate Chico is where he was last seen, which might help the search party at his school. “First grader MIA again; implement System: Buddy. Go, go, go!”

Now that I’m thinking about the variety of occasions he’s been lost, it’s probably not a good time to bring up the whole Plymouth Plantation fiasco…