Don’t cry over spilled paint

In these last weeks before school starts, everyone’s busy painting classrooms, fixing desks, and cleaning and painting dorm rooms. Much has been made about the need for staff to model good work habits for kids, and one of those that kids often don’t do so well, is taking good care of tools and conserving resources. I had all this in mind as I organized a little group of five girls to clean and paint the inside of a particularly grimy looking classroom. As they washed the walls down, I was carefully moving a table so as to prevent paint from dripping on it. Of course, in the process, I completely knocked over a totally full bucket of paint. So much for my lesson in preserving resources! As the girls asll gasped and gathered around, I looked and them and asked, “uh oh, what should we do?” Luckily, I think maybe they’ve spilled a can of paint or two in their day because the oldest one, without even blinking, just said, “start painting!” So they started dipping their brushes and rollers in the giant paint puddle on the concrete floor, and started throwing it up on walls. Then I went and found a dustpan, and one of the girls and I cleaned up pretty much the whole big puddle. Two hours later, the room was all painted, the puddle was all cleaned up (hooray for acrylic paint and cement floors!) and we all had a quick thinking lesson in improvising when things don’t quite go as planned.