Last Friday I had my annual "Earth Day Extravaganza" where I have the kids essentially make things out of my trash. I have collected my toilet paper rolls, milk cartons and egg cartons for like the last six months for this thing and Friday over sixty kids descended to make some lovely crafts out of them and bottle caps and old magazines.
For one of the crafts we made bird feeders out of old milk jugs. Stupidly I kept out a big bag of bird feed for the kids to dump into their feeders. Of course you can imagine what happened: bird feed got everywhere. And bird feed does not come out of the carpet very well. One kid excitedly spilled bird feed in other parts of the library and my unhappy coworkers had to clean it up with a broom.
The place was an absolute disaster area after the more than sixty kids came to do their crafts. It took me, a coworker, a mother and three little helpers an hour to clean it all up. One thing I have observed in all the numerous activities I've done and the many messes I've made is that at the end of all these activities the white mothers and kids rapidly disperse with their crafts. However, it's the Hispanic mothers and children that stay to clean up. After the Earth Day Extravaganza a Hispanic mother and her three children, one toddler aged, stayed after a whole hour to help make the room spotless. I did not even ask her too, actually I repeatedly told her she did not have to help. If all kids were taught to help clean up like these children, messes like these would be cleaned up in ten minutes.
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