Inside the four walls of a school, protected by solid structures and layers of hallways, school is safe.

Life has a routine. Life is organized. And life has rules. For school-age children, life is school.

For kid minds, life has two kinds of people &8212; those who get up and go to school and those who don&8217;t.

I&8217;ve blurred that line this year.

Mrs. Tuccio&8217;s fourth-graders see me in their school some days. They&8217;ve become accustomed to my presence, and for the most part, they&8217;ve stopped screaming greetings down the hallway every time they see me. I&8217;m nothing special anymore.

If I&8217;m there, I&8217;m there; if I&8217;m not, I&8217;m not. Sounds too simple to say, I know.

But it gets interesting when you explore their minds a little deeper. They think they are my job.

When I come to their classroom, I&8217;m a living breathing newspaper reporter, but if I step outside the structure of McLaurin&8217;s walls I fall into the vortex.

It was probably October before they first started asking questions. If I&8217;d get up to leave class, they&8217;d question my departure. &8220;Are you going home to go to sleep now?&8221; one asked.

I wish.

It&8217;s been kind of hard to explain to them that when I leave their class, I go back to work. I do work. I do have a job.

Visiting them once a week isn&8217;t my job. (Sure, it&8217;s part of it.) I don&8217;t crawl into hibernation anytime I exit their presence.

The world that is McLaurin Elementary closed its doors this week. We&8217;ll all float in an unstructured black hole until after Easter break.

I guess, for kids, life is in the moment. The world revolves around you, and seeing beyond that scope is a challenge.

Mrs. Tuccio&8217;s fourth-graders are probably spending time in front of the TV this week. Maybe they are out of town, or just spending all day outside. I don&8217;t imagine they had Easter break homework.

And I doubt they are thinking about what they learned in math on Friday. Ms. Bell and Mrs. Tuccio won&8217;t exist again in their worlds until Monday.

A few weeks ago Jesse questioned Ms. Bell about her plans for the week out of school.

Her response was vague &8212; &8220;I won&8217;t be thinking about Jesse.&8221;

I hope she was right. I hope the teachers are able to take a needed break and get their minds off the children who sometimes drive them crazy.

But I bet it isn&8217;t so easy.

For us adults, there is no black hole outside McLaurin. There&8217;s just life. And Jesse and crew are a part of life.

Their successes, their failures, their performance on looming state tests are all things adults have to worry about.

Some of us worry more than others. We all aim to be worry-free, but our kid minds got left inside the four walls of some school somewhere, and life rules make them hard to retrieve.

Yet, spring is here. It&8217;s easier than ever to be worry free. The sun is bright, and the grass is neon green.

Maybe the adults should learn from the kids this week &8212; hit the yard and let loose. Forget about school (work), and maybe, just maybe, that kid brain will make a comeback.

Julie Finley

is the managing editor for The Natchez Democrat. She writes a weekly column based on experiences with Marty Tuccio&8217;s homeroom class at McLaurin Elementary. She can be reached at 601-445-3551 or

julie.finley@natchezdemocrat.com

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