The Patrol

Our School Safety Patrol is comprised of two squads--A and B--each with about 20 members drawn from the third through fifth grades. Each squad, led by a Captain with her Lieutenant and Sergeant, alternates duty every two weeks.

Among the duties of The Patrol are maintaining safe behavior at the back parking lots where eight buses and about 50 cars unload students in the morning, and load them to take back home in the afternoon.  Another group directs in- and egress at the busy front parking lot, and there is a pair of guards at each of the two crosswalks and at the corners of the school building.

For most of the students at our middle class, suburban school, being chosen for The Patrol and rising through its ranks is one of the signal honors of being a Blue Jay. It has largely been fashioned into this elite group, who model and help maintain responsible school behavior, by Mr. R, our regular librarian for whom I have been substituting.

As his sub I have inherited some of his duties. For one, I'm the Head Crossing Guard, overseeing the busiest crosswalk, calling out "Cross!" at the appropriate times. This signals the two brave, short young people at each side of the street to enter the crosswalk, stop flag pointed like a lance. Their other hand is raised in the face of buses, trucks and cars, calling for them to stop. On my "Okay!" the patrols retreat to the sidewalk as I cover their backs.

This past Thursday, Halloween, I felt part of a grand and happy American tradition as I helped usher a good-natured, homeward-bound stream of costumed students and their patient parents across 37th Street. It was a rare sunlit day with a frisky wind swirling autumn leaves down from the high poplars, and off the cherry trees planted along the front of our school. Good times.