Hide-And-Seek

"Come and play with us, Ms. Rodriguez!”

At first, I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand why a small flock of students surrounded me after stepping onto the playground. All I wanted was a little sun and fresh air, while I kept watch of the play outside. All they wanted was for me to join them for a game of hide-and-seek.

“Umm… I don’t… I don’t want to.” I admitted with a smile.

They continued. They hounded. They followed and surrounded me. They were relentless.

​“Come on! Come on! Come on… pleeeease.”

Their playful pleading crossed in and out of firm demands, at times insisting. It was a strange focused approach by the group of maybe eight or nine kids. And they weren’t giving up.

“Play hide-and-seek with us!”

Why on earth? I thought to myself. Why on earth would they decide to suddenly ask me to play.

“Play… I don’t… why?” I questioned, finally. “You said you missed it!” demanded one petite, but firm voice. “I… what? Missed it?” My mind wandered for a brief confused moment, before it finally came to me. I did miss it, and they knew it because I shared it with them earlier that day.

In the quiet of a room filled with moving pens and pencils, I wrote in my notebook. I sat just a few minutes to write underneath the document camera for all to see. Burying myself inside one small moment, I wrote about missing the game of hide-and-seek.

My students did more than notice the act of a teacher writing, they noticed the meaning behind the writing, hung on to it, and made the decision to do something about it. They decided to gift me a game of hide-and-seek. It was a game I played often with my two sons when they were young. I missed the game with them, and my sweet students wanted to help make a small impact, because they could. And they did. They made me smile and laugh out loud.

I played, finally. We played a game of hide-and-seek. It took them a while, but they finally found me. Today, my students found a small part of me buried in my notebook.