The Training School Day 2 – Close to New York City
Day two of the training school began with another extremely informative movie. This time about bacteria. Since this masterpiece of visual artistry was created sometime in the 80s, the dangerous germs were depicted with the help of 50 cm long plastic monsters that were able to cling to anything.
How not to do it: A woman changed her child on the floor, happily tossing the full diaper around and, of course, not washing her hands. As a result of these diaper escapades, every free inch of the room was covered with nasty, grinning plastic monsters.
How to do it properly: wash and disinfect hands, disinfect changing mat, change diaper, throw dirty diaper in the garbage can, wash and disinfect hands, put on new changing mat, wash and disinfect hands again,….this daring undertaking turned into a seemingly endless process, which my seatmate described very aptly with a dry comment: “And by the time she’s finished disinfecting, the child has already wet its diaper again.” Although none of us had any intention of throwing full diapers around, I couldn’t remember my parents covering the room from top to bottom with germicidal substances every time.
As we already saw green colors dancing in front of our eyes, we wanted to lighten the mood a little. To do this, we were split into different groups depending on the age of our host kids. Amelie joined me in the group for five to six-year-olds and we made another poster. This time it was about nutrition, development and activity ideas.
Of course, the workbook played an important role again, but there was a welcome surprise for most of us during the lunch break. Huge gift baskets for the lucky nannies whose host parents had dug a little deeper into their pockets – filled with a wide variety of AP articles, of course. There were more or less fashionable sweaters as well as bags, but also – and these were the most popular – rather tasty cookies. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a basket, but Amelie generously shared her many treasures.
This was followed by a training session on safety and appropriate behavior in America. A rather homely-looking policeman was waiting for us in the large hall, who I couldn’t for the life of me imagine chasing criminals. A questionnaire was supposed to help us understand the most common rules of conduct. Which was sorely needed, because I ticked almost everything wrong. Who is naive enough to think that if you get lost, you should just ask someone for directions? No, the right answer would have been to lock yourself in the car and wait until the police came by and rescued you.
The policeman clearly enjoyed standing in front of hundreds of giggling girls and flexing his muscles. The spectacle reached its climax when he invited a poor victim from the audience to role-play.
“You called 911 so what’s the emergency?”
“Well, I am a nanny and alone at home and…”
“Oh, she is a nanny, she’s 20 years old, she’s alone at home…rawr….what are you wearing?”
“Nothing, I…”
“Nothing?! I’m coming!!!”
At some point this made us wonder whether the good man was really a policeman or just an actor hired by AP. Fortunately, the day’s program ended with this not entirely PG debacle, and we didn’t have to think any further about this rather inappropriate dialogue.