My First Day of Kindergarten, Part VIII, Conclusion

A few minutes later the first buses arrive and little students scramble out into the hall outside. There’s little order and quiet this time as they say their goodbyes and leave the classroom behind. We aren’t finished with catastrophes, however, as one boy gets sick all over the floor and another kid’s backpack. Laura must be stressed and annoyed, but she doesn’t show it as she takes matters in hand, clears a path for other students to get by, and begins cleaning things up. The boy is strangely silent. In fact he has said only a handful of words all day. I just stand their awkwardly, patting his shoulder and murmuring something from time to time.

I call Mom to pick me up, then for some unknown reason Laura leaves the room and I’m left with only one kindergartner: a sweet little girl who is waiting for someone to pick her up. As I’ve nothing better to do, I begin cleaning and straightening the classroom, and the girl eagerly joins me. She chatters brightly about this, that, and everything, saying that she loves to help. True to her word, she helps me get the job done, and we have the room looking much better in no time. We then sit down together and wait for our respective rides.

I feel that I now have a rather good idea of what it is like to be a kindergarten teacher on a day to day basis. What a crash-course! I have seen the adorable side of little children who want nothing better than to please their darling teacher, and I have seen the hyperactive side that could strain one to the breaking-point. I have seen children who are uncommonly bright for their age, and others whose most rudimentary knowledge of counting and spelling is sorely lacking. All of these kids, crammed into a noisy classroom, are being prepared for the big, scary world outside. It is heavy food for thought.

The little girl goes off with her ride and Laura comes back. We share a few words as she finishes cleaning up the vomit. It is not pleasant, but she is pleasant about it. She is showing me a little handheld device that tests a student’s academic progress when Mom walks in, ready to take me home. As I thank Ms. Taldo for the informative and interesting day, I make a mental note that I would like do this again. It wasn’t all fun and games, but I really have enjoyed myself immensely. In a few short hours I have learned to care for these kids and become concerned about their education. Homogenous masses of kindergartners condensed into crystal-clear individuals, each one a precious little gem, each one a beautiful challenge and an opportunity.

That’s really what I took away from my first day of kindergarten, a sense of the individual child. Though herded like highly-organized cattle from class to class and treated fairly and equally, they are all unique. The purpose of teaching is not to make sure your class get high marks, it is to help every child reach his or her highest potential, wherever that might be. It is a challenging job, and not for the faint of heart. I am not yet ready to declare my college major, but my experience today has vastly developed my ideas concerning teaching. For the better.

Thank you for bearing with this very long post!
Tata for now,
Abby Rogers

My First Day of Kindergarten, Part VII

At a certain unknown time, Ms. Taldo announces that class is over and children should start getting their coats and backpacks together--the school buses will be here soon. The students scramble to gather their things, and the last act of the schoolday is putting their chairs back on top of their desks. This is a ritual that I have yet to discover the purpose of.

It is now that I get the opportunity I have been waiting for ever since I arrived. Laura tells me that I can read aloud to the children! I love reading aloud, and the little ones seemed so eager. I sat down in a comfortable yellow upholstered chair and am handed a lovely piece of literature, Junie B. Jones is a Beauty Shop Guy. I flip open the book to a little scrap of Kleenex which a boy informs me is where they left off yesterday. Clearing my throat, I dive right into the moment where the intrepid kindergartner Junie is trying to cover up the horrendous hairdo that she’s just given herself. Unaware and unprepared (I never read any of the Junie B. books), I come upon this section:

   I quick picked (the hat) up and put it on my head.
   And guess what?
   It hided my sprigs!
   “Hey, if I wear this to school, no one will even see my hair!” I said real relieved.
   Only just then, I did a teeny frown.

What on earth is this?! I am not the world’s best grammarian, by far, but I am immediately appalled at the horrendous manner in which this book mangles the language I love! I quick picked up? Hided? Real relieved? Did a frown? In this one short section alone I was bombarded with numerous errors that would have made a modern teenager wince.

But this was a kid’s book. It was supposed to be for kindergartners. Apparently, there are some adults out there who think it’s alright to dumb things down for kids instead of trying to challenge them, instead of trying to give them something worth trying to understand! This is a completely foreign idea to me. The concept that you would put a book like this in the hands of a kindergartner and tacitly assure them that this sort of trash is really writing, is reprehensible.

I would like to insert a few words that the children’s author (and Newberry Award Winner) Madeleine L’Engle is quoted as saying:

“You have to write whichever book it is that wants to be written. And then, if it's going to be too difficult for grown-ups, you write it for children.”

L’Engle believed that it was criminal to dumb something down for someone just because they were young. Children through the ages have proved themselves to be as brilliant or even more brilliant than well-educated adults.

I’m not saying that Barbara Park (author of twenty-eight Junie B. Jones books) is responsible for the downfall of English grammar in recent generations, but I am giving these books as examples of how we Americans love to minimize our children’s potential. I have been watching these kids all day long, and I have seen some real talent in some of them. Others are far behind where they ‘should’ be. What if these children were exposed to challenging literature? What if they were asked to understand things much bigger and more complex than they could comprehend? What if it was demanded that they grow? Perhaps some of these children will always underperform because no one expects anything greater of them. Another L’Engle quote: “A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.” How different would these children be if they read, or listened to, book that were like “living fires”?

But then there are those teachers and parents who are willing push children as far as they can go, who will train them, help them, really educate them and give them the tools they need to go beyond mediocrity. Laura might just be one of those teachers. I can see that she loves her pupils and wants to help them. The school system and the sheer size of her class may slow her progress, but as I watch her I am sure that these children are blessed to have a teacher like Ms. Taldo.

As I read Junie I try to substitute proper grammar as I go along, attempting to straighten out the catastrophic writing. I’m soon finished with the book (in which the little girl is rewarded for lying--we won’t even go into the moral implications of this) and, as a few kids are still clustered around my feet and begging for another story, I start in on a Mercer Mayer book about playing in the snow. It’s only a few sentences long, but I intersperse the narrative with conversation: asking the kids what they like to do in the snow, if they have any siblings they have snowball fights with, if their mothers give them hot chocolate when they get back inside after a cold afternoon of fun. They all reply at once with a little chorus of sticky grins and giggles.

I then give up the chair to a sweet little blonde who wants to read aloud to her peers. I’m so proud of her as she starts into The Berenstain Bears: Ready, Set, Go!. There’s nothing really deep here, but at least it seems to use proper grammar. The book actually serves as a lesson in comparatives like ‘good’, ‘better’, and ‘best’. I help the girl with a few tough words like ‘Olympics’, but otherwise just do a little cleaning up. I observe Laura sitting at a very low table shuffling paperwork and talking to what looks like a group of especially disobedient children.

Tune in tomorrow for the exciting conclusion of the series,
Abby Rogers


Junie B. Jones is a Beauty Shop Guy
Text copyright© 2003 by Barbara Park. 
Copyright© 2003 Random House Children’s Books 

My First Day of Kindergarten, Part VI

Some get it right, others get it wrong. The children are then called upon to use their letters to create words that mimic the ones on the screen. Laura has patience with them, but lets them know when they are wrong and will not tolerate any horsing-around. When she finds their mistakes she doesn’t give them the answers. Instead she lets them figure things out on their own, asking them what the problem is and expecting them to fix it. Many of them try to get away with slip-shod work. She won’t let them. They are expected to perform to their highest ability, and most of them do.

Suddenly I have the wild urge to march up their and match ‘tam’ with ‘Tim’. It seems like such an honor, a badge of brilliance. This worries me. If I stay here much longer I may start acting like a kindergartner myself!

The children move on to mathematics next and I sit silently at my desk as they go over their hundreds chart and learn to count by threes. More songs are sung and dances danced, Laura joining in and encouraging total group participation. The children then go over the basics of the American system of currency, and math class is at an end.

Now comes a brief moment of social sciences. Martin Luther King Jr. Day was observed just a few days before, and Laura takes this opportunity to educate the class on what a great man he was. She gives the wide-eyed children a brief sketch of what life was like for Blacks in the racist South of the ‘50s and ‘60s. It is probably an entirely new concept to them that other children like themselves could have been hated simply for the color of their skin. Laura insists that the color of your skin has nothing to do with how smart or nice you are. All of that comes from inside a person. She tells them that King convinced Americans that what they were doing was wrong, and that that is why we celebrate him today. It is a rather inspiring speech, after which we move on to the calendar.

Laura has informed me that the children are terribly behind on their knowledge of the calendar. She tested them and found that some didn’t even know that one box meant a day, a strip of boxes meant a week, and several strips meant a month. So now she drills them over and over with days of the week, titles of months, numbers, and holidays. Several children get quite and excited when their birthday months is brought up for practice. Clara, who is sitting nearby, chatters to me about how her birthday is July, and how wonderful that is. I smile and murmur something. I hate to distract her from her lesson, but she is such a charming little thing.

Now to address the not-so-charming members of Ms. Taldo’s class. There are a few children in particular who seem to have phobia of sitting still in their chairs. They will stand, squirm, sit on their legs, get up on their knees, they seem to prefer anything to planting their behinds squarely in their seat and quietly doing their work. All day there have been interruptions and castigations, with the frequent order from Laura to “pull your colors”. This method of punishment involves several colored squares of paper on a chart hanging on the classroom door. As far as I can make out, every time a child misbehaves they must change the paper in their little part of the chart to a different color. Certain colors tell others that this child has been a good girl or boy or a very bad girl or boy. One girl has been told to pull her colors about seven times, but it seems to have little effect.

As the disobedience continues, and Winston’s glasses remain firmly away from his face, I can see that the children are tap-dancing on Laura’s last nerve. Her face is more solemn than ever, and when she sees a pig-tailed girl talking instead of writing and doing gymnastics in her chair, it’s the last straw. She takes four or five of the worst offenders out into the hallway. The door is ajar, and the entire class can hear her. The eyes in the classroom are wide, mouths silent. Their beloved Ms. Taldo sounds like she’s on the verge of tears. “I try and I try to find ways to teach you. I try when I’m here, when I’m home, all the time I am trying to help you! And some days when I drive home I’m crying because you just won’t learn!”

This little scene is soon over, however. The chastened students file back into the room and studies resume. Almost all of the pupils are finished with their work, except for a couple of little ones at the far side of the room. I can see that Laura is busy, so I summon my most teacher-ly attitude and go over to them, offering my help. Neither of them has any idea what to do, so I go through a few questions with them, correcting their mistakes and instructing them as to the next step. I might be helping them a bit too much, but Laura seems to approve. Or at least, she does not disapprove. It is hard to tell what goes on behind her mask of a face.

Tune in tomorrow for another exciting installment (I could go on like this forever),
Abby Rogers

My First Day of Kindergarten, Part V

Once back in the schoolroom Laura announces that we have a few minutes before the kids come back. Normally they would be a recess during this time, but the temperature outside is hovering around the freezing point and they have to play inside. Until then, though, she assists another teacher with her PowerPoint projector. As harmless as it sounds, it is fraught with rules and regulations. Apparently the cords are a problem. According to policy, if you have long cords lying in the floor you have to constantly remind the children to step over them. This could get rather boring after a while. I’m beginning to realize just how much the rules affect day to day school life.

In the time we have left I ask her a few questions I had prepared before coming to school. First, is there any opportunity to express one’s religious views during class? I am a passionate Christian and one reason I am interested in teaching is to reduce the amount of bad-press children hear about Christianity in school. She responds by saying that it’s all right for a teacher to talk about their personal beliefs and value systems, but only when a student initiates the conversation. Even then, you must only state your views as just that, your views, and never as fact. Fair enough. There’s actually a Bible class nearby that sits on land not owned by the school, and at enrollment parents are given the option for their children to attend the class. This was where Ms. Taldo’s pupils had gone earlier in the morning for half an hour.

I also want to know what has made Laura want to become an elementary school teacher. She is more than willing to tell me. Apparently she had thought of being a teacher since she was twelve years old, but it was while taking classes at Crowder College in Neosho, Missouri that she realized her calling. The college gave her the chance to teach a group of academically-challenged children. Working with them cemented it. She declared her major as a Bachelor of Science in Education and eventually graduated from John Brown University. And so here she is today, preparing to plunge back into her job as a kindergarten teacher.

When the kids get back to their class they play for half an hour. An elaborate toy kitchen is set up on the rug, complete with enough plastic edibles for a banquet. A few girls play with a giant box of wooden blocks, and others fiddle with miniature dinosaurs. Laura takes aside one tearful little boy and asks him what the matter is. Apparently some girl took his toy, and he started blubbering. Ms. Taldo informs him that he had a right to that toy as the first possessor, so he should go to the girl, tell her how he feels, and request it back. This is a frightening proposition to the still-crying child, but it is a good lesson for him to learn.

The children go back to learning now, and each one sits at their desk with studious heads bowed over their center work. I am now given the task of sorting out books the children were assigned to read. They are all piled haphazardly in a box and it is my job to organize them. While I’m working on putting every I Can Read Too book in a pile by themselves, a little girl named Sophie sidles up next to me. I give her what I hope is a warm, kindred-spirit smile, but she doesn’t say much for a minute. Then she tells me that she has read one of the books, and that she likes reading. We chat about literature for a few moments, then she begins to help me sort the books. She says that she likes to help and I assure her that she’s very good at it. Before she leaves to go back to her desk, she gives me a big hug around the waist. What a darling! The idea of teaching sullen, bratty high-schoolers is receding farther and farther into the back of my mind. Who wouldn’t want to spend their days with such endearing little angels?  

Spelling is what’s next, and the children are told to sit Indian-style on the rug. Or ‘criss-cross applesauce’ as Laura puts it. She projects a picture from her computer onto a large white board hung over the rug, on which is displayed six or seven letters. Every child should have a set of their own letters during this exercise, but some children are missing ‘a’s, some have two ‘c’s, and so on. It takes a very long time for them to get them all sorted out, and poor Laura is getting rather impatient. She is constantly having to get them back on topic. Winston, something of a problem child to begin with, has recently gotten reading glasses. He apparently detests them and takes them off his face at every opportunity. Laura tells him to them back on for the fifteenth time.

The smart-board is a magnificent invention. Laura uses it as a touch-screen and is able to manipulate the little letters with her fingers. She takes the little ‘a’ from the bottom of the board and drags it all the way to the top, saying “aaaaaaaaah”, then brings it back down again saying “aaaaaaaaaay”. The children mimic her actions. She does the same to the other letters, imprinting their long and short sounds on the children’s minds and tongues.

Next she gives them three words, ‘cot’, ‘hay’, and ‘Tim’. Underneath these are myriad other three-letter words that must be put into these categories, separated by their first letter. Where would the word ‘hip’ go? A forest of raised hands. She selects Clara, a darling girl with wispy brown hair. The girl jumps up, goes over to the board and drags the word up towards the word ‘hay’. Her little arm won’t reach nearly as high as it needs to, so Laura helps her out on the last bit. “Is Clara right?” the teacher asks. The class shouts out their approval. Other little boys and girls take their turns, sorting out ‘tap’, ‘cat’, and ‘him’. When a child has an answer, his or her entire face lights up with the knowledge; it is as if they had just invented the incandescent light bulb. One can almost see their minds expanding by the second.

Tune in tomorrow for another exciting installment!
Abby Rogers

My First Day of Kindergarten, Part IV

Another one of my assignments is to paint in a map of the world, just a network of black lines on a clear sheet of plastic, to be made into a sun catcher. It’s not very complicated: paint the oceans blue and the continents green, but it might be even trickier than the hippopotamus. After all, what if I miss Antarctica or mistakenly color Australia blue? It is rather nerve-wracking.

While Laura is teaching numbers I sneak a peek at the other lady, who is again drilling the children on the letter ‘H’. She looks even more solemn than Laura (so much for the chipper, pink-dressed kindergarten teacher stereotype). However, whereas I can easily imagine that Laura’s features are naturally sober, this other woman just looks like she would rather be anywhere else. She is constantly correcting the students, censuring their every movement. They seem to react differently to her than they do to their beloved ‘Ms. Taldo’. Laura is focused, but her attitude is one of genuine interest in her pupils. This other woman looks like she is doing her job, and no more. Which kind would I be, I wonder. I’d like to think that I would always be sweet and patience with my class, but he stress and hecticness would probably wear all that away in about half an hour.

It is getting to be time for lunch, and I’m certainly ready for it! Nothing will give you an appetite like a roomful of, literally, snotty-nosed kindergartners. Laura sings another little ditty, this time about lining up nice and straight, keeping hands to one’s side and chin in the air, and the little academicians file silently out into the passageway. Quite a few of them have packed their lunch (more Spider-man paraphernalia), but the others are willing victims. Personally, I’m rather jittery. I have heard so much about dreaded cafeteria food, I’m not sure what to expect!

The hallway outside the cafeteria is crammed with several elementary classes--and they’re all talking at once. The noise is deafening, but who can really blame them? It must be horribly claustrophobic to be closeted up in a school for seven hours every weekday.

Finally we work our way into the cafeteria and I realize that I have left my lunch money in the classroom. What a way to begin one’s first lunch at school! Laura and the lunch lady are forgiving, however, and I’m allowed to go through, promising that I’ll pay later. I’m able to choose between milk fortified with vitamin D, milk fortified with vitamins D and A, and chocolate milk. Yikes, I don’t even like milk! I bite the bullet, however, and put my fortified beverage in a little hollow of my Styrofoam tray, helpfully labeled ‘milk’. A lady in a shower cap serves me a little Styrofoam bowl of turkey and noodles, and I have the choice of peaches or iceberg lettuce and tomatoes. I go with the peaches. Then I get a dinner roll and a little package of butter (or buttery spread, probably the latter) and I’m on my way.

As I am shadowing Laura and not her students, I get to sit with her in the teacher’s workroom. You might think that we would eat in the teacher’s lounge, where the refrigerator, soda machine, microwave, and giant popcorn maker are located. But thank goodness we aren’t; it’s a tiny, cold room and half of the fluorescent bulbs are dark. The workroom is much brighter, and the table in the center is filled with well-dressed, laughing women. There are tall ones, short ones, dark ones, fair ones, plump ones, thin ones, teachers of every sort. I see that I am the only one to have taken advantage of the cafeteria fare, everyone else has brought their own. Laura is eating soup, others have brought salads, tacos, and pasta dishes.

The conversation mainly revolves around the work at hand: how the children are behaving, how they aren’t doing very well academically, how everyone at the Toulouse City school got a raise, even the janitor. They also discuss an upcoming conference in Oklahoma, and how an expected ice storm may maroon them on the interstate. Apparently someone told them to bring “blankets and bottled water”. Laura is definitely alarmed and says that she will be speaking to the person in charge. Can this conference be worth the risk?

My cafeteria food isn’t half bad. The turkey and noodles is a little soggy, but warm. The peaches are better than I expected, but the sticky sweet white bread roll is a far cry from my Mom’s homemade whole wheat ones. All in all it’s better than I was led to expect, and I choke down my milk with a smile.

Tune in Monday for another exciting installment!
Abby Rogers

My First Day of Kindergarten, Part III

I am now given my first assignment as a kindergarten-teacher-shadower: create a hippopotamus puppet. This little work of art will be used later in the week for what Laura calls ‘center work’, projects the children do in the middle of the day. This assignment is a little more difficult than you might realize. I have always had something of an aversion to cut-and-paste busy work, even when I was a kindergartner myself. I much preferred coming up with elaborate family sagas for my extensive collection of Barbie dolls. Nevertheless, I plunge in by painstakingly cutting a rotund little hippo out of paper (nearly amputating his tail). Then get out my crayons. As I color him in shades of bright blue and red I ponder that question of the ages…do hippos really have bellybuttons?

The morning work goes on for about half an hour, with Laura intermittently chastising students for inattention and praising others for good work. At a set time she tells the children to put away their papers, then gets out a clipboard and begins the roll call. Everyone is present, a rare occurrence.

One of the first things I learn about being a kindergarten teacher is that you must have a good singing voice. Abruptly, Laura begins singing a little ditty to the tune of ‘If You’re Happy and You Know It’. “Put your bottom on the rug, on the rug! Put your bottom on the rug, on the rug! Put your bottom on the rug, and give yourself a hug! Put your bottom on the rug, on the rug!” Some of the children join in with a little chorus of “on the rug!”s as they hurry to their colorful destination. Now they must go through a very elaborate process, complete with a literal song and dance, to find out what day of the week it is. What was yesterday? Monday! What is today? Tuesday! What will tomorrow be?  Wednesday! They then sing the days of the week to the Addams family theme. Scary. They also spell out the months of the year in song, to a sound-off-type cadence call. Are they training the younger generation for the third World War?


The kids get rather worked up with excitement as they go through every exercise. One little boy is rather grave and businesslike, however. His name is Franklin, and apparently it is his day to run the class through their paces. Franklin uses the long teacher’s pointer to select students to answer questions, solemnly deliberating before each choice. He seems very sweet and I adore that serious, scholastic turn of his mouth. Geesh, I am not even a teacher and I am already picking out my favorite student!

I am rather absorbed in gluing my hippo to a brown lunch bag, savoring the old childhood sensation of rubbing dried Elmer’s glue off of my palm, and don’t pay much attention to what the students are doing. After a few minutes most of them get up to go to another class for half an hour. The only one left sits down a the computer station and works on a fun, education game.

Nothing much happens before the children return and begin work again. Strangely enough, the next time I look up I see another teacher in the room (she’s also wearing a green sweater, this is weird). Laura explains to me that this woman is a federally-employed teacher and she’s helping out because of the high level of poverty and over-crowding in the Siloam schools. The children start to learn all about the letter ‘H’ from this other teacher while Laura takes a few select students aside, one at a time, to drill them on their numbers. One little girl can’t seem to remember what an eight looks like, and a boy gets twelve and twenty-one confused with each other. Laura’s patience is remarkable. I really don’t know if I could sit there and gently guide these fragile souls into the higher realms of learning. I can just see myself screaming, “it is an eight! Haven’t you ever seen an eight before? We’ve gone through this a thousand times!” But, unfazed by these premonitions, my mind begins whirring, planning techniques and systems to make learning numbers easier. Perhaps a correlation of words, like ‘eight’ and ‘ate’. An eight resembles two doughnuts stacked on top of each other, maybe something like “I ate the doughnuts”. On second thought, maybe high school is the best place for me after all.

Now the kids are learning about ovals. Back in the nineteenth century, geometry might have been a somewhat dry and boring subject for a roomful of vigorous five year olds. Not so nowadays! All eighteen children are dancing around on the rug, singing at the top of their lungs about this person named Olive Oval. If nothing else, education has definitely become more entertaining over the past few centuries.

Tune in tomorrow for another exciting installment!
Abby Rogers

My First Day of Kindergarten, Part II

Laura’s classroom is number 33, at the far end of the building. She’s talking with another woman when we walk in; the other woman soon leaves and Laura greets us kindly. I immediately notice that she’s wearing a green sweater as well. I must have selected the most teacher-ly thing in my closet, perhaps the first step to a successful career in teaching. My mentor has shoulder length reddish-blonde hair and a somewhat solemn countenance. She doesn’t smile much, but her eyes are even and not unkind. I am to learn that she is a strict disciplinarian, but also a tender, sympathetic woman.

The classroom is much more cluttered than I had expected. In my mind kindergarten classrooms were neat and orderly, with a place for everything and everything in its place. Here it looks like a home-school supply store had exploded. Puzzles, bingo games, and blocks overflow from a bookcase in one corner, and a counter that runs the length of the room is crammed with papers, maps, projects, snack cakes, and juice boxes. The room is literally covered from floor to ceiling with letters and numbers. The desks are all in the middle of the room, and for some inexplicable reason the chairs are perched on top of them. A large rug covered in big numbers, shapes, and the alphabet is against the wall opposite the counter, and above the rug a large white board, awaiting the day’s first lesson. Laura’s desk is against the wall farthest from the door, crammed between some filing cabinets and a computer station.

There’s nothing for me to do right away, so I busy myself with putting away my purse and coat and taking notes on everything I see. Laura is working on a weekly newsletter she sends out to her students’ parents to keep them updated on their scholastic progress. I can see that she has written a page of interesting ways to drill kids on their numbers, as well as the announcement that they will soon be learning about maps.

She’s keeping a close watch on the clock and in a few moments she tells me that it is time to get the kids. We walk down to the gym, stopping on the way at the teacher’s workroom to pick up her newsletters from the copier. The workroom is spacious, very white and smells of warm copy paper. As we go out I notice several boxes of cereal box-tops. I knew that those things were supposed to help out schools, but I never really thought about anyone having to go through the trouble of redeeming them.

We arrive at the gym a few moments later. it is a big echo-ey room with a spongy floor, where a man who looks like a coach (the whistle kind of gives it away) is rewinding a Magic School Bus video. The room is almost empty, but it doesn’t stay that way for long. As if on cue, swarms of children begin to flood the gym. Little groups of ten to fifteen come keep coming, one right after another. Little towheaded boys and brunette girls, some loud, some shy, many who Laura has to remind not to run. Some of the children are well-dressed, well-groomed, and well-mannered, but others look like they just tumbled out of bed. I see a girl has not combed her hair, and at least one child is wearing dirty clothes. The ones that really stand out, however, are those who run up to Laura and throw their arms around her waist, hugging her as tight as they can. She hugs them back, says a few words to them and then sends them off to watch the television. Soon there are dozens of them sitting on the gym floor, and the volume of their conversation is rising. it is really amazing how much noise a few classes of elementary students can make.

The coach then blows his whistle and everyone scrapes and stumbles to a standing position, then the whole mass begins moving towards the big double doors into the hall. Eighteen children stay behind to follow Laura and I back to classroom 33. The hallways are almost impassible with swarming children. As we herd our little flock a little dark-haired girl tries to get my attention. At first I can’t tell what she’s saying, it is very noisy in here, but I finally make it out, “Are you a real teacher?” I have to laugh.

“No, I am just here to watch Ms. Taldo and learn from her.”

Again, those black eyes, wide with wonder, “Are you an actual teenager?” I have to laugh again. I will soon learn that kindergartners, at least the little girls, are intensely interested in new faces. I am fascinating to them, an entirely new experience for me. Apparently Laura has overheard our little exchange, and when she relates it to another teacher a moment later the woman smiles and tells me, “That’s Audrey, don’t let her bother you.” She seems to think that the little girl might have been annoying me. I actually think that she is rather sweet.

When we get back to the classroom all of the children go to their tables and desks and begin setting their chairs on the floor. Soon everyone is seated and babbling away while Laura sorts through some papers at the counter. She begins something she calls ‘morning work’, a time when the children cut and paste words into vowel-sound categories and practice writing their names.

Tune in tomorrow for another exciting installment!
Abby Rogers

My First Day of Kindergarten, Part I

I have never attended kindergarten. Before now. It is one of those things that a home-schooled child misses out on, and it is not always easy to relate to others who have had the experience. My kindergarten was phonics in the living room and writing at the dinner table. I was surrounded only by my family, and all my education consisted of was, well, education. No extra-curricular activities with hundreds of children I didn’t know, no ‘socialization’, per say. But I had a wonderful childhood, learned very quickly and excelled in academics.

However, now that I am seventeen years old and about to graduate from highs school, I find myself wondering what a kindergarten class is really like. I have heard snippets of conversation, seen glimpses on television and in the newspaper, read books about people who had experienced it, but I have never actually been to a kindergarten class, or any public school class, in fact.

I am beginning to think about career choices, and the idea of being a teacher has occurred to me. Before I begin taking my first developmental psychology class, however, I decide that I need to have at least an inkling of an idea of what a teacher, in any grade, does on a day to day basis.

I have my mom contact a long-time friend, Laura Taldo, who teaches kindergarten at the local public school, to ask if I can be her shadow for a day. Laura is more than happy, and the date is set for the next Tuesday. I start getting goose bumps. Imagine--school buses, backpacks, desks, wooden pointers, cafeteria food! This is going to be an incredibly unique experience, and I hope that I’m up for it.    

My first day of school actually begins on Monday--getting to bed early. Apparently, in order to arrive at the school bright and chipper at 7:30 A.M., a teacher must get to bed before midnight. My schedule is usually the exact opposite: in order to clean late into the night a cleaner must sleep late in the morning. I put in my earplugs and try to ignore the cracks of light seeping around my door. This going to bed early thing could take some getting used to.

It is worth it though, because when I pop out of bed at 6:15 the next morning I feel pumped and ready to go. it is exhilarating to wake up before the world, and I take in the cold, silver landscape with bated breath. Who knows what this day will bring? Slipping into some comfortable corduroys and a cute green sweater, I try to neatly braid my hair and then rush upstairs for a hot mug of strong black coffee. Mom is still in her bathrobe but as I go to the computer to update my blog she goes into her room to get ready. it is still 6:40, we have plenty of time.

After quick breakfasts and a last-minute goodbye to Dad, we’re out the door by 7:30, right on schedule. As we drive down the highway I can see little clusters of children migrating out to the roadside to wait for the bus. it is rather eerie, all of them coming out at the exact same time, like some invisible force is dragging them away from their homes. The sun is peeking over the horizon now, but the roads are still quiet, the busy morning traffic is yet to come.

After a little difficulty we arrive at a huge brick building emblazoned with the words Glenn Harrell Elementary. Dozens of kids with backpacks are swarming through the doors, cars and coming and going, dropping off their precious cargo. I never had the experience of leaving my family every day to join my comrades in a big brick school, it must be a little traumatic for the little ones.

We find our way to the front desk where I put on a bright orange volunteer badge and Mom and I walk down the long tiled hallways to Laura’s classroom. The walls are all brown and taupe, covered with cute little craft projects, rows and rows of colorful name plates over hooks on the wall, and middle-aged women clicking their heels from room to room. Mom and I discuss the novelty of the place in low undertones. There really is no other place quite like an elementary school; it has an atmosphere of its own, predominantly characterized by hundreds of Hannah Montana and Spiderman backpacks lined up on the walls.

Tune in tomorrow for another exciting installment!
Abby Rogers