Ironically, I did my first three-week practicum with this class when they were brand new kindergarteners and it is amazing how much they have learned about procedure and being a student in just one year. For instance, they have actually learned how to form a line! That’s something they hadn’t mastered at the end of my practicum. I had left shaking my head that, as cute as they were, I wasn’t sure I could spend my days repeating the sound of one letter of the alphabet for a week at a time (a says /a/, ants on an apple, /a/, /a/, /a/). And getting them to listen and keeping their attention was nearly impossible. But, look at them now. True, their attention spans are still short, but they have definitely learned some skills that most of us take for granted. They automatically form a line to get a drink or wash their hands and getting everyone’s attention at once is actually possible now. In my book, kindergarten teachers are heroes for this. How do they stick it out? I had a chance to better understand their motivation before Christmas...
Two kindergarten teachers who are team teaching their combined class of 27 students this year went on maternity leave at about the same time. I was asked to sub for one of them along with a retired veteran teacher that taught D’s kindergarten class years ago. It was a great experience to be able to have her as a mentor and be able to teach for eight weeks instead of just a day or two. I knew all 27 names and faces by the end of the first week and by the second week I could even conjure a mental image to connect with each name even if the student wasn’t right in front of me.
This class had been in school for two months by the time I came and, although they were still shaky about forming a decent line, they did know their small group names and the basic routine of the day. Although the curriculum wasn’t any more stimulating (they were finally past the letter a and on to m says /m/, monkey on a mountain, /m/, /m/, /m/), I must say that it was easy to pull together a week’s lessons and the day moved along nicely because we switched gears every 20 minutes. After a month, we were all in a nice routine and I began really feeling like a teacher. It was so nice to have time to get to know the students and to become comfortable with my role. By then I could also see the idiosyncrasies of each little personality for myself, and get a feel for their strengths and struggles. By the time I left another month later, at Christmas break, I was witnessing some students crossing the span between being a non reader and an emerging reader; that magical time when a student is able to go beyond sounding out letters to actually blending the sounds into a word and words into a sentence. No one is more surprised than they are when a group of sounds actually become a word that they recognize. We had also created art projects that involved 27 six year olds, Elmers glue, marshmallows, and paint; a combination that still makes me shudder. Kindergarten art projects teach one the hard way to simplify, simplify, simplify - both instructions and procedures. And never help one student for too long a time because five others are innocently concocting gluey disasters in your absence.
But, alas, they won my heart anyway. From the wispy little waif who tipped her head to one side when she smiled at me to the little boy with the toothless-little-old-man face that resembled Gabby Hayes of the old westerns. I suppose my favorites were the two little ones who seemed to always be in left field when it was time to follow instructions. Staff members were still trying to figure them out when I got there; why they barely spoke, what were their capabilities. I found out the first week that the little girl talked just fine when I approached her one-on-one and the little boy was eager to please, but just got ahead of himself and had trouble articulating. Neither had the deficits about which people speculated. They were just awestruck with the whole world of being in the school environment where people expected them to do things for themselves. I had the feeling that they were unused to the attention and the expectations of adults. How could one not fall in love with these little urchins? *sigh* They are a lot of work, but a lot of reward as well. Just don’t turn your back on them after handing them the glue.
This was the prototype of one of our art projects, but most of my students felt the snow was more likely to fall in clumps, or in horizontal rows, or in about three vertical columns.
