School Daze

Teaching small folks is not for sissies.

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Humph.......I know, I know.  They just are so cute.  They are so nice.  They are just so little.

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Little people  (those under 6) usually don’t have a hidden agenda.  If they see it and they want it, they take it.

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Mary Michael, when she was six, told her mother that it takes one year to fly a rocket to the moon if you “take the long way.”  I love her.  Her nickname is “Cautious”.  She is going to graduate from school some day and go to Paris.  Just ask her.  She is enamored by crepes, the Eiffel Tower and anything French.

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Sally is much more practical.  She's 6 right now.  Her nickname is “Crash.”  Sally is still all about the Babbies.  Babbies are her baby dolls.  She has elaborate scenarios that are conducted with the babbies.  I personally like it when she assigns me a babby role and I have to be covered with a blanket (dish towel) and wind up sleeping side by side with her dolls as she tends our needs.  (I am very good at being a babby.)  My favorite babby is one named Frozen Babby.....she was found sleeping in the freezer.  (No, I can’t make this stuff up!)

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When she was three,  Sally saw a dead bug....flat on his back, feet straight up in the air.  “Shhhhhh,” she told her mother very dramatically, “I think it is a dead baby hedgehog.”

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For those servants of the Lord that teach our smallest of children, my hat is taken off to you.

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Kindergarten teachers are saints.  Pre-K teachers are angels.  1st grade teachers are lion tamers with no whips....only honey-sweetened words to make those small ferocious beasts follow them blindly down the lane to learning.  Watching primary teachers help small students learn to open milk cartons by themselves should be an event in the Olympics.

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I am in awe of great teaching. Always have been and I always will be.  I was over fifty and an assistant principal the first time I really understood chemistry....I was listening to Traci Wood and Ron Aaron explain the periodic table to their students and thought to myself, “Dang, I wish I had them explain this to me when I was in high school.”  High school teachers see the future of their charges looming so close in time....they are determined to teach as much as they can in a short period of time.

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And middle school teachers.  Middle school teachers are smart, fast, and full of the devil themselves. They enjoy coming to work because they LIKE adventure.  Middle school students are frisky.  On a good day they are wide open and on a bad day.....they....they....they.....make us turn white-haired!

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Mary Michael headed to fourth grade last week.  Sally moved to first grade.  I have been thinking about is their true education.....I hope the girls find joy, and wonder, and friends, and life-long learning.  I want them to read great books, internalize science, and see social studies everywhere they look.  It's time to sing, and play, and create art and enjoy math.  Spanish will be spoken, the pleasures of writing and spelling will be used on a regular basis, and I want them to love a great book fair like their Nana does.   I want them to listen to their teachers, be kind to their classmates and see how it all fits together in the big picture of life.  These are the same things I want for all children.