Meeting My Role Model

As the school year wraps up, I’d like to reflect on my first year of substitute teaching.

It’s been interesting. I’ve mostly taught at the primary school, since my kids are there. Despite eleven years as a high school teacher, I was not ready for “the littles,” especially Kindergartners.

My first time teaching Kindergarten, I didn’t know what to expect. It’s been a long time since I was on the other end of that colorful carpet. What I remember most clearly from being a Kindergartener is a feeling of distress – the teacher said be quiet, and the other kids weren’t quiet. She said sit down, and they didn’t sit down. She said no touching, and they were touching. I was appalled.

I remember the blocks station and playing “house,” where a girl with long blonde hair bossed everyone around. She insisted on passing out papers and telling kids where to sit and how to play. Maybe she grew up to become a Kindergarten teacher.

I became a high school teacher, which is nothing like Kindergarten, except for the bathroom situation. You still have to monitor who’s in the bathroom, how long they’ve been in there, how many times they’ve been, and who’s going next. It’s my least favorite part of teaching. I have no interest in students’ natural calls and want an entirely hands-off relationship with their bodily wastes. Both parties would be happier if I wasn’t involved, but it’s not to be. “Bathroom monitor” is a part of every K-12 job description.

However, some experiences are unique to Kindergarten, like the way one girl ate her ice cream sandwich. She held it horizontally, so she could nibble off the top chocolate cake layer, then smashed the rest into her face to create a rectangle of ice cream around her mouth. I’d never thought of that.

The best part of teaching Kindergarten is reading out loud, something I rarely got to do in high school science. I LOVE to read out loud; it’s one of my favorite things – varying characters’ voices, adding dramatic pauses, making the sounds. I could read to primary school kids all day.

And then there’s tackle tag. Given time outside, Kindergartners spontaneously run around and touch each other, until they fall into a wriggling pile of screaming bodies, a mountain of five-year-olds. Someone always gets hurt. It’s my job, as the responsible adult, to call an end to the game before that happens.

It was just before tackle tag began one day, that I met my role model.

He was in my class, a kid who, when given seventeen turkeys to count, counted ten. He fooled around in the hallway on the way to lunch – refusing to walk in a straight line and giggling. I had my eye on him.

At recess, he dug in the sandbox by himself, pouring sand into a spinning toy, then came to the swings once the other kids tired of them. He just sat in a swing, watching the others play, their merriment gradually escalating toward mass mania.

I walked by, and the boy asked me to push him.

Now, I wasn’t the only Kindergarten teacher out there, and none of the others were playing with the kids; they sat to the side, watching, resting, taking a much needed break. It was our first chance to sit down all day. I was reluctant to push the kid – was it even allowed? But he sat there, unable or unwilling to move on his own, so I agreed to push him a few times, then let him continue independently once I got him going.

I pushed, and he turned around to stare at my hands, as if unable to believe I was actually doing it. He smiled like I was Santa dropping down the chimney. Wheeee! Yay! His smile was pure joy, joy without restraint, joy without fear. He was a ball of happiness. I kept pushing. He kept smiling.

“Pump your legs,” I said, but he didn’t know how. He looked like he’d never done it before. I gave him the same “up-down” directions I’d given my own children, and he tried, repeating his best attempt at lever-legs with outbursts of Wheeee! and that smile, that joy.

I pushed much longer than I’d planned, and when I stopped, he kept inefficiently swinging his feet, until he slowly came to rest. I moved on to regulate the devolving game of tackle tag, and he sat in the swing, beaming, until recess ended.

I don’t know if he learned anything that day in Kindergarten, but I know I did.

– by Jessi Waugh