One morning, not long ago, one of my brightest little boys made my day. His bus arrives early, so every morning he peeks in through the window on our door, sometimes jumping up and down with excitement. If he sees one of us moving around the room, getting it ready, we can hear him crow, “I see Mrs. X!”
Finally, we opened the door. He flew in, pumped his arms, and said, “Whoo hoo!”
Because he was at school.
I really love this job.
Not too long ago, the letter of the week was Q. I introduced it, and then demonstrated how to write it on my big chart paper. First I wrote capital Q correctly, a few times, and then I showed how to write lowercase q.
“Now I’m going to write it the wrong way.” I made a few ridiculous-looking capital Q’s and the kids giggled happily. They enjoyed my “bad” q’s as well.
One little boy (who sits right in front of me because he used to be so excited about school he had to interrupt me about it all the time) started looking worried. It seemed to make him uncomfortable to see me not be able to write a letter properly.
I said, “Shall I fix this?” and the kids chorused, “Yeah!”
I wrote lowercase q the correct way.
The little boy shouted, “Yay, teacher! You DID it!”
Those are the little moments that keep me going.
This month our theme is Fairy Tales and Folk Tales, and we are concentrating on one story per week. Last week’s story was “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” and this week’s was “The Three Billy Goats Gruff.”
A few lessons learned and observations noted:
*Preschoolers can be bloodthirsty. We re-read “The Three Little Pigs” today, after having read it a lot last fall during our farm unit. The class was thrilled to see the book come out again, and were enthralled the entire time. They “helped” me read the story, all the way through. In this version, the first and second little pigs get eaten by the wolf. When I got to the end, when the angry wolf climbs up onto the roof, a small, feminine, quiet girl snarled, “Hah! He’s gonna die!”
*Some preschoolers are not. At the end of the Three Little Pigs story, one little boy said he thought that they should get a doctor so that the dead animals “can be alive again!”
*Always read the book before you read it to the class. Let me repeat that: ALWAYS read the book before you read it to the class. I usually do, but for the “Frog Prince,” I didn’t. There were other adults in the room at the time, witness to my discomfort as I realized that there was NO MORAL to the story. The princess is spoiled, lies to the frog, breaks her promise to him, treats him with disgust, and then hurls him against the wall, for which dreadful behavior she is rewarded: the frog turns into a prince who then marries her on the next page. There is no lesson learned, other than go ahead and be mean and you’ll still end up with the prince. The last page had a weird addendum about the prince’s assistant, who had felt tight gold bands around his heart while the prince was in his amphibian state, and on the wedding day heard the bands go Pop, pop, pop! I skipped that page entirely, because I was so appalled (and the other adults were all laughing). I googled it, and that is the original Grimm version. We did talk about it today, and the kids laughed along with me — “Yeah, she threw the frog on the wall! And then he married her! But she was mean! That was so weird!”
*Fairy Tales are exciting. One boy in my class cannot wait for “Jack and the Beanstalk.” ”Is that next week?” he keeps asking, only to sigh when I tell him that it is our story in two weeks. The class loved the last two books, and has learned to tell the stories out loud, and are even starting to act them out on the playground. The Big Bad Wolf is a favorite character, and the thing to say whenever we get to the “woods” card in our pack of vocabulary cards is: ”Don’t go in the woods!”
1. You get to wear silly hats.
2. You get to do things like wear purple every day for a week (it’s Purple Week!).
3. It’s never blood on your hands; it’s always marker.
4. Hugs. Lots of them.
5. You get to read awesome, funny books out loud every day.
6. You are famous, you are loved, you are TEACHER, you are their School Mommy, you loom large in their lives.
7. Valentine’s Day lasts for months. You will get a lot of homemade valentines. Maybe a hundred.
8. You are magic. You make puppets become REAL. You can wave your magic wand and they will believe.
9. You can make a huge difference. By the end of the year, you will see tons of growth, and feel a real sense of accomplishment.
10. Did I mention the silly hats?
“Honey, shhh. You can speak Parseltongue once we get outside.”
(Yes, I am a big enough Harry Potter fan that I could tell what that whispering noise was, when we were in the hall getting ready to go out.)
A little boy in my class raised his hand at story time the other day, and piped up, “Mrs. X, you have a beautiful face.”
I melted, naturally. ”Oh, honey, what a nice thing to say. I love you, too.”
A few days later he said it to my Americorps volunteer.
Then the next day, he came up to me at arrival time and said, “I think Mr. Gym Teacher is beautiful.”
I grinned, and said, “He’ll be happy to hear you said that.”
And when I next talked to Mr. Gym Teacher, who is a big man, he was happy.
Yes, I did this. I feel like an awful person, even as I feel like laughing.
On Saturday morning, I was driving my 11 year old and his buddy to skateboarding, as usual, when I asked the buddy (whose native language is Spanish), “How do you say ‘Be quiet’ in Spanish?”
The friend, who is a lovely, sweet boy, said, “Callate.”
So on Tuesday, I told my nonstop chatterbox, “Callate.” I said it more than once, although I usually added “por favor,” and he did quiet down, right away, each time.
Then last night I was reading a YA novel with some rough teens in it, and a few of them were saying “Callate” to each other, and I started to think…..Hmmm, this sounds rude. What does this word actually mean?
So I looked it up, and yelled, “ARGH!”"
My husband called from the other room, “What’s wrong?”
“I just told _____ to shut up! Several times! I had no idea that’s what it means!!!”
When ______ arrived at school, his older sister was with him. She speaks English beautifully, so I told her the whole sad, embarrassing, ridiculous tale. I could tell she was trying not to laugh. She did, however, at my request, apologize to her brother on my behalf.
Then, before she left for class, I asked, “How DO you say be quiet in Spanish, politely?”
“Silencio, por favor.”
Phew. Now I know.
Dear parents,
Thank you for sending me such a sweet bunch of kids. They are very smiley and seem to like coming to school. They giggle when we read silly stories, and they already have favorite books (“The Pigeon!” “The Chicken!”). They love recess and Gym class, and they are learning our school routines, day by day.
I do have a homework assignment for you, however. Could you please teach your children their names? And could you teach them that when someone says their name, they should look at that person and listen?
Thanks!
Mrs. X.
Today in the blocks a little guy said to me, “I know lots of jokes now that I’m five.”
I said, “Oh? Can you tell me one?”
“How did the bowtie touch the apple?”
“Um, I don’t know,” I said, thinking, wait, wasn’t this Monkey’s unfathomable joke?
“So he could sit on his lap!!!”
Yep, that was Monkey’s joke. It’s spreading!
At our pizza party today, Monkey said, “How did the bow-tie touch the apple?”
I said, “Wow, I don’t know.”
“So he could sit on his lap!” He crowed with laughter, and I smiled to myself. I have a great job.
