Struggling through with joy... |
kind of.
Struggling through with joy... |
It was a marathon day – 7 classes in a row before lunch, four more after, teaching from 8:50 to 12:20 with no breaks. I have to plan ahead on days like this like I might for a 5K: eat a good breakfast, finish my coffee before the first bell, drink just enough water to stay hydrated, but not so much I have to pee before 12:20. When I started in this position days like this ruined me for the evening. Making dinner was an impossibility and was usually consigned to my husband. Coaxing my kids into their pajamas brought out the worst in me. I snapped and stomped after them as they lilted into the bathroom to brush teeth, half dressed. Once they were in bed, I passed out on the couch while my husband read, no company to anyone but my elderly chihuahua curled in the crook of my legs.
Now it is April, and I’ve built my stamina. It’s beautiful outside, the sky blue and dotted with the fluffy clouds of spring. When I pick up my kindergarteners, the fifth class of my morning, we pause to sit for our mindful moment in the shade of the school. We breath our arms up and become butterflies, exhaling to fly. They seem calmed by this, happy, and I expect them to line up behind me to head into our classroom without incident. This kind of magical thinking might lead you to believe I haven’t taught for almost twenty years. Instead, I hear an enraged scream and cry, turning to see one of my students stomping to hide between the chain link fence and a trash barrel, his face red and wet with tears. “She cut in line!” he screams when I ask for an explanation, and my empathetic observations (‘I can see that you’re angry, let’s take some deep breaths’) give rise to the same sort of reaction I would have: no shit, genius. Leave me alone. So I do. We move where I can still see him and the rest of the class sits in front of me as we practice the ways to see 8, 9 and 10 on our fingers. I flash four fingers on each hand and they whisper their predictions to each other; I flash three on one and five on the other. We’re still essentially doing the number talk I planned on, but without the power point slides of ten-frames I had ready to go in our classroom. My angry little boy growls and yells when we look too intensely at him, which is to say any time I spend longer than two seconds checking on him. “We’re ready to head inside, please join us,” I call. He growls some more and curls into a smaller ball. We are alone out here on the playground. I’m grateful, then, for the random things my students hand me as they leave my classroom: I dig the stub of a pencil and a scrap of red construction paper left behind from the last class. I write I need a help with S., please come to the playground, and send two of the kindergarteners in to the office. I pray they find their way – it’s a big school and they’re prone to distraction – and continue with my lesson. I teach social and emotional skills, which, in kindergarten, is best instructed through play. It is their language. Today we are talking about pretend play as a way to develop empathy. Of course that’s not how I explain it to them. I say, “When we can think about what the person or creature we’re being looks like, sounds like and feels, we can also start to understand each other better.” They stare at me, unknowing, until I demonstrate. See? I am a horse. I feel excited to gallop, I whinny with happiness. Then I truly am a horse, galloping around my group of kindergarteners with glee, and they too are excited, and they jump up and join me in my galloping. I pray no one from the office comes out at just this moment. “Shall we all be happy horses?” I ask and we gallop and whinny around the blacktop. My angry friend is dislodged by this display of joy and horsemanship. He races over to join us in our galloping, tears dry, as the counselor walks out and surveys the scene with a bit of confusion. I look at her and shrug, then give the thumbs up. She shrugs too, walking closer to get an explanation. Later, I try to problem solve with the little girl who cut in front of her classmate. I’m not sure it’s effective. We have much more to learn about how our actions affect others, what an appropriate reaction is, that the world does not revolve around our wants and needs. Part of this will be learned, often with difficulty, in growing up. Part of this will be learned in my classroom, pretending, thinking, learning to breathe deep and manage when things get tough, talking it all over, and sometimes, by whinnying around the playground on a sunny spring day.
1 Comment
5/7/2019 07:58:19 am
I enjoyed reading about how you work with kids in kindergarten to teach them social and emotional skills. You sound like a great teacher!
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