Nearing the end of the year

“There are two Kindergarten teachers in our school with the last name Macheski,” the kindergartner told me. “But one of them has the first name M.R.S. and OUR teacher has the first name M.S.”

🙂 It was a sweet day with sweet kids – a few overly chatty ones got on my nerves (S. didn’t want to listen and seemed to think she was the teacher occasionally), but it was a good day. I love how this age of child is so very responsible. They know their routine – where their orange folder goes, what to do next, who is the line leader or teacher’s assistant. It’s sometimes hard for me to stick to their exact routine, but I love how they take it all so seriously – making sure they have their crayons, and their sharpened pencils. In fact, now that I think about it, it’s mostly when a few of the kids do NOT follow the rules that Kindergartners get upset. Cutting in line (a federal offense), not sitting in your right seat (they have the district attorney on speed dial), or touching something/going somewhere that they wouldn’t try if the “real” teacher was there – really sets off the majority who want to do everything right. I need to remember to take these things seriously, because honestly, all I want to do is have everybody sit SOMEwhere, read them a book, or walk them 30 feet away to Art class without having to take 5 minutes to discuss the walking order!  Hopefully it is useful for them to hear that these should NOT be big matters.

This teacher has all the kids put their school-to-home orange folder into a bin at the beginning and she told me to have the kids count out loud with me because if there weren’t 22 in there, it would serve as a reminder for a couple of them to go get theirs out of their lockers. Which – it did. 🙂

They also take the Pledge of Allegiance very seriously – I think that’s true up through the first couple of grades. After that, it’s a reluctant duty, still done by most, but by high school, it melts away to a half-hearted, slumping, sotto voce grunt, if anything is said at all.