So, the thing, the amazing thing, about being a kindergarten teacher in the same school for several years is that you get to watch your students grow up, see them continue to learn and grow. You get to see their smiles in the hallways, and if you’re really lucky, they keep hugging you whenever they see you, even when they are too old, and too cool, to hug their own classroom teachers.
And the thing, the really really hard thing, about being a kindergarten teacher in the same school for several years is that you see your students when they struggle, when they fall, when they fall apart and get lost, and there is so little you can do.
You walk into a classroom, and there he is, a child you poured your heart and soul into. His desk apart from everyone else, his head down. You ask him how he is and his eyes slide away from yours.
“I’m okay, Mme.”
“Are you sure, you seem sad…?”
“Yeah, Mme, I’m…. ok.”
And then you see it – the invisible curtain over his eyes, the one you worked so hard to raise, is back down again. And there is a big scratch on his cheek and he doesn’t remember where it came from. And his shirt is stained. And his hands are clenched. And there are toothmarks up and down his pencil.
And it’s not because of his teacher. You know her. She is a good teacher, with a heart as big as the sky.
But you worry. You worry that he has become invisible even to her.
Because you know him. You know how difficult it is to love him, and even more difficult to like him. He is not cuddly. He rarely smiles. He is often grubby. His work is messy. There are no spontaneous hugs or burst of affection. There are no love notes. There is no drive to be your helper or to earn your approval. There is only survival, an instinct to make himself safe, and anger that leaks out in drips and drabs.
And what you really want to do is scoop him up and run him back to your classroom, where the curtain over his eyes came up, and once in a while you saw a glimmer of a smile, and on one, single, miraculous day that you will never forget, he once folded a paper airplane, wrote your name on it, left it on your desk.
So you give his shoulder a squeeze and you leave him. You go back to your desk and you cry hot tears while you google “paper airplanes”. You carefully fold one. You write his name on it.
And in the heart of the deepest crease, you write a single “x.” A single “o.” A single heart.
At lunch time you leave it on his desk.
And you hope that he will know.
Update: This post was written when I still used Blogger for this blog. I thought about editing it so it would make more sense now that I have my own domain and work in WordPress, but the very fact that this post exists here without being re-written is a pretty good illustration of my underlying point: We can ALL do hard things when the motivation is there…
Last night, I sat down to start a semi-big project that I have been semi-dreading: migrating my blog from blogspot to wordpress. The reasons are many, but the short and sweet answer is that wordpress has more capabilities to do more things, and as my little blog community grows, it seems to make sense to move over there. I knew there were a lot of steps involved, things I have never done before, and don’t entirely understand. I knew I was going to have to LEARN a bunch of new stuff, and make it make sense, and apply it. I knew there were certain risks involved.
What if I do this wrong? What if I screw it up? What if my blog disappears? Wait, I need to buy the domain name AND the hosting. Ok, so the domain is like the name of the restaurant. And the hosting is the physical space for the restaurant. And I need to pay for both. Ok, that makes sense. But how MUCH space do I need? I don’t want to pay for more than I will use. But what if it’s not enough? Can I make it bigger later if I want to?
Ok, deep breath. Why I am doing this again? Am I sure the easier way is not worth considering? No, the easier way really isn’t what I want. If I’m going to do this, I’m doing it all the way. Even if it’s hard.
Learning is hard, folks. You try, and you play, and you ask for help, and you struggle to UNDERSTAND the help that you get. And then you apply it, and you realise you didn’t even ask the right question, so of course you didn’t get the answer you needed… So you ask again, and the first answer isn’t quite enough, but it sends you to another answer that helps a lot. And just when you think you have it, your pencil breaks (or, in my case, Google wallet took an unannounced 10 minute vacation.)
To be clear: for the 2 hours I sat at my computer, trying to figure this all out, I was deeply engaged. It got dark outside, and the house got a bit of a chill, and even though I was sitting FACING OUT THE WINDOW, I was surprised to discover these facts when I finally looked up. I was engaged, the task was authentic. I was learning, asking, self-correcting, trying and error-ing, and trying again. Reading and squinting and doubting the double-taking and cursing the people who DON’T MAKE THIS CLEARER. But I was doing. Bit by bit, I was doing.
I think the lesson here is that: there is nothing that says learning shouldn’t be hard. It is and can be hard. But maybe, as learners, we are far more likely to persevere through the task if it is also meaningful, and tied to an outcome that matters to us. I WANT to make more of my blog. I WANT to own this space more than I currently do. I am committed to figuring this out. But that doesn’t make it easy. If I had been tackling this task for reasons I didn’t choose, or for reasons someone else decided where important… I probably would have given up.
I persevered through a difficult task because I was personally invested in the outcome. There’s a thought to chew on when we think about student motivation.
In 2 hours, I got exactly one step of this process completely figured out and squared away. I bought my domain: www.missnightmutters.com now belongs to me. (Go ahead, type it into your address bar – you’ll find yourself right back here. Isn’t that SO COOL?!). There is satisfaction in that, in having ONE STEP done. But there is also frustration that ONLY one step is done.
Later today, I will chip away at the next step: choosing and paying for a hosting service. Then installing WordPress on that host. Then taking a really deep breath and moving the blog over.
It has been hard. It might get hard again. But I can do hard things when the process and the outcome really matter to me. I can do hard things.
My students, even in kindergarten, can do hard things. Our students can and will do hard things, and do them willingly, but only if the process and the outcome really matter to them.
Furthermore, the belief that they are capable of doing hard things is probably more valuable than the actual DOING.
As my grandma, who, after a stroke, taught herself to do left-handed needlepoint at the age of 85 (talk about doing hard things!) would say: “put that in your pipe and smoke it.”
Thank you for showing these children, with everything you say and do, that the adults in a classroom are there to help them. They have arrived on my doorstep with perfect confidence that if they are unsure or worried or scared or upset or struggling, I will help them. Their faith is so perfect that they do not hesitate to ask for help, or to announce that they are having trouble. They are not embarrassed to be learning, they are not hiding their mistakes. They are hanging them out there for all to see, trusting that this is a place where mistakes are okay, where second chances are readily available, and where there is always an opportunity to try again.
And above and beyond all of this: thank you, for loving these children so well and so thoroughly that their expectation of school is just that: love. For holding them and hugging them, smiling at them and laughing with them so often and with such enthusiasm that, when they arrived at my door just 3 short days ago, their love was right there bubbling at the surface. I’m just not sure that I can think of a better definition of school readiness than for a child to arrive at school prepared and expecting to love and be loved.
So, thank you, dear preschool colleagues. The work you do is undervalued and underpaid, but please, please know: it is not unappreciated. You have polished these little ones up so bright and shiny. The responsibility of keeping that shine alive is both humbling and inspiring.
Happy September, friends.
Today’s post is the continuation of Brayden’s story, started here. The year that Brayden started in my room he came to me for half-days, beginning in March. By April, we knew that he was not emotionally equipped to handle a transition to first grade, and the unanimous decision was that he would re-enroll in kindergarten, and would be in my class full-time the following year. My feelings about children repeating kindergarten are very complicated, but then… Brayden was (and probably still is) a complicated kid.
I wrote this post in mid-October of the year I had Brayden full time. His first 6 weeks of school had been rocky, but promising. And then… and then.
Oh, Internet, I swear I never wanted this to be a place where I just pour out all my woes, but…
Brayden? My laundry-list child, who started transitioning into my classroom in March of last year? Who hugs me with a ferocity that makes me cry, and who melts down in loud, noisy tears, on a regular basis, over the smallest of slights? Who spends an inordinate portion of his life on timeout, who has to push every single adult in his world to the very brink before he trusts that they (we) will set the limits he so desperately needs? Who, when he is done melting down, curls up in my lap and buries his face in my neck, and whispers: “I love you, Miss. Night”?
Yes, Brayden. Brayden, who I love with a protectiveness that frightens me.
Brayden.
Brayden, whose mom, just 3 weeks ago, accepted a corporate transfer to another city. A city 3 hours away from here. A transfer that is effective January 1st.
The last 3 weeks, since Brayden learned of this upcoming move, have been horrific The words have been said, and can’t be unsaid. He knows. He has gone from being a child in need, a child at risk, to being a child in crisis. Make that A Child In Crisis. Every day, every single day, there has been a meltdown to the point of him being carried, wailing and thrashing, from the classroom. Every interaction, every single interaction, with him, begins with “no! I will not do what you say!” He is oppositional and defiant and aggressive and angry and out of control and scared.
So very, very, terribly, scared.
I have bruises on my shins from his heels furiously flying as I carry him to the office. Tracy (my boss) has not completed a single meeting without a Brayden-related interruption, in 2 weeks. (And the one morning she was gone for an off-campus workshop was too difficult and exhausting and painful — for me, Brayden, my aide — to even begin to describe.) Every time I hear a loudspeaker announcement calling Tracy to the office at a time when my class is not with me, my heart sinks. It is Brayden. It is always Brayden. On Friday, in what would prove to be the final straw, our yoga teacher (who is also an early intervention specialist, thank the sweet baby Jesus) got punched in the mouth while trying to restrain a struggling Brayden. His mom was called, he went home, and he will not return to our classroom until we have found a full-time aide, just for him.
Every single scrap of time and energy I have had for the last 3 weeks have been consumed by him, and when I am not with him, I am recovering from being with him. It is not okay, or healthy, not for me and not for the other 19 children in my class. For them, I feel I have been a mediocre teacher. I have also, I suspect, been a mediocre and inaccessible leader to my team of colleagues. I have definitely been a completely absent blogger, and have become, quite possibly, the world’s most boring conversationalist, to everyone except my own mother (who might, quite possibly, love Brayden as much as it is possible to love someone you have never actually met.) When I am at my most exhausted, I resent the intrusion of this one small boy into my head and heart and world, and I wish for my life and time and energy and classroom back. At my darkest moments, January starts to seem like a beacon of hope and harmony…
But the rest of the time… My heart breaks, both for Brayden and for myself. I am scared of what will happen to him at his new school. Will his new teacher love him? Will she know that he CAN’T stop wiggling during circle, and that the safest thing for all concerned to to strategically seat him where he has enough room to roll around without kicking anyone? Will she allow him to push his own physical limits, even when it seems too dangerous, because PUSHING is what he most needs to do? Will she let him crawl into her lap and bury his face in her neck? Will she hold his hand even when inside she is shaking in frustration? Will she help him name his feelings, learn to control her own breathing, tell him she loves him even in his most unlovable moments? Will she praise his successes, however tiny they may seem? Will she set limits and stick to them, even when he has been laying on the floor, howling, for 30 minutes? Will his new school have an administrator like Tracy, who has turned her office into a safe haven for kids who need a place to get it together? Who will walk out of any meeting to carry a sobbing Brayden down the hallway so his classmates can eat lunch in peace? Will the other kids see the humour and enthusiasm and affection that hide beneath his nervous tics and pushy body language? Will he find a friend? Please, God, let him find a friend…
Brayden is taking next week off — it is only a 3-day week anyway — and staying home from school to allow all of us a break and some time to strategize, not to mention to find the angel-in-disguise that we will need to be his aide for the next 2 months. Just contemplating 3 days without him makes my whole body relax. I know I need it, and I know the other children deserve to get to know their teacher again.
But the thing is… I will miss him.
And if I know right now that I will miss him like crazycakes for just 3 days… what am I going to do in January?
*God’s Will, Martina McBride. Of course.
