Guest reading and other tales from Kindergarten

Jacob's and Hannah's teacher, Mrs. Mac, invited me in to their classroom to be a guest reader today. I was assigned a Christmas themed book and told to show up for 11:30 am. Jacob was especially excited as Tuesday is show-and-tell for the boys and thus I could double as a guest reader and as his item for show-and-tell. Although the kids are changing schools in January, I was still looking forward to putting some faces to the names that I hear about at home.

Mrs. Mac had separated the class into three groups and I was set up at the station in the hallway. I felt mildly miffed as I had taken off my boots as a show of solidarity with the Senior Kindergarteners and, now that I was relegated to the hallway, my socks were in for some cold and damp. I seated myself at the mini chair and waited for my first group. They literally hopped to my reading station - apparently this is how SKs navigate their surroundings. They then placed their cushions on the floor and looked at me with slightly wary visages. I asked their names to satisfy my own curiousity and began the story. J and H were in this first group.

J sat with one hand upon my left knee and H sat at my right clearly of two minds as to whether or not she should acknowledge that I happened to be related to her. Most of the children quickly became interested by the book while one kept his eyes firmly planted on the middle of my forehead for the whole story. One little boy, Elliot, was the size of a grade three and clearly destined for the defence line of some NFL team. He also seemed wise beyond his years and was only 'just' putting up with the antics of his 5-year old classmates. At one point in the story, I read that music filled the air on the night of Jesus' birth. I stopped in appropriate teacher style to ask what each of the students would do if they heard music coming from the sky. Some laughed, one said that he would listen to it and Elliot, in a brilliant move, told me that he would simply ignore it. Ah, Elliot, the plague of apathy so young.

At the end of the story I was asked to pass around a stuffed mouse (one of the story's characters) and let the children tell me what it made them think about. I passed the mouse to Hannah who quickly said, "Love." Really, a stuffed mouse? The next student said, "Sharing." On it went, "Caring," "Kindness." Even little Elliot sweetened his voice to say that the mouse elicited feelings of peace in him. No sooner had the last child answered the mouse question than the next group of SKs came hopping out to greet me. This was quite a different group.

Clearly the more difficult students had been placed in this configuration. They sat down and told me their names. Ahh, yes, these were familiar names mostly associated with tales of classroom discipline. I began to read and tried not to notice the little boy who drew his arms inside his sweatshirt and spun around on his cushion while quacking like a duck. I justified this behaviour by thinking that, yes, there was a duck in the story, the hallway was cold and little boys need to move. Clearly this was the student to whom the teacher had alluded when she had told me that if anyone didn't listen, I could send that person back into the classroom. I decided to give him a break. At the conclusion of the story, I once again posed the mouse question. These answers were quite different: "I thought of when the mouse almost DROWNED AND DIED in the river..." Oh. They then hopped away and I was left on my little chair in an abandoned hallway.

I re-entered the classroom for one quick session of maternal observation as they prepared for lunch. All 18 gathered on the carpet to wait for the announcements and grace. One girl furtively sucked her thumb, another twirled her hair incessantly, another's hands were somewhere that made me hope that handwashing was a prerequisite to lunch. One child kept both sleeves of her sweater around her hands and had sucked on each sleeve so that the edges of the sweater were soaked with saliva. Another girl had her hair firmly planted in her mouth in a mad suck. If these children were another 15 years older, I would have been surrounded by neurotics. Perhaps we need to question the age at which we send these fragile souls to school!! (I won't tell you which kids in the above description were mine!)

I said a quick goodbye (which was lost in the lunchtime din) and inserted my frozen toes into my lonely boots. No one noticed my exit as it was chicken soup day and my kids were wolfing down a meal that they would never touch at home. All in all, it was a very interesting, slightly bittersweet, and enjoyable time. If nothing else, it was excellent fodder for a blog post.