No Wonder They Have Naps in Kindergarten

I am wiped out after three days of, not teaching, but merely assisting in a remedial kindergarten/first class. I have literally taken a nap every day after our half-day school session.

One the first day, I made two kids cry. On the second day, I avoided any criers but I suspect that was by virtue of lack of interaction with the really young ones. Today, I had another crier but she wasn't my fault. She came to me that way.

That didn't matter. I still had no idea what to do with her.

She was terrified the yard aide was going to call her mom because she had been caught kicking a classmate. I tried to convince her that there wasn't anything she could do about it now that the kicking had occurred, so she might as well enjoy the rest of her day and deal with her mom later. And meanwhile, maybe she should remember that kicking isn't appropriate.

She doubled over like someone had stabbed her in the tummy and wailed, "But you don't understaaaaaaand!!! I'm soooo scared!!!" I told her that being scared didn't really do any good since being scared didn't change the situation. She looked at me like I was the lamest grown-up she had ever met. She could quite possibly be right.

My first crier was a little girl who came to me with barely a sniffle - just a small, sad face. She said her foot hurt and pulled down her sock to show me. I commented that it was probably a blister, and we could put a band-aid on it to make it feel better. I was actually feeling quite proud of myself for knowing how to fix her. Then she pulled the sock down more, and I saw it was actually a splinter. Still, I know how to fix a splinter, too.

So I said, "Oh, it's a splinter. We'll. . ." and was cut off with a soul-wrenching wail, "Nooooooooooooooo! It can't be a splinter! It's NOOT a splinter!!"

Me, "Yes, it is a splinter. We'll just take it out."

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!" By this time, I had a crowd of kindergarteners trying to see what I was doing to torture their friend. I tried to reason with her (because that would be the logical thing to do with an hysterical 5-year-old, right?) but only succeeded in increasing the volume of the wails. It took a fellow kindergartener to convince her to hobble to the office and have the nurse remove the splinter.

Then there's C. C answered the question, "What letter makes the "mmmm" sound?" with "I don't know." He answered that for every sound I suggested. He then told me that he doesn't know how to write a letter even if I tell him which letter to write. He finally claimed he couldn't copy a letter from the alphabet chart. So I wrote dot letters on his paper to trace. It was at this point that he flung the paper off the desk, shouted, "I KNOW HOW TO DO IT!" and burst into tears.

Give me hormonal junior highers any day.

C, however, also provided me with my first summer school funny. Today I convinced him that he could write "M O M" and that he did know how to write "M" and "O." I watched him put his pencil to paper and then turned to help his neighbor. When I looked back, C had written three very neat boxes with various dots inside each one. I said, "C, what are you doing?" He looked at me, looked at his paper, and then shook his head and began erasing. "Man, I was writing in robot language again," he mumbled as he erased.

Kindergarten is a whole new world for me.