Trinity School has a half-day kindergarten. This is a rare commodity these days: working parents and busy schedules have determined that children ages five and six years old don’t need a shorter school day. They can handle a day that’s just as long as a first-grader, or even a sixth grader. And they do.
But I appreciate Trinity’s tenacity in sticking to this old-fashioned approach. In my opinion, young children need to be at home more than they need to be away. A half day provides ample academic stimulation for a mind so young. Half days, when you are five and six, are a good thing.
Of course, Trinity’s half-day kindergarten posed a bit of a problem for me this year. As a (suddenly) working mom, my day extended two-plus hours beyond that of my daughter, and She Needed Something To Do.
I would have loved to have taken her home with me every day at one. But I couldn’t.
I worked it out early on. On Mondays she went to a friend’s house. Tuesday through Thursday she went to an excellent art-centered after-school program. And on Fridays my Wonderful Boss John allowed Emma Grace to spend the afternoon with me.
From the outset we decided to spend the first half-hour or so in her classroom. Her teacher was in and out, seeing children off at car-lines, tidying the room. Every week, Emma Grace would pick something to show me: their fish Charlotte, their hamster Biscuit, their hermit crab…. What was the hermit crab’s name?? Once we played with the building blocks, more than once we played with Noah’s ark, often we read books together. But usually we ended up in “housekeeping,” the corner of the room that had a miniature refrigerator, miniature stove, miniature broom and dustpan, and a really marvelous cake made out of wood that had velcro on top so that one could attach velcro-tipped wooden candles or velcro-tipped wooden strawberries or velcro-tipped candies. Emma Grace loved playing with that cake.
After we played in her classroom for awhile, I would usually take her back to my classroom. There I would find something for her to do while I tried to get some of my work done. It wasn’t easy. She was tired from her morning and tired from a full week, and we were both ready to go home.
Today was the last teacher-work day for the close of the 2006-07 school year. We started the morning with a party for John, my wonderful boss who, sadly, is leaving to teach in Boston. The headmaster talked for awhile, remembering some amusing moments with John and remembering seeing John playing catch with his son in his front yard, and realizing, too, that his memory is faulty, that all of our memories are faulty, that none of us can retain everything that is beautiful and valuable and precious about another.
The rest of the day was busy-ness. I had the check-list to check over, files to copy to a disc, white boards to wipe down. And before I left my classroom, that room where I spent hours and hours sweating over curriculum and wondering if I could manage this job I had taken on and quietly falling in love with twenty-one students on the early side of their teenage careers, I stood at the door for a minute. I looked at the empty tables where the students used to sit. I looked at the chairs stacked against the far wall. I listened to the clock ticking and wondered at how loud it was and why I had never noticed it being so loud before.
And then I went over to the main building where my children were in their classrooms all year. I spoke with Everett’s teacher for a minute, thanking her again for being someone who made Everett feel safe and taught him so much at the same time. And while I talked with her, my eyes kept wandering over to where he sat, just there at the front of the room. Then I went up to William’s classroom and hugged his teacher and noticed for the first time that she had a label next to the plant-hook on her wall. “Boston fern,” the sign said, and then the botanical name under that in Latin.
And then I went to Emma’s classroom. It looks different now. The bulletin boards are stripped clean, the labels on the cubbies are gone. Most of the shelves are emptied of their games and puzzles; the chairs were stacked on the tables. Charlotte was still there on the bookcase, but otherwise the room was empty. I went over to “housekeeping” and just stood there for a minute.
It was a good year. It was Such A Good Year. And that’s just the parts I remember.
