Teaching the first grade this week, I was reunited with the kindergartners I had tried to instruct a year ago during a time when their regular teacher was serving grand jury duty. It was a mostly exhilarating albeit somewhat exhausting experience to drop in again and be surrounded by so much youthful innocence and unbridled exuberance. I can report here, non-judgmentally, that a few of the students remain frightfully antic and blithely indifferent to rules about classroom decorum, diligence, and the collaborative requirements of education.
Declan informed me, "I only want six things for Christmas."
"Underwear, socks, and what else?" I teased him.
"No, toys," he said. "But I'm getting my dad one thing: beer."
"A can of beer?" I asked.
"No, a six-pack. I mean a 12-pack."
Anthony told me, apropos of nothing, "In France, Santa gets wine and cheese as a snack, not milk and cookies."
Devin explained that he was leaving for Florida on Friday but that Santa had been advised to leave gifts for him at his grandma's house in New Jersey.
Last year I was introduced to Olivia, who made her presence felt immediately in a big way. On one unforgettable day in November, Olivia made a quick bathroom visit before we headed down the hall to the Veterans Day assembly. Soon after taking her seat on the gym floor she rose to inform me, "I didn't wipe myself good." As an editor for 34 years (and a parent), I had a lot of experience with juvenile behavior and cleaning up messes. This, however, was unprecedented. Thankfully, an aide overheard Olivia's confession and stepped up and redeemed me.
Fast forward to today. During the course of the morning, the diminutive but hungry and hypochondriacal Olivia was at my desk continually--not continuously (it only seemed like an unbroken run of appearances). Shortly after 9 A.M. she inquired how much longer it would be until lunchtime. That was followed by complaints about her health (she was fine) and her classmates, her plans for Christmas, and a brief unsolicited history of her parents' employment, including a parenthetic note that her father was usually less busy than her mother. As often as she materialized in front of me, I patiently reminded her to go back to her desk.
By the end of the day, Olivia had heard enough from me. After my final admonishment to her to focus on the assigned task, I overheard her say to her table mates, "Mr. K used to be fun, but now he's pushing us to work to the limit."
I almost felt like a real teacher.
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