Final Notice- Kayleigh Robb

Noticing Blog

I've grown to like the way that people look at me when I say I'm a kindergarten teacher. Whether it be the CEO I am bar tending for at a 50,000 dollar holiday party, or just some sweet, lonely woman on the subway, I almost always get the same look, and then the same response. The look, well, that is this wide-eyed stare, the "taken-aback, oh my goodness are you completely sane?", look. And then I typically get this, "God bless you, that's a job I could never do."

But as I pound out this, my last noticing blog, I have to
disagree. I think that, as my first four months in kindergarten come to a close, more people COULD do this job. Of course, I am biased, but I will tell you what I have "noticed" about kindergarten, this semester, through the words of those I have spoken to about my profession:

-"It is complete chaos!"
One of the highlights of my teaching experience this year so far has been introducing centers into my classroom. My MT and I have spent a lot of time perfecting and getting some sort of routine into the several "center times" we have developed (BURST, Literacy, Math and Open center times). It is a highlight not only because I get to work one on one with a small group of students but also because my students get time to work truly independently, or with partners. It is also a great time because the classroom is loud, it looks like chaos at times and yet I know the students are still learning. They're in kindergarten and developmentally these little munchkins are not completely able to sit down and work silently to always stay in their seat, to not ask their friends for help or to show interest in what they are doing.
-"The kids can't even tie their shoes. I'd just feel like a babysitter."
No, most of my students cannot tie their shoes. The individuals who usually say something of this nature when trying to fathom why on earth I love teaching this grade are not really talking only about the matter of tying shoes. When students enter this grade, they're not used to all day school life. They cannot read, they cannot write and they can't tie their shoes. This leads many individuals to believe that as a teacher, I have to do everything for My students, they're basically helpless. This is a misconception.
If anything, I have learned that my students can do so much more than I could imagine. They are growing exponentially; emotionally, socially and intellectually . It doesn't matter to me that I have to zip a jacket or two and tie a shoe here and there when I get to witness a year of such great growth and change. When in four months you see a student who was struggling with basic English utterances when she began, write and illustrate beautiful compound sentences and sit at the head of your class, eyes bright, hand raised, no longer shy, you can't help but think, every little shoe print on my new dress is so worth this!
-"I just don't have the energy."
And I don't. It's not me who walks in to class every morning with a smiling face, greeting the new day. It's the students. Their smiles bring my smile. They have the energy and the drive to get through a dynamic three hours straight of language arts and an hour of math. They have this fresh passion to learn that students so often lose as school goes on. Kindergarten and kindergarteners are the epitome of energy, but it is absolutely contagious.