Kindergarten Moving Up Quotes

Lissa and I had been friends ever since kindergarten, when our teacher had paired us up together for writing lessons. Forcing five-year-olds to spell Vasilisa Dragomir and Rosemarie Hathaway was beyond cruel, and we’d—or rather, I’d—responded appropriately. I’d chucked my book at out teacher and called her a fascist bastard. I hadn’t known what those words meant, but I’d known how to hit a moving target. Lissa and I had been inseparable ever since.

I conducted an off-site consisting of 25 parents in the Seattle area with an income of $200K+ and whose children are entering kindergarten. The headline is that Galer Street is considered a second-tier school, a fallback option for those who don’t get accepted to their first-choice school. Our objective is to move the needle on Galer Street and kick it up into the First-Choice Cluster (FCC) for Seattle’s elite. How do we achieve this? What is the secret sauce?

God is the ultimate recycler. We have a good planet here. It has its troubles, yes. We have overpopulation, we have pollution, we have global warming, we have the Thursday night television lineup,” more laughter, “and, of course, we have the infected. We have a lot of problems on Earth, and it might seem like a great idea to hold the Rapture now—why wait? Let’s move on to Heaven, and leave the trials and tribulations of our earthly existence behind us. Let’s get while the getting’s good, and beat the rush. “It might seem like a great idea, but I don’t think it is, for the same reason I don’t think it’s a great idea for a first grader to stand up and say that he’s learned enough, he’s done with school, thanks a lot but he’s got it from here. Compared to God, we’re barely out of kindergarten, and like any good teacher, I don’t believe He intends to let us out of class just because we’re finding the lessons a little difficult. I don’t know whether I believe in the Rapture or not. I believe that if God wants to do it, He will… but I don’t believe that it’s coming in our lifetime. We have too much work left to do right here.

Every now and then, I'm lucky enough to teach a kindergarten or first-grade class. Many of these children are natural-born scientists - although heavy on the wonder side, and light on skepticism. They're curious, intellectually vigorous. Provocative and insightful questions bubble out of them. They exhibit enormous enthusiasm. I'm asked follow-up questions. They've never heard of the notion of a 'dumb question'. But when I talk to high school seniors, I find something different. They memorize 'facts'. By and large, though, the joy of discovery, the life behind those facts has gone out of them. They've lost much of the wonder and gained very little skepticism. They're worried about asking 'dumb' questions; they are willing to accept inadequate answers, they don't pose follow-up questions, the room is awash with sidelong glances to judge, second-by-second, the approval of their peers. They come to class with their questions written out on pieces of paper, which they surreptitiously examine, waiting their turn and oblivious of whatever discussion their peers are at this moment engaged in. Something has happened between first and twelfth grade. And it's not just puberty. I'd guess that it's partly peer pressure not to excel - except in sports, partly that the society teaches short-term gratification, partly the impression that science or mathematics won't buy you a sports car, partly that so little is expected of students, and partly that there are few rewards or role-models for intelligent discussion of science and technology - or even for learning for it's own sake. Those few who remain interested are vilified as nerds or geeks or grinds. But there's something else. I find many adults are put off when young children pose scientific questions. 'Why is the Moon round?', the children ask. 'Why is grass green?', 'What is a dream?', 'How deep can you dig a hole?', 'When is the world's birthday?', 'Why do we have toes?'. Too many teachers and parents answer with irritation, or ridicule, or quickly move on to something else. 'What did you expect the Moon to be? Square?' Children soon recognize that somehow this kind of question annoys the grown-ups. A few more experiences like it, and another child has been lost to science.

How I picture it: A scar is a story about pain, injury, healing. Years, too, are scars we wear. I remember their stories. The year everything changed. Kindergarten, fourth grade. The year of the pinecone, the postcard, the notebook. The year of waking in the night, sweating, heart racing. The year of being the only adult in the house, one baseball bat by the front door and another one under the bed. Or the year the divorce was finalized. First grade, fifth grade. Two houses, two beds, two Christmases, two birthdays. The year of where are your rain boots, they must be at Dad’s house. The year of who signed the permission slip? The year of learning to mow the lawn. The year of fixing the lawn mower, unclogging the toilets. The year I was tattooed with lemons. The year of sleeping with the dog instead of a husband. (The dog snores more quietly. The dog takes up less space.) The year of tweeting a note-to-self every day to keep myself moving. The year I kept moving. The year of sitting up at night, forgetting whether the kids were asleep in their beds or not. The year of waking in the morning and having to remember whether they were with me. The year I feared I would lose the house, and the year I did not lose the house. The year I wanted to cut a hole in the air and climb inside, and the year I didn’t want that at all. The year I decided not to disappear. The year I decided not to be small. The year I lived.

Why does it bother me to tell people I have health problems? Doesn’t everybody at some point? I suppose that’s the crux right there. For most people, the difference is in the “some point” part. They have a problem. They go to the doctor. Doctor fixes it. Life moves on. It was a small, annoying inconvenience. For me, and likely for you since you’re reading this, your problem is not so temporary. You’ve got it for life, or until science finds a cure, which for some diseases is as likely as winning the lottery when you haven’t even bought a ticket. So we make people nervous. Nobody wants to have a condition that affects their social outings, work choices, family life, and just general day-to-day stuff. Nobody picks that for what they want to be when they grow up. “Oh teacher!” The kindergartener excitedly raises his hand. “When I grow up, I want to have a chronic illness and have people say how strong and courageous I am for enduring it even though I don’t have any choice in the matter! Woo-hoo.” Instead,

Common Core has basically eliminated kindergarten. Yes, you read that correctly. It has moved the start of formalized instruction from Grade 1 to kindergarten. And having done so. it has largely eliminated the all-important play and socialization factors at this level. This is not to mention the wide swath of developmentally inappropriate tasks it is requiring teachers to teach and children to learn up through Grade 6.

So we decided to take a different tack. We made a plan to get up twenty minutes earlier and start walking our girls to school. Our older daughter was in third grade and our youngest was in kindergarten. Both were able to do the mile-and-a-half distance, and it turned into a lovely family time. We’d walk and talk, nobody on a phone, and saunter through a field where we’d look at bugs and leaves. Despite the fact that the girls attended a community school—most everyone attending lived within a two-mile range—we rarely saw any other kids walking or biking on our route.

Madeline." "Yes, Steve." "I love you. I've always loved you. I've loved you since kindergarten. I loved you when I married someone else and every day after that. There's only ever been you." More emotions flooding through my body - this time a love that I took for granted, the deep abiding friendship of a person you've known all your life, a new desire, one that's healthy and strong and rooted in respect for self and other. "You're my best friend," I whisper, with a smile. "And so much more. I love you." And then his lips are on mine, the scruff of his beard, the strength of his arms. Since Evan, I've been in this tight cocoon, not allowing myself to feel, not trusting myself to move on. Now, finally, I'm free. And then we hear applause, and everyone is crowding into the kitchen. "Oh, my god," says Miranda. "It's about damn time." I feel heat come up on my cheeks, my scar burning. Even Badger blushes as everyone piles into the kitchen, laughing and clinking glasses. The kitchen is the heart of the house. Family is the soul. And love is the foundation.

I was woken up the next morning to Brandon’s lips on my neck. I smiled softly and ran my fingers over his head, “I want to wake up to this every morning.” My voice was raspy from sleep. He chuckled against my throat and placed a warm kiss on it causing me to bite my own lip to stop a moan from escaping. “Does that mean I get to keep you?” “As long as you share me with Bree. I’m pretty sure she’d kidnap me otherwise.” Brandon had gently moved the collar of his shirt I was wearing away and was smiling against my collarbone, “I went to Kindergarten, I learned how to share with others.” I burst into laughter and brought his face to mine for a quick kiss. “Well I don’t want you to share me with everyone.” “I don’t plan to.

I can’t stand the awkward anymore, so I motion to the door and say, “I’ll just—” “No. Please.” She looks up at me. “I can’t be alone.” Seriously? This girl needs a lecture about being too familiar with strangers. Maybe I should sing her that “Stranger Danger” song you’re supposed to learn in kindergarten. “I don’t bite, I swear,” she adds. “How’re you so sure that I don’t?” She lays back on the bed again and stares at the ceiling. “I don’t care.” Something is very wrong here. I try to feel for spirits or old emotions again, something to point at why she looks so lost, why she doesn’t care about herself, but there’s just that distant hum in the air. “I can’t stay,” I say. I need to check on Ava this morning before she goes to the academy. Rebecca doesn’t move. “You don’t know anything about me,” I add. “You should be more careful, Rebecca.” She startles at the sound of her name and sits up. “How . . . ?” “Your license. The same way I knew where you lived. Like I said, you need to be more careful.” She seems to settle. “My name’s not Rebecca. Well, it is, but everyone calls me Emery.

Student behavior had been a challenge, Walmsley told me. One girl sometimes got up from her seat to dance across the classroom. A boy with a special-ed diagnosis could answer problems on paper but had trouble speaking up in front of his classmates. On a quiz, he wrote Walmsley a note: “Teacher, you think I’m stupid, but I’m not.” On the wall was a chart showing a ladder, each level representing one behavioral demerit. Step 1 is a warning. At Step 3, a child is sent to the “icebox,” an isolated chair at the back of the classroom. By Step 5, a parent is notified, and the child is removed from the classroom. Each student’s name was written on a wooden clothespin, and as he or she accrued demerits, the pin moved up the ladder. Like Arpino with her kindergarteners, Walmsley spent an extraordinary amount of time policing how his fourth graders sat. Were their eyes “tracking” the teacher? Were pencils resting in the pencil groove of the desk? He didn’t hesitate to give demerits for small infractions. “Remember how I was talking about chocolate milk? How milk and chocolate are our products?” he asked the students, referencing the previous day’s multiplication lesson. When a boy named Anthony answered, “Yes!” he earned a demerit for speaking out of turn. By the end of the period, Anthony’s clothespin had moved up the ladder, and Anthony was sitting in the icebox, scowling.

Mom showed me a section. It was a passage about a fifty-fifth high school reunion. It began: The list of our deceased classmates on the back of the program grows longer; the class beauties have gone to fat or bony-cronehood; the sports stars and non-athletes alike move about with the aid of pacemakers and plastic knees, retired and taking up space at an age when most of our fathers were considerately dead. It continued: But we don’t see ourselves that way, as lame and old. We see kindergarten children—the same round fresh faces, the same cup ears and long-lashed eyes. We hear the gleeful shrieking during elementary-school recess and the seductive saxophones and muted trumpets of the locally bred swing bands that serenaded the blue-lit gymnasium during high-school dances.

Regardless of psychological gymnastics, we know what we see, and many of us learn from it. It’s a rare mover who becomes a collector of anything. Even rarer is a mover who gets hung up on the “sentimental value” of objects. After more than three thousand moves I know that everyone has almost the exact same stuff and I certainly know where it’s all going to end up. It’s going to end up in a yard sale or in a dumpster. It might take a generation, though usually not, but Aunt Tillie’s sewing machine is getting tossed. So is your high school yearbook and grandma’s needlepoint doily of the Eiffel Tower. Most people save the kids kindergarten drawings and the IKEA bookcases. After the basement and attic are full it’s off to a mini-storage to put aside more useless stuff. A decade or three down the road when the estate is settled and nobody wants to pay the storage fees anymore, off it all will go into the ether. This is not anecdotal. I know because I’m the guy who puts it all into the dumpster.

In an intriguing study by Richard Fabes and Nancy Eisenberg at the University of Arizona, researchers played a tape of a baby crying to a group of kindergarten and second-grade boys and girls and monitored their physiological and behavioral reactions.3 Specifically, they noted whether the child tried to eliminate the troubling sound by turning off the speaker or to soothe the baby in a manner that had been demonstrated previously by an adult—talking to the baby over the speaker. The results? The girls were less upset by the crying. They made greater efforts to calm the baby and less often moved to turn the speaker off. Boys whose heart rate pattern showed that they were quite stressed by the crying also were quick to “turn off” the crying with a flip of the speaker switch. These distressed boys were also more likely to act aggressively toward the baby—telling it to “shut up,” for instance. Boys whose heart rate showed a lower stress level were more likely to comfort the infant. The researchers theorized that children—in this case, boys—who are more easily stressed by emotional responses may prefer to avoid them. In other words, boys who have trouble managing their own emotions may routinely tune out the cues of other people’s upset.

It was a passage about a fifty-fifth high school reunion. It began: The list of our deceased classmates on the back of the program grows longer; the class beauties have gone to fat or bony-cronehood; the sports stars and non-athletes alike move about with the aid of pacemakers and plastic knees, retired and taking up space at an age when most of our fathers were considerately dead. It continued: But we don’t see ourselves that way, as lame and old. We see kindergarten children—the same round fresh faces, the same cup ears and long-lashed eyes. We hear the gleeful shrieking during elementary-school recess and the seductive saxophones and muted trumpets of the locally bred swing bands that serenaded the blue-lit gymnasium during high-school dances.

In the German and French pensions, which twenty-five years ago were crowded with American mothers and their daughters who had crossed the seas in search of culture, one often found the mother making real connection with the life about her, using her inadequate German with great fluency, gaily measuring the enormous sheets or exchanging recipes with the German Hausfrau, visiting impartially the nearest kindergarten and market, making an atmosphere of her own, hearty and genuine as far as it went, in the house and on the street. On the other hand, her daughter was critical and uncertain of her linguistic acquirements, and only at ease when in the familiar receptive attitude afforded by the art gallery and opera house. In the latter she was swayed and moved, appreciative of the power and charm of the music, intelligent as to the legend and poetry of the plot, finding use for her trained and developed powers as she sat "being cultivated" in the familiar atmosphere of the classroom which had, as it were, become sublimated and romanticized. I remember a happy busy mother who, complacent with the knowledge that her daughter daily devoted four hours to her music, looked up from her knitting to say, "If I had had your opportunities when I was young, my dear, I should have been a very happy girl. I always had musical talent, but such training as I had, foolish little songs and waltzes and not time for half an hour's practice a day." The mother did not dream of the sting her words left and that the sensitive girl appreciated only too well that her opportunities were fine and unusual, but she also knew that in spite of some facility and much good teaching she had no genuine talent and never would fulfill the expectations of her friends. She looked back upon her mother's girlhood with positive envy because it was so full of happy industry and extenuating obstacles, with undisturbed opportunity to believe that her talents were unusual. The girl looked wistfully at her mother, but had not the courage to cry out what was in her heart: "I might believe I had unusual talent if I did not know what good music was; I might enjoy half an hour's practice a day if I were busy and happy the rest of the time. You do not know what life means when all the difficulties are removed! I am simply smothered and sickened with advantages. It is like eating a sweet dessert the first thing in the morning.