A Pilgrim’s Digression

Last night, we went as a family to Brendan’s elementary school for an ice cream party “meet and greet” with his principal and teacher, as well as the other three kindergarten teachers.

The ice cream was the school cafeteria kind, served in a tiny, styrofoam cup with a paper peal top and a small wooden “paddle” to eat it with. That brought back some memories, almost as much as if we were given one of those tiny half-pint cartons of chocolate milk to drink.

But the real purpose for being there was not to eat ice cream, or even to acclimate this crop of five year-olds to school, but to soothe the anxieties of parents sending their children off to elementary school for the first time.

After meeting with Brendan’s teacher, Mrs. Morris, his classmates, and their parents in the classroom, we adjourned to the gym for a meeting with the principal. After the principal spoke for a few minutes, the teachers called the names of their students and assembled them in lines and took them back to the classroom so that parents could concentrate on assuaging their own worries.

Surprisingly, only one little girl out of approximately sixty children went into loud, screaming convulsions when the teacher tried to separate her from her parents.

After the kids departed for their first lesson in classroom etiquette and protocol, we parents listened attentively to the principal talk to us about the pick up and drop off rules, the necessity of allowing our child to walk into school unaccompanied by a parent on these first days (a school staff member will personally escort the child to their class, even if they have to drag them kicking and screaming), and general rules regarding breakfast and lunch and phoning in for a sick child.

This is going to be quite an experience for all of us. I think that we and Brendan are well-prepared for it, since he has been in pre-school since he was three, but there are some big differences between pre-K and K. Perhaps the one thought that keeps recurring in my mind is how much more independent he is going to have to be, now.

After school is out at 2:30, he is going to board a school bus to travel to another elementary school for YMCA after-hours activities. He has been assigned a student number, like a PIN number, for checking books from the library and purchasing lunch and breakfast. The cafeteria works on a debit system, whereby the parent deposits lunch money on account and the child punches his number into a keypad to purchase food.

Brendan was supposed to have his five-digit number memorized by the start of school, but his teacher admitted months ago when we first met her that few if any of the kindergartners were ever able to remember their number. We haven’t really worked with Brendan to memorize his number because we will feed him breakfast before school and we will pack him a lunch. As for the library, presumably the librarian can look him up to check out a book to him.

But maybe we are already falling down on our parental duties. I suppose I could begin drilling him on his number even today…

One good thing is that two of Brendan’s classmates from Montessori will be in his kindergarten class with him. That should ease his transition, although except for expressing an occasional nervousness, he seems to have gotten over his anxiety since I sat up talking to him about school the other night.

It’s funny, that night that I sat up in the dark and talked to him, I told him about what Kindergarten was like for me. But our experiences are going to be quite different, beginning with the fact that I only went to school until noon. Brendan has put in a full day of school since he was three.

When I arrived in Kindergarten, I may have known my ABCs but not much else. My classmates came from a similar background. There was no pre-school, and everyone was expected to learn in Kindergarten the things that Brendan already knew at age four.

When I went to Kindergarten in 1978, the public school system in Mason County, West Virginia, was involved in an experiment called “mainstreaming” in which children who were both severely and mildly retarded were placed into the same classrooms as “normal” students. Special Ed. teachers were assigned to the classrooms to handle these children.

That was certainly an experiment that failed.

When I went to Kindergarten in 1978, we lined up for lunch and one student was chosen to lead the class in a rote, pre-lunch prayer. I came from a completely secularized family, so prayer was something new for me. For reasons I have never understood, my parents had an innate antipathy to religion, to the point that when a friend invited me to church on Sunday, my parents would refuse to let me go, even though I was curious about this facet of life.

Still, when it was my turn to pray aloud, I prayed. I didn’t know what I was praying to, or why, but I did it.

When I went to Kindergarten in 1978, few homes had computers. I would venture to say that in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, no one owned a computer. Certainly there was not a computer to be found in my elementary school. Brendan’s classroom has four Mac computers, three old Blueberry iMacs and a newer, white eMac for the teacher. His school library is well supplied with more Macs and books.

When I went to Kindergarten in 1978, my elementary school had no library. The library was literally a janitor’s closet with bookshelves lining the walls. The teacher had to remove the mop bucket so a few of us could crowd in at a time to pick out a book. I admit, this unfortunate circumstance may have been a factor of the impoverished school system rather than typical of the elementary school experience in 1978.

At the time, it did not seem remarkable to me that our school had such a poor library. I read a lot of books from that closet. I remember some of my favorites were the “Little House” series by Laura Ingalls Wilder, but these were girls’ books. In order to prevent other boys from seeing what book I was checking out, I hid it underneath something serious and innocuous. My favorite of the Wilder books was On the Banks of Plum Creek, and I recall once placing a junior biography of Martin Luther over top the book as I checked out, so that no one would notice.

Another favorite book of mine from this library was a book about King Arthur and his knights, a book which I still have. At the end of my fifth grade year, the school purchased some new library books and discarded the old ones. We students were allowed to pick through the discards and take home one or two. I still remember that book giveaway as a great highlight of my elementary school experience. I also took home another favorite, Superweasel, a book which would almost certainly raise a storm of protest among conservatives today, if it were taught in school. Fortunately for modern censors, the book is long out of print.

However, as usual, the good fortune of small minds is a misfortune for the rest of us.

So tomorrow Brendan begins school.  I’m still working out what to think about it.  I took him by the Montessori school yesterday to say hello to his former teacher, Catherine, and he acted shy.  It was as if, right before my eyes, I was watching that period in his life recede into dimmest memory.  He commented on all the changes in the school, such as new rugs, and rearranged furniture, but otherwise he acted bashfully around the woman who has been like a third parent to him for two years.  In the end, however, he hugged her and said he loved her, and I have no doubt he meant it.

Now, tomorrow, we begin to get to know the capable Mrs. Morris.  I am sure I will have more to write about this subject in the coming weeks.