Winding Down The School Year
Read more articles on Let Me Share With You and education.May 21, 2007
Posted by Karen Amato Schwartz
May 21, 2007
Posted by Karen Amato Schwartz
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To those loyal readers who have been checking in, only to discover I’ve been lax this week, I apologize. This has been one of my busiest times in awhile, and unfortunately, something must take a back seat. My focus today is the big sigh of relief I’m allowing myself regarding the fact I have only 3 days left as a preschool teacher.
For those of you who don’t regularly follow my column here, my career seems on a track guided by unseen forces, reinforcing my belief that there’s a method to all this madness. Before motherhood, I enjoyed every job in corporate management until it was time for the next opportunity to piggyback onto the last. But most of my last 13 years have evolved around children. When my daughter entered kindergarten, I thought I was done with all of “that”. But I was wrong. Returning to the dance world as an educator, my adult and teen classes were slowly usurped by baby ballerinas. As I eased out of that field, an opportunity for preschool administration surfaced and morphed into classroom assistant. Since all I wanted to do anyway was to give the daily art class and be silly, it seemed perfect, and for two years it was. But this year, with 9 boys and 4 girls-many of which have type A temperaments-it was constant upheaval…and I’m past the constant upheaval stage.
There is certain personality kind that can maintain equanimity around 3-5 year olds on a continuous basis, and I’m not it. I can manage pretty well for awhile but I’m just not geared for the long haul. This is not to say I dislike kids; it’s saying that dealing with young kids takes a patience and energy all its own. Early childhood education is so often the neglected stepchild of our system and that’s ironic for such a critical point of a child’s life.
Luckily, fate has provided other options that it apparently wants me to pursue at this time, so the door is slowly closing without my trying to prop it open. I leave with some fond memories, and deep wonderment as to what will happen with these children during the next 5 or 10 years. After you’ve been around a little person every weekday for 10 months, they do become part of your existence. One of the mysteries I have long held is how teachers manage to say goodbye, on an annual basis, to students who have touched their hearts in special ways.
Pretty soon I will no longer be worrying about keeping peace and reminding children to wash their hands and be quiet at prayer time. Something very basic will be gone from my life, but hopefully they will have acquired those basics for themselves. It’s been fun in its way, but there comes a time to move on to what’s next in store. Hopefully it will be just as interesting and smile-producing…
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