Falling in Love After Cancer

Falling in Love after cancer, or how I have fallen in love with life again. One of the rekindled loves in my life is teaching kindergarten. The past couple of weeks have brought an enormous learning curve. Who would have thought teaching five year olds could be such a challenge and joy? or so comical?

The first few weeks of kinder are grueling because almost all school behaviors are utterly unknown to these five year old people. Their well-developed sense of justice consumes an enormous amount of time with just listening to complaints about who said or did what unkind thing. However, now that we have a few weeks of experience with one another, I have begun to know them as individuals and that has made all the difference in the world in how we relate to one another. I know, amazingly, they sound just like big people!

I still marvel that a small piece of lint or tiny insect could utterly derail a lesson by capturing the attention of a third of the class in a matter of seconds, but I am also learning to use that short attention span to my advantage. It is amazing how an upset and inconsolable child can be readily redirected to examine a new project or something fun that might be more important than the current tragedy, (known to most of the rest of the world as a tempest in a teapot.)

Their joy in the simple everyday things never grows old. The excitement over a new pair of shoes or joy in learning to hold a pencil by pinching the pencil and resting it on the third finger. Today, the excitement of a student’s success with “pinch and rest” was only momentarily eclipsed by the sight of the pencil tip pointing away from the writing surface. A quick intervention and reteach righted the pencil and the student moved on to the task of learning to write his name. Since the first day of school, this student has told me he doesn’t know how to write his name. So, a couple of days ago, we began learning a letter that appeared in his name twice and he had already learned a third letter. That meant only two letters were unknown.

With great pride and enthusiasm, this student quickly learned the remaining two letters, wrote his name on a practice sheet, and proudly told me when he was done. Recognizing his excitement in the nice job he had done, I dashed off a note to the parents at the top of his name page explaining him learning the “pinch and rest” and then writing his name. Needless to say, it was an exciting moment. Heady stuff for the person teaching him to do it!

There are some little things about kindergarten that are equally satisfying. Even though most of my students are emerging literates, they love to draw a picture and write, (or wribble – scribble write) to communicate information or a story. Happily, not one of the students thinks she is unable to write. They are using the letter and sounds I have taught them to write unknown “words.” One student showed a string of letters on a page. As I reviewed the student’s writing with a fellow teacher, I noticed that all but one of the letters were letters I had taught in class. Again, I was ecstatic to see that my actions had direct, positive impact on my young student’s life. This could become addicting!

Whether teaching someone to hold a pencil and write a first name or watching the excitement on the face of someone who just learned the sounds we say can be represented by written symbols and communicated to others, it is gratifying to be part of such a miraculous process!

Falling in love after cancer is kind of like being a kindergartner all over again: it’s the seemingly small things that grab me!