Giving thanks to the little ones

Last week was the beginning of yet another school year. This was something like my seventeenth year to be starting September in a public school. But this was only my second time to start the year in kindergarten and the first was when I was four, so it's a little different this go around.

I'm a learning consultant at a school in a neighboring city and I really like what I do. I work with the kids in a kindergarten classroom three hours of every school day. It gets me out of the house, and more importantly, out of my head for a good portion of every workday. For writers, I think sometimes there's nothing more valuable than living life in order to then write about life.

I've learned a lot about wee ones in my two weeks at school and I've learned some things about myself. I've figured out that maybe I really could try my hand at improv since I've been doing it every day in front of a very live(ly) audience. Not to put you on the spot or anything but can you recite the Pledge of Allegiance right now? While simultaneously teaching children their right from their left hand? While telling a child to stand up and another to be quiet and yet another to please stop crying? While watching to make sure the parents get the lunch card in the right container? While making sure no one runs away to find find mommy? While also thinking about how to fill the next five very very long minutes before the teacher comes back? And that's just in the first two minutes of the day.

I am constantly amazed by the teachers I work with. To do what they do, every day for way more hours than I am there, for years and years, takes a very special talent and skill set. To be perfectly at ease with food coloring and Karo syrup in front of little ones, to be just as comfortable conversing with parents as with toddlers. To be calm enough to go with the flow no matter what yet completely organized within an inch of their lives. It's a gift they have.

I'm having fun. I'm getting hugs and little hands weaved into mine every day. I'm getting to give and receive smiles, to wipe away tears, to laugh and to learn, to sing and to dance and to stretch and to sit on the floor. I'm getting to live life as only a five year old can, only thinking about the moment. Only thinking about the immediate future. And for that, for all kindergarten is giving me, I am so thankful.