Goodmorning, Little Schoolgirl, The Grateful Dead

Everything I need to know, I learned in kindergarten.  The cliché statement holds a grain of truth, as all clichés tend to do.  What life skills did we learn, all the way back in time, that we still use today?  How much of what we learned later on is only built upon the groundwork laid in kindergarten?  Where would we be if we lost all the lessons we learned then?

I learned to read and to write in kindergarten.  What do I still do, almost twenty years later?  I read, I write, I share the memories and thoughts through words, images.  I gave up attempts to color within the lines long ago but still paint pictures in other ways.  I learned how to express myself these ways, asking questions, looking for the answers.  Asking what words, expressions and thoughts mean.  How to share, both physically and emotionally.  Empathy – although that truly comes at a later time.  Everything important, I learned in kindergarten.

Sitting in Panamanian classrooms, I watch children in third and fourth grades, unsure of how to read.  I watch teachers call out special needs children, calling them stupid in front of the grade.  I ask children what they do in school each day, both as an analysis tool and as a way to bond with them.  “Nothing,” they reply often.  Or with one word subjects.  “Math”, or “Social Studies”.  Their answers are unspecific, unsure and often, unlearned.  I asked a kindergartener, a grandson of a friend who lives off the island, what they teach him in kindergarten.  He replies, colors, shapes.  He colors a lot and his favorite color is all of them.  Other than green.  He hates green.  He has not learned to read nor write.  His teacher is mean; she tells them to play then yells at them.

I don’t want to be a teacher.  I never really wanted to.  I want to even less as I observe these classrooms, have the teachers ask me to teach English.  They allow me to teach brief lessons on turtles, recycling and other natural science topics.  But what they really want me to do, what they only want me to do, is teach English.  Seeing how school goes here, how they teach, how much they would have me do, I say no, I put it off, I avoid.  But you can only avoid for so long before you have to do something drastic.

Everything I need to know, I learned in kindergarten.  But what if my kindergarten was like kindergarten here?  What if I hadn’t learned to read before even entering?  What if I never had the opportunities I have had?  Where would I be?  More importantly, who would I be?

I see smart kids get called stupid for getting one part of a question wrong.  The teachers say it is to encourage them to do better next time.  Everything I need to know, I learned in kindergarten.  Does being mean to someone make them like you?  Does being mean get you what you want?  How would I teach these classes if they were mine?  I wouldn’t.  I wouldn’t, not because I do not think the children are worth it – they are – but because I can’t.  I don’t know how.  I do not want to be a teacher, because of what I learned in kindergarten.