Don't Worry About a Thing... And Other Life Lessons Learned In Preschool

June is a tricky month when you are a teacher, particularly of four-year-olds who will go on to kindergarten in the fall. All year long, it seems that June will never come. Some days, it seems that 1:00 will never come! And then, less timidly than September and with less fanfare then December, and hardly as subtly as March, June arrives and with it, Graduation Day. These bright and longing faces that walked into my classroom in September with combed back hair and sparkly shoes, with shiny backpacks and freshly creased pants are preparing to walk out my door and into the World. June, you did it again! Here you are and these kids are all seemingly a foot taller. Some have lost teeth. Some have gotten glasses. Their hair is a little more wild, their sparkly shoes a little worn for the wear. Those shiny backpacks are faded and wrinkled; those freshly creased pants no longer even reach their ankles. In many ways, nothing will change. Many of these kids will still come back to school come Monday morning when camp begins. And with my pending nuptials, I'll be leaving that classroom a bit before they do. But some things did change. Some of them are barely palpable and some of them tug at my heartstrings because in this year of teaching, more perhaps than in any other, I changed.
I walked into my classroom in September with combed back hair, sparkly shoes and a Muppet backpack.  (Later that month, a small school bus pulled to the side of the downtown sidewalk where I was awaiting the city bus and asked if I was the little girl who was supposed to be taken to a local elementary school; I promptly swapped the Muppet backpack for a tote and purse instead.) I walked in with all the confidence in the world, ready to teach my students. This was, after all, my dream job: an integrated classroom with a play-based curriculum in a Jewish school. In the end, however, it is my students who taught me. They taught me how to learn, how to play, how to love and how to forgive. They taught me how to fall and how to cry. They taught me how to feel and how to have hope that truly springs eternal. And this came in phases. There were lessons learned in the classroom, lessons learned in the hallway, and lessons learned on the playground. They are lessons I shall carry near to me as I continue my career in whatever realm that will be and they are lessons I shall carry dear to me when, G-d willing, I become a parent myself. My co-teachers and fellow staff, too, were invaluable in these lessons and became like family.

Today as I cleaned out and set up my classroom for camp, I could smell the change in the air. Something about the emptiness and the humidity of June just felt so disorienting, but at the same time so familiar. And it really hit home today that everything I've ever learned in life, I learned in preschool. It began in 1987 in my own preschool classroom at a synagogue down the street from the one where I now teach, and it continued 25 years later in this one with many other classrooms along the way. I could never adequately convey it all in one blog post, but here are some highlights:

Stop Talking! I talk a lot. A lot! Having a severe ear infection this year was one of the greatest gifts-in-disguise I ever received. For over a month I was in severe pain and my right ear was literally draining. I tried 3 rounds of antibiotics before the infection finally cleared, but my hearing didn't fully restore for four months. I was embarrassed to admit it, but for about a month and half, I really could hear almost nothing out of my right ear. All of a sudden, unless a child was looking at me and speaking toward my left, I missed entirely what he or she had said. I came to understand for a child with a processing delay how much time it actually takes to decipher and decode what a teacher is saying. I learned to slow down and leave space because the children had to do this now for me. It caused me anxiety especially at first. I felt frustrated and embarrassed when I had to ask people to repeat themselves one or even several times. Now, the anxiety, frustration and embarrassment the children felt when they couldn't respond to a directive right away made a lot more sense. In not being able to hear, I learned not to talk. I learned that the moments when my voice would want to be loud are the moments when my voice should become quiet. I learned to say less and to listen more.


That's It, I'm Going Home! It was my first day when I followed a student out of the room to his cubby as he put on his backpack, grabbed his lunch box and proceeded toward the front exit. "That's it, I'm going home!" he announced. How many times in my life have I felt that? How many times have I actually said it?! We've all felt that way. Done. Just done. And there really is no place like home. But what I learned from my students and from 11 places I called home in the last 28 years and soon to be 12, G-d willing, is that home is not a location. It's not a physical place and I don't need to go anywhere to be there. Home is a state of mind and a state of being. And everything I need is in the faces and the places around me.

You can pick your nose. you can pick your friends, AND you can pick your friends' nose. Ok, that one is pretty self explanatory. But my students taught me a lot about friendship, boogers and all. Together we learned that you have to be a friend to have a friend. And when I really think about it, this is true of all relationships. Even building the bond and connection between a husband and wife is not so dissimilar to the very basic foundations we learn about relating to one another as preschoolers. We must be confident enough in our individuality to be sensitive to that confidence in the other. We must be willing to share, and when we're not, able to take some space. We might not all like the same things, but we do like enough of the same things and even in preschool we can begin to appreciate that the common ground between us all is always of greater importance than the distance between things that make us different.

It's not too hard, you CAN do it, and it's OK to ask for help. About a month after the shine and sparkle of new shoes and backpacks began to fade, so did my confidence. I began to wonder if my supervisor realized how unqualified I really was for this position. I mean, did anyone even read my resume? I started to feel like an impostor. Sure, I was taller than the kids, so by process of elimination that would make me the teacher, but I had no clue what I was doing. For the first three months of school, I would be so nervous leading circle time I'd begin to sweat profusely. I stood in utter awe of my co-teacher who has significantly more experience and education than I do. She resonated calm and remained centered and always seemed to know what to do. I wondered if anyone picked up on the fact that I was totally winging it. And then I realized that success in this classroom would be measured differently than success in my previous classroom and differently still than success will be measured in classrooms to come. I told myself each morning as the city bus entered the parking lot to the building next door to the school that I would find moments of success. And I did. More and more and more. Moments,  minutes, hours and now, in my eyes, truly a year of success. The fact of the matter is that, like kids, success comes in many shapes, sizes and shades of joy. No task put in front of us is too hard to accomplish. I CAN do what I set my mind to. But if and when it feels too hard, again I take a cue from my students. It's OK to ask for help. It's OK not to know everything when you begin, because that is precisely why we are here; to learn, build, and grow together. And I am pleased to say that even though I lost 25lbs after a few months of unplanned runs down the school hallway, I definitely grew a lot!

Everybody Gets Mad, and Sad, and Scared. My worst day ever was my best one as well. I think it happens to every teacher at one point or another and for me, it happened in February of this year. It was one of those days where for better or for worse, I was not feeling my best. I was tired. I'd just returned from a trip to see my now-fiance, and goodbyes were not easy even then. I was assisting a student who was upset to calm down and in the midst of it, without actually intending to hurt me, he got me right in the jaw. My eyes welled with tears initially from the impact or maybe the surprise, but before I knew it, my emotions caught up. I was about to cry. I was mortified. Not at getting hit, but rather that in that moment I couldn't help this kid, I couldn't help my other students and what was worse, I couldn't help myself and I was crying. I tag-teamed with another teacher; have I mentioned how priceless my co-staff are?? And I did what all mature, sophisticated, educated teachers do in a moment like this: I cried in the closet. Another teacher was able to help the student who was upset immediately; we both needed a change of scenery in that moment--sometimes everybody just gets stuck! But he was worried. Worried I was mad. Worried I would leave. I know that worry well--that gut-wrenching fear that you finally spilled one glass of milk too many and all the love and tolerance has run out like milk across the table. So I faced my fear of being seen in a state of vulnerability in favor of educational opportunity. I sat next to him and said very simply: "See? Everybody gets upset sometimes. Even teachers get mad and sad and scared and we cry and it's ok. We just need to ask for help, that's all we need to do." And I say it again and again to myself and to my students: we just need to ask for help. And that's all we need to do.

Something Different. One of the most challenging lessons to learn in preschool and in grade school and in college and in life is how to cope in the face of change. We live and thrive on routine in a world that is subject to constant fluctuation. Children are amazing. They feel their emotions and express them at full intensity. And in that, they let go; they move on. Somewhere along the line we are told or come to perceive that this full-intensity display is not OK and we learn instead and to our detriment that we must stifle our feelings and our reactions. Instead of that good 20 minute tantrum, we sit on 20 year grudges and cling to 20 year pains. We hold so tightly to what we can control because we are fearful of how much we cannot control. And things come and go. People come and go. Excitement about change can feel funny inside of us. We want to wiggle and move and make a lot of noise and instead we're told to be still and stay quiet. It's in those moments that I learned right along with my students that things do change. Sometimes things are different. Sometimes we don't know what will come, and that's hard. One student said it best: "I don't like not knowing." In those moments, I help them and help myself look for the things that are the same. The things that are always within and around us. Even when something is different, we still have everything we need.

It's hard to wait. Ever been a four year old in the late spring on a playground where the sprinklers are being tested and the teachers say you can't go in? It's hard to wait. One student in this situation said to me "They should just turn off the sprinkler so friends don't have to look at it and want to go inside." I could not agree more. Ever been a four year old waiting for her turn at a game or with a toy or on the computer? Or the four year old waiting for his mommy to come at the end of the day when the other kids  have already left?  Or the four year old waiting for lunch? It's hard to wait. And the fact of that matter is, we spend a lot of our lives waiting. We have ample opportunities to practice waiting in line, and on the phone, and for a test result or for our wedding day.... It's still hard to wait!  Too many times, the temptation stares us right in the face like that sprinkler on a sunny day when we're not allowed to get wet. And the same things that worked more or less when we were four work now to get us through the time and the distance. We distract ourselves, we change scenery or activity, and sometimes, it helps just to say it and get it out there: it's hard to wait.

These are all important and meaningful life lessons. I take away from preschool today very much the same things I took away from it as a preschooler myself 25 years ago. One of our very favorite children's book characters is Pete the Cat. He is notorious for having all kinds of potentially frightening and challenging adventures or misadventures, but does he worry or cry or get upset? Goodness, no, because it's all good! And the most important thing I would hope I taught my students, the most important thing I know they taught me is this: don't worry about a thing, everything is going to be alright.

We played the following song this morning as the students paraded into the room for our graduation ceremony. When we were first dating, my soon-to-be-husband sent me a clip of the original version. In a beautiful, simple and poignant nutshell, it reminds me again and again of preschool's--of life's most valuable lesson.