“I’m five years old and I could be a better teacher...”

Being a younger sister, I couldn’t wait to finally be able to go to kindergarten. I had heard countless tales of how magical school was because supposedly your teachers take you on amazing adventures all day. The rumor was you spend the day learning, playing, laughing, and making new friends. What could be better? Who wouldn’t want to go? I was pumped. The anticipation was over, I was finally about to be a real kindergartener! 

Lies. All lies. 

Sadly, my kindergarten experience was dreadful. Being the smallest kid in the class didn’t help my chances of surviving the chaos that I was living in five days a week. My social ranking in the class quickly became “Frightful Franny’s Rag Doll”. Frightful Franny would literally drag me around the classroom on my butt forcing me to play with her like I was her rag doll. I was not impressed with my new school life. I have vivid memories of trying to escape her, but wherever I went she would find me. There are only so many places to hide in a classroom and clearly I was lacking essential self defense skills. Quickly I realized my evil kindergarten teacher, Mrs. V who must have had checked out of her job at least a decade before, was not going to save me from my misery. 

With streams of tears cascading down my cheeks on the way home from school, in a confident and stubborn voice I declared to my mom, “I’m five years old and I could be a better teacher!”. My mother being the lovable ball buster of a woman that she is said, “I’m sure you can be, so go become one”. 

That one thought... 

     lead to that one statement...

          that lead to an idea that would forever live in my mind...

              I will be a better teacher. 

Unlike most kids, I hung on to that dream throughout my entire childhood. I was able to survive my kindergarten year with evil Mrs. V after my principal switched me out of Frightful Franny’s class due to the bullying. Fortunately, my luck began to change in first grade. I had a gem of a teacher who I will call “Magical Mrs. S”. She was truly magical. That year, Magical Mrs. S not only taught me how to read, but she even inspired me to fall in love with writing. Best of all, I stopped being seen as a rag doll and was finally seen as a human being again. Life was good. 

As the years went on, most days my parents would ask the age old question, “Honey, what did you learn at school today?”. There started to be an obvious pattern to my responses. My comments were rarely about the content. Instead, it became evident that I was spending all my school days critiquing my teacher’s teaching styles. No joke. Looking back, I am able to admit now that I was probably a bit of an odd kid. At that time, I thought it was what every kid did during the school day. I would make statements like, “My teacher needs to work on her time management skills… she sure didn’t explain the directions enough… Mrs. Z knows we aren’t robots so she let’s us dance to Elvis music when she can tell we are getting antsy”. My list of critiques went on and on, day after day, year after year. In true rock solid parenting form they kept pushing, “But what are you learning?”. My reply would always be the same, “I’m learning how to be a better teacher”. 

I have created this blog in an attempt to keep pushing myself to become a better teacher. As I’m sure all of you other teachers have come to realize, the truth is we can always do better. At the end of the day we all hope to be a “Magical Mrs. S” versus  an “Evil Mrs. V”. My hope is we can inspire each other along the way of living life as a teacher and attempting to live life as a balanced human being.