I Heart Kindergarten

I really love kindergartners. Maybe it's because my kid is one. Maybe next year I'll think kindergartners are nothing but a bunch of snot-nosed brats and that first graders are sweet buttercups of the earth. But the more I substitute in my son's class--and the afternoon class that follows him--the more I adore them.

I see them in four tiers. There are the kids I really love, the kids that I like just fine, the kids I sometimes struggle with and the kids that drive me right up to the edge of my own sanity. Thankfully, out of 41 students, only a handful of them fall into that last category. Yesterday, one of them, the one who is probably my least favorite of all because he cries and gets into some kind of catastrophic fight at least once every time I sub, told me twice that he loves me.

And, honestly, even when I'm not particularly fond of a kid, if he tells me he loves me, I'm apt to start thinking more positively about him.

This is not my advice to dating teenagers, however. In that case, use some discernment.

But, really. I *heart* kindergartners. It's maybe possible that I missed my calling in life which was actually to play with five-year-olds all day. To listen to their laughter, to read them stories in funny voices and listen to them giggle in all the right places, to sing songs and wait, patiently, as they tell a three minute story that has nothing to do with anything and could have been told in twenty seconds.

This might be bliss.

But bliss would require a degree that I have basically no transferable course work for which is altogether ridiculous because THEATRE. Theatre is what enabled me to read stories in funny voices. And I've been told by more than just one or two kids that I'm the best story reader...OF EVER. I'm not bragging on myself here, folks, I'm just making the statement that a degree in theatre should totally get me hired as a kindergarten teacher.

Although, sadly, I do not think the district would agree.

Which is probably for the best because, like I said, next year I might think kindergartners are just a bunch of germ infested little pests.