Idea for kindergarten mother day gift

The forging ofa sense of identify is never finished. Instead, it feels like catching one's image reflected in a mirror next to a carousel-`Here I am again.'

--Catherine Bateson, Composing a Life, p. 219.

I actually remember when it started. Well, not the exact date, but certainly the exact event. She was sitting at the dining room table after dinner, her legs curled up under her in that peculiar way she has of making herself taller while seated, hunched over student papers. I was coming from the kitchen and was caught by the light on her hair and the intensity of her posture. I watched her from the corner of the room, clearly in her sight, but not seen. She was reading some assignment the fifth graders in her first student teaching classroom had completed. Absorbed in her work, she smiled at one paper as she marked something on it, bit her lip as she looked at another, frowned as she re-read another. She continued like this through the pile of papers in front of her, completely engrossed in this task that perhaps seemed like the mark of a "teacher." Finally, she sat back and looked up to find me watching her. "Look at this," she said, as she held out a paper for me to see. "This is one of the students I told you was having such a hard time with his math problems the other day. Look how well he did on this!"

She had been working after college graduation for three years when she called one day and said, "I want to be a teacher, and I want to come back to Oxy for my credential." I protested her attendance at the teacher education program where I taught, reminding her of how close we were and telling her I didn't think it was a good idea for her to do this. I felt she needed to be away from me as she pursued this long-standing (she says 'genetic'), but heretofore repressed, longing to teach. Besides, she had been living on her own for three years and the return to living with her parents might be challenging for all of us. Uncharacteristically, she rejected my advice and insisted on applying to our program. As things turned out, I wonder why I questioned her judgement.

What a gift this has been for me to watch my daughter become a teacher! Not only did I observe first-hand her progress through the professional preparation program, I also have been an invited participant and sometimes co-teacher in her classrooms. And as I watched, I began to write. At first, I just wrote occasionally in my own journal about my reaction to her experiences. That first night with the papers, for instance, or my private expressions of concern over her well-being as she struggled to learn how to "control" those same fifth graders. But gradually I noticed that my entries changed in two ways: I started to write stories, and I started to reflect on my own teaching as a result of thinking about my daughter's teaching. I began to think seriously about the teacher education program in which I taught as I closely observed its impact on a very conscientious student. Then later, as she invited me to her own classrooms, I pondered the relationship of the personal and the professional in our teaching lives. When the "Lives of Teachers" Special Interest Group of the California Council on the Education of Teachers was formed, I became an interested participant. Heather also began writing, and we occasionally shared our separate stories with each other. Most of what we write is very personal, for it has become a significant self-reflective tool for us, not just of our teaching, but of our lives. This story is from the collection written during her third year of teaching first grade, with names and details changed to protect the identify of her students and to allow us to share it with an audience.

"Mrs. Rae, you look older!"

This year, it's been Andrew. Cute, blond, little, smart, privileged, verbal, antsy. Early in the school year we connected during one ofmy classroom visits when I went to his desk, knelt down to his level, and had him "read" his book to me. Quickly, he asked me to read to him, which I did, wondering as I did what Ms. McCormick would think about this variation on super silent reading. Rationalizing, I told myself he was better engaged this way and others around us were attentive to my whispered story-telling. And Andrew knew I liked him. And he liked me.

Throughout the year his had been the most prominent among the names recited by my daughter as she sighed in exasperation during the telling of a tale of lessons gone awry, of table points' failure to motivate expected classroom behavior, of children continuing to need reminders from her.

"But he is so bright and skilled," I'd answer. "He needs to be challenged academically. He's bored."

"He's Andrew," she'd answer me.

During a later visit I made to the classroom, he could hardly wait for his group to circulate to my center where I was working with the children on word families in reading and spelling by having them read and write words on their white boards. Sitting beside me at the round table, after scurrying just short of running to the table, he peered into my face with a serious expression on his. "Mrs. Rae, you look older."

"Older!" I replied, laughing, but thinking to myself, Older than what? Older than Heather? Older than before? Has my hair turned grayer? "Well, Andrew, I am older than I was the last time I saw you." Still frowning, he continued to peer at me. "I don't feel any older, though." I catch Heather's eye across the room and laugh with her at this honest burst of observation from one of her challenges.

On the day in question, we're going to the local Performing Arts Center for a special performance by the symphony. Heather's school participates in a program that sends a member of the symphony orchestra to each school, educates teachers about music so they in turn can educate their students, and provides a culminating field trip to the concert hall for a performance. This will be the second year I have attended with her class, acting as a room mother, riding the bus, shepherding my group of four or five students. This year the theme has been Tchaikovsky, and the performance will turn out to be wonderful.

But, first we have to get there. Heather is in charge of the buses for her school, so shortly after the children arrive for the day and are settled at their seats during super silent reading, she leaves me in charge so she can oversee the arrival of the buses and the distribution of classes to their assigned places. I am aware of how immediately my self-perception changes as I move to the front of the room from my customary position on the sidelines. What is this? I wonder, aware of my heightened attention to children's behavior. Is Amanda talking to her table mate or just reading to herself Why is Edgar fidgeting? Oh-oh, there goes Joan out of her chair. It's as if the hairs on the back ofmy neck are erect; I know my posture has changed. What does my face look like? Where is my smile?

I tell them I will read a story to them while we are waiting. I take one from the chalk tray to read and immediately am greeted by choruses of "We've already read that one." Knowing that as soon as I'd put it down and picked up another, they'd say the same thing, I say, "That's ok. It's a good book, so we'll read it again. If you prefer to continue reading your own, you may do so. But I'll read this one." I begin reading and immediately realize that there is a good reason why I tell my students in the credential program to always preview what you are going to read or show to students so you are well-prepared for how to use the material. The book is not good; it's laborious, wordy, uninteresting. Since I don't know where it is headed, I don't know how to skip some parts and liven it up. I feel the class slipping away. And I feel the frown on my face and the tension in my body. Ariana and Michelle go to the library corner in the back of the room to read. I watch them and confirm my approval of this through a nod and smile. But then, they begin to talk and fidget and push and pull at each other. "Ariana and Michelle," I interrupt my uninspired oral reading to say," you may sit there if you are reading quietly." I gamely continue reading, picturing at the same time my exhortations to the students in my reading methods class to "make the literature come alive with your enthusiasm..." Fortunately, Heather returns to announce that it is time to get on the bus.

We are the third class to board this bus. As luck would have it, I'm seated next to Andrew and Sam. We settle in. Heather leaves to check on the other buses, returns to announce that some of us have to go to another bus, and calls the names of about half of her class, indicating they are to go with her. She says to me, "Sorry to leave you like this. Are you ok?" "Sure," I say, squirming with anticipation of the return to a real teacher role. I'm to be in charge of this half of her class.