The Whole Picture

Hello Everyone,

Last week, I had one of the most frustrating hours of work I’ve experienced since starting at the preschool, as well as one of the more important life lessons I’ve been given recently.  

A little background: I teach in the three-year-old class, which means that throughout the year, I get to watch some of the biggest transformations that happen in people.  Children can go from being quasi-verbal to being able to articulate themselves in full, complicated sentences.  They can go from having accidents multiple times a day to being able to regulate themselves without thinking about it.  They develop real friendships for the first time in their lives, and they are constantly discovering the world around them.  In a single day, they can go from being a total novice to being a total expert about a particular subject, whether it’s a spider they have found, or a story we are reading.  After all of the developments that happened over the course of last year, our new children this year feel like babies!  Most of them are at school and away from their parents for the first time, and have never been asked to do things like line up or pour their own milk, or sit quietly while their friend shares something at Circle Time.  But as I was reminded last week, they are already picking up on a lot.

My co-teacher was on her lunch break, and I was in charge of transitioning the kids from lunch time to nap time.  After lunch, we try to have several different types of “table toys” available to the kids.  These are small, manipulative toys which children can play with at the table.  This is intended to be a relatively quiet, focused time, when children can develop abilities such as sorting according to color, size, shape, or they can strengthen their memory, or their ability to understand opposites.  One of the options I’d put out for the children was a tub of colored milk jug lids which about half of the students were sorting according to color.  It was going exactly as I’d intended, and I was even hearing things like, “I’ll give you my blue one and you can give me your orange one!”  [In case you have not worked with young children, know that such expressions of cooperation are to a preschool teacher what crossing the finish line is to a marathon runner.]

I turned away briefly (yes, yes, I realize this was my mistake!) to talk with a parent who was picking up her child, and when I turned back, let’s just say I was given a chance to understand opposites.  The classroom was in complete chaos.  It was miraculous, really, how quickly all semblance of order had disintegrated.  The children who had been sorting were now throwing all of the caps into the air with wild abandon, confetti-style.  The children who had been using different table toys around the room had caught on and were throwing their toys up in the air too.  

This was annoying, especially since we needed to start getting the cots out for nap time, which we couldn’t do until the floor was clear, but this was nothing I hadn’t experienced before.  I announced that it was time to get our classroom ready for nap time, and set about trying to realize said announcement.  However, in the next twenty minutes, several things happened which thwarted my efforts:

1.) None of the children (most of whom have not yet transitioned into the phase where they follow instructions they don’t care for) actually listened to me at all.  Eventually, I was able to get a few of the more seasoned preschoolers on board, but the mess was so widespread, their efforts did not make a big dent.

2.) Several more parents came to pick up children, and though we had good interactions, it negated any progress we’d made on cleaning up.

3.) One child decided that his role in the cleaning up process was to go around and empty out each bin of toys (presumably to give the other children something to put away?  “Simba, let me explain.  When we make a mess, our mess becomes the mess that the other children have to clean up, and so we are all connected in the great Circle of Preschool Life.”).

4.) Another child, who is still getting used to the idea of being away from her parents all day, had her daily meltdown which she exhibited by following me around as though attached to me by a one-foot long tether, wailing, “Miss Sarah! Miss Sarah! I want to go HOOOOMMME!!!”  She was utterly inconsolable, and at one point, I turned to her and said, “I do too!”

5.) We found a giant spider (about two inches) right by the nap time cubbies, and I had to capture it and release it outside.  I’m not the world’s biggest spider fan in the best of circumstances (“the best of circumstances” in this case being when I am far, far away from any spiders), but this was not a welcome addition to my morning.

Eventually, of course, it all got sorted out, but needless to say, when my co-teacher came back from her break, the children were not all sleeping peacefully, and I was not in the most gracious of moods.

The next day, one of the girls who had instigated the Mardi Gras-like atmosphere asked if we could get the milk jug lids down again.  I told her we could, but only if they stayed on the table.  At this point, Annie (who for reasons none of us understand, has a Bostonian accent) piped up:

“But who will be the ped-lah?”

“Sorry, what?” I asked.

“Who will be the ped-lah?”

“The ped-lah?”  I repeated.  “The peddler?”

“Yes.”

There followed a pause that lasted for about twenty seconds as I figured out why she knew the word “peddler” and what that had to do with our table toys.  Gradually, it dawned on me.

“Annie,” I said slowly, “Are you talking about the peddler in Caps For Sale?”  Caps For Sale is currently one of our favorite picture books to read, and it involves a peddler whose hats disappear when he takes a nap under a tree.  

After looking all around him, he finally looks up and sees that a bunch of monkeys have taken the hats.  The peddler then tricks the monkeys into throwing the hats to the ground so he can recover them.

“Yes,” she said.  

“Annie,” I said.  “When you and the other children were throwing the milk jug lids into the air yesterday, were you being the monkeys from Caps For Sale?”

“Yes,” she said, as though this were as obvious as the fact that nap time is not for sleeping.

“Ah,” I said.

And with that conversation, I’d stumbled upon the rest of a picture I didn’t even know was incomplete.  I was no longer angry or frustrated about the day before.  In fact, I wished I’d known about the reenactment at the time so that I could have taken a photo!

One thing this exchange taught me, which I sincerely hope the children (or any nearby spiders) did not pick up on is that it can be quite easy to distract me when I’m upset:

Me: “I’m frustrated and angry!”

Children: “But books!”

Me: “Oh, that’s true.  Never mind!”

But a much more important lesson was that while my new knowledge wouldn’t have solved what seemed to be a perfect storm of problems the day before, it did remind me that my view is incredibly limited.  So often, I don’t remember that there is usually more to a given situation than I know, and that if I did know the whole story, I might feel completely differently about the situation.  If I don’t remember to ask questions, or look more carefully, or simply to just be patient with people as they figure themselves out, I will certainly miss out on the bigger picture.

If I don’t look up, I won’t see the monkeys in the tree.

Have a good week!

Sarah/Mouse