unconditional love of kindergartners

My supervising teacher has been absent the past three days on account of attending an education conference in Argentina. This left me in the teacher position and the classroom aid to help as needed. My teacher made sure I was well-prepared before leaving but even so, I'm exhausted. Students are much louder here overall than students in the United States and being loud enough to get their attention when necessary has left me with the raspy remains of a voice. I guess I'm out of practice.

Great things
I did a "touch" science lesson all by myself on Thursday that went exceptionally well. I let them touch ice and noodles and describe them, then I went to each group and allowed them to play with "oobleck." Oobleck is the cornstarch and water mixture that baffles many including myself and my kindergartners. They loved it. They were also surprisingly well-behaved and came up with some killer descriptions.

One of my students brought in a book he wrote and asked me to read it to the class. He hands me some haphazardly stapled together pieces of printer paper accompanied with a slightly confusing story line. Needless to say, I was overjoyed to see a little one as shy as this guy so excited to share some literature he created. I read it to the class with extra expression and enthusiasm. When I finished, I suggested that we thank our friend for sharing. To my delight, the students enclosed him in a giant group hug while yelling "thank you!" and "what a good story!" So sweet.

Not so good thing
Yesterday, while the classroom assistant was at lunch I had to take the students to gym. Here's how it went.

1. Line kids up
2. Go to gym
3. See another class going into gym
4. Assumed I misread the schedule
5. Get embarrassed
6. March back to classroom
7. Realize our schedule says I was there at the correct time
8. Line kids up
9. Go to gym
10. See class in the gym
11. Teacher of said class tells me I have the wrong time
12. Back to the classroom

For the record, I had the right time, but the kids had no clue. All they knew is that I dragged them all over the school and they didn't get to go to gym class.

Here's where the unconditional love comes in.
I sat them down after this fiasco and had a little talk with them. I explained that everyone makes mistakes, even teachers, and Miss Nar made a mistake today. I apologized and asked if they would forgive me.

They said yes. Not even just that, they did their best in their little munchkin way of making me feel better. A chorus of "it's okay" "we can just stay in the classroom instead of going to P.E." and "don't worry Miss Nar, it's not a big deal" rose from the class.

So here's what I'm getting at. One of the beautiful things about kindergartners in my opinion is that they love unconditionally. It doesn't matter if I had to give them a stern talking-to 3 minutes earlier, if I sit down on a chair anywhere near them they're going to crawl up onto my lap and put their arms around my neck. Or in this case, even if in their mind I am the villain who stole their gym class from them they see my distress and do their best to make me feel better. It's really a beautiful thing.

One last thing on that note, I was stopped by a parent of one of the students who was giving me the most trouble over the past few days.
"Oh boy," I thought.
"Thank you for helping while Ms. Malouk was gone," she said "My daughter talks about you a lot. She says you're a great teacher."

Heart, melted.