Yesterday was the third-to-last day of my aunt's school year. (This is the aunt who teaches kindergarten and for whom I did classroom work for most of the school year.) She had told me earlier about how her students were feeling about the end of the school year. Specifically, they were not feeling good about it. They had their anxieties about leaving their classroom and their teacher, and one of them was actually crying, saying, "I don't want this year to end!"
Last year, I had gone through a similar experience (although mine was less "leaving my first-ever year of compulsory education and entering into a strange new First Grade experience" and more "leaving my last-ever year of compulsory education, plus the school that had been the only place I ever felt truly comfortable and happy in my whole life and entering into a strange new college experience"). I thought it would be the right thing, then, to give them a little speech to help them through what would be a nerve-inducing time. What I said was something along the lines of this:
"Kids, have any of you heard of the word 'transition'? It means 'the time when you're changing from one thing to another'. You're all going to go through a time of transition really soon. You're transitioning from kindergarten from first grade. It doesn't help that you're losing most of the things from kindergarten, and it doesn't help that you have no way of knowing what first grade's going to be like, and it really doesn't help that you're going to spend the next three months away from school and doing something totally different from school.
"But even though you're losing a lot of things, you're going to gain something. You're going to gain first grade. You did a lot of awesome kindergarten things, but now you're getting a little older and going to do awesome first grade things. And most of you are going to be in the same classroom, too, so you'll basically all be doing the awesome first grade things together. You're saying goodbye to your classroom and to your teacher, but you'll get another cool classroom and teacher, and you can even sometimes come and say hi to this classroom and teacher.
"You're saying goodbye, but you're also going to be saying hello. Hello to other kids and another teacher and other lessons. That's kind of what life is. Saying goodbye, and saying hello again after."
The kids liked it pretty well, and so did their teacher. So did I. I thought those were pretty good words to say, and I'm glad someone said that to the kids. I think that if more people said things like that to kids and if they didn't have to figure this out entirely on their own, kids might grow up to be slightly better-adjusted individuals. I think a lot of adults could benefit from remembering this, too. Life is saying goodbye, and saying hello again after.
No comments:
Post a Comment