Are you excited for kindergarten?

Yes, I am. Back on August 4, my friend Katied from Creative Literacy asked me this question in the comment section. It's taken me over two months to reply. Not because I was being rude or ignoring her, I just didn't know how to answer it. I felt a lot of uncertainty when she asked this question. Uncertainty about the set up of my room, rearranging my classroom library, gathering and organizing math manipulatives, organizing two classes and figuring out a daily schedule. The uncertainty is much smaller now. Now, it's related to things that come with change. As we all know, change is good and change is making me think about new things, in new ways and old things in a new way.

To answer Katied, yes I'm excited now that I'm in the trenches but more so after two small events last week. E and I were having a writing conference over a story he had written in his Drawing and Writing Notebook, at first I saw a group of stick figures gathered together and his name was written in a speech bubble. E says, "Look Mrs. Robek, that's you and you are reading Old MacDonald to us at the carpet." Yes, it was me. I was sitting in my rocking chair surrounded by E and his peers reading. E is a child who has been writing about things important to him since school started and I was included. I was just beaming inside and out at this moment.

On the same day, N was last in line as I took the children out to recess before lunch and he stopped before entering the playground area and called to me, "Mrs. Robek, I'll see you real soon, I'll see you when you come and get us from lunch. Right Mrs. Robek, real soon." I'm not sure what provoked N to tell me this, but maybe he knew I would stop and think. N is a confident student and has handled adjusting to kdg. I got to thinking how it takes time to connect with a new class and new students, each group is different. I walked away feeling connected to N and thrilled he looked forward to the time I would pick him up from lunch. My students are only on day 17 of school, but we've connected.

I think I couldn't be excited before school because I didn't have any connections. Everything was new. I've connected with my space and it feels like home but more importantly I've connected with 45 students and to me you've got to connect and have a relationship to learn. I hope you've found some connections.