Five-year-old Bertilus Bornelus hurried over to the kitchen and started to cook — corn on the cob, glazed doughnuts and tiny cans of Progresso soup. The stove is wood, the pots and pans are metal, and the food is plastic, but it didn’t dampen his enthusiasm, or volume. Five other children were in the kitchen with him, chattering excitedly.
His mother, Joy, looked up from a chair across the room and said, ‘Shhhhh!’ Bertilus was the only one to look over. He quieted down, to the amusement of the other parents at her table. “He knows my ‘shhhhh,’” she laughed. She and the other parents sat in childsized chairs at round tables in Sandra Gomez’s kindergarten class at Columbia Elementary, filling out all the paperwork their kids needed to start school.
She was one of thousands of parents who attended a Meet the Teacher open house last week. They wandered hesitantly into their children’s classrooms, settled themselves awkwardly into kids’ plastic chairs, and tried to get a sense of the person who would spend 180 days educating, protecting and correcting their children.
The parents displayed the nervousness their kids didn’t; their kids showed the confidence that would disappear, in part, by the first day of school on Monday. The group is fortunate to have Gomez. She is a warm, capable woman for whom a class of 18 kids is a treat, and it shows in her big inviting smile.
For four years she juggled 32 students at an inner-city Miami school, where only a small fraction of parents got involved because the rest worked two or three jobs. “Some are so excited, they are ready to go. Some are scared. Some cry. Some are timid, afraid to approach me. So I sit on the floor next to them and talk to them until we get along. It’s a scary thing to come into a huge building with tons and tons of people,” Gomez said.
“The children who come from [voluntary prekindergarten] are ready to follow rules and routines. Some have never been in a school environment. But they catch on really quick, they’re like sponges at 5 years old.” The coming year is her second at Columbia, which is also the 38-year-old school’s second year in a two-story building on Cypress Lake Glen Boulevard in an upscale neighborhood.
Columbia’s student population is primarily white (70 percent), though Hispanics now make up about one-fifth of the student body. But nearly half the students at the most east-side school in the district are poor enough to qualify for free or reduced lunches. It just earned its fourth A in a row under Principal Karen Finkelstein. “It’s an outstanding staff. Everybody pulls together as a team to ensure students succeed,” she said. “If you have a love for children and you put their needs first, then you’re going to work hard to motivate them and help them do well.”
Dealing with variety
Kindergartners are a unique age group,
in that they come at every possible level
of readiness — some can already read,
some are barely toilet-trained — and
teachers must reach them wherever they
are.
Gomez said it’s important for kindergarten
teachers to be knowledgeable of
different learning styles.
“Some children might only learn by doing, or learn through music, or learn through movement, some can work independently. But they can’t be sitting still for more than 10 to 15 minutes.” She has countless moving-pace activities, calming-down activities, outdoor activities — whatever the situation calls for.
By the end of the year, she said threequarters of her students will write good sentences, with some words spelled phonetically rather than correctly, and about the same number will be able to read introductory first-grade material. “You can’t expect all the same things for all of them,” Gomez said. “But the higher expectations you have, the higher they’re going to go.” Columbia Elementary is one of just a handful of east-side schools that offered a separate kindergarten-only Meet the Teacher to ease the transition.
The school also had a pancake breakfast for kindergarten parents and students last spring — their first chance to go through the cafeteria line. In all, they had up to four chances to visit the school prior to the first day on Monday, Aug. 18. “This way they’re starting to be familiar with the building,” Finkelstein said. “But the most important way we can help keep parents’ minds at ease is communication.
That’s so key.We want them to keep us informed and we will do everything we can to keep them informed.”
Mixed feelings
At Gomez’s Meet the Teacher, most
were kindergartners in a classroom for
the first time in their lives. Their older
siblings boldly directed the play, and
their younger siblings did as they were
told, thrilled to be included.
As the parents listened to Gomez talk
about what the children would learn this
year in her classroom, the kids showed
no fear — Mom and Dad were right
behind them.
Like Kristina Liezert, who walked up to her new teacher, shook her hand and gave her a rose made of chocolate. “She’s been looking forward to it all summer,” said her mother, Cindi. “She plays school at home all the time with her two older sisters.” Some children, like Brianna Hartwigsen, were brimming with confidence because their parents have given them a head start.
“She’s excited. She already recognizes the alphabet and can write her name,” said her mother, Jen, a sixth-grade reading teacher at Legacy Middle. It’s the parents whose concerns were etched on their faces. “I stayed home with [Bertilus] for awhile, so he wants to be around other little kids. Honestly, I think he’s excited. Me, on the other hand…” said Joy Bornelus, with a slight laugh. “No, I’ll be fine.”
Xavier Diaz and his 8-year-old brother, Rafael, sat down at the kitchen table with paper plates and plastic forks — perfect for eating the unopened plastic cans of soup — as their parents, Carmen and Rafael Sr., listened to Gomez and filled out paperwork. “He’s excited. He went to VPK at Tree House Daycare, so that was a good head start,” said Rafael Diaz Sr. “It’s easier the second time around,” confided Carmen Diaz.
“It was very emotional the first time. I was depressed for a week.” Watching one’s child walk off to school for the first time is stirring; even the most pragmatic soul is touched with a hint of pride, a hint of sadness. For just those sort of mixed feelings Columbia’s PTA sponsored a “Boo Hoo” breakfast — doughnuts and Kleenex — in the cafeteria on the first day of school, starting right after the kindergarten teachers picked up their new charges.
“It’s hard when your child leaves your house for the first time, and you’ve had them at home or in day care a couple times a week. The No. 1 issue would probably be safety — making sure their child is in a safe environment, that he or she is being monitored and taken care of, being loved and continued to be nurtured,” said Finkelstein.
“One of the expertises of the kindergarten teacher is to be able to deal with the variety — she gives them the education to help them grow and develop in individual and unique ways.”
