By Calvin Trampleasure, 2023
- Chapter 1: New Ways and Big Days
- Chapter 2: RUSD Becomes WCCUSD
- Chapter 3: 4 Cs Adventure in Physical Education
- Chapter 4: The 4 Cs and 101 Ways to Praise
- Chapter 5: Washington Elementary, Richmond
- Chapter 6: Kindergarten Fire and Love
- Chapter 7: Kindergarten Years, Extended Day K
- Afterword: Something Unpredictable
Kindergarten Fire and Love 2009-2017
In 2009, I interviewed with Ms. Holland, Madera Elementary School principal for a Kindergarten/Physical Education position. Little did I know I would develop a knack for kindergarten; at first I took the job mainly to continue teaching physical education to Madera’s five upper-grade classes after lunch.
The kindergarten class time was 8:15-11:45, just “half-day K.” From 1:00-2:43 I taught two classes of physical education, and upper grade teachers got 50 minutes of “prep time” with their students outside at “P.E.”
I thought the prep jobs would return in a year or two. However, fate would have me teaching kindergarten for more than twelve years. It was “another turning point, a fork stuck in the road.” A Pinole Valley High School drop-out, Billy Joe Armstrong of Green Day song goes, “So make the best of it and don’t ask why, it’s not a question but a lesson learned in time.”
It did take time to learn the lessons. New directions are full of both frustrations and satisfactions. Still, with the twin power of experience and reflection, things unfolded with interesting twists.
“It’s something unpredictable, but in the end it’s right, I hope you have the time of your life,” Billy Joe Armstrong sang.
The lessons learned in kindergarten years shaped me as much as any previous physical education or upper grade teaching in RUSD/WCCUSD.
By about the fifth year in kindergarten, I got my confirmation in a most direct way, and I was doing things well at this grade level.
“It is like you are the fire and we are the love,” Tarrissa, a kindergartner told me one recess. We had just finished a wonderfully moving activity in the classroom, and Tarrissa came up to me by the play structure.
“What was that?” I exclaimed, “Can you say it one more time please,” I asked.
“It’s like you are the fire and we are the love,” Tarrissa repeated.
With a big smile, I told her it was an amazing thing to say, and I would never forget it.
“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel,” Socrates said in Greece centuries ago.
Or years before that, in the words of Plutarch, “The understanding is not a vessel which must be filled, but firewood, which needs to be kindled; and love of learning and love of truth are what should kindle it.”
I put Tarrissa’s name card above the classroom door at the end of the school year, and it stayed there until the day I retired! It reminded me about the fire, and about love!
In kindergarten the flame is made of part play, part music, part stories and part humor. There is no marketed curriculum that can package this energy, no price on this style of teaching, and no “cookie cutter” approach to this flame. It comes from “talking from your heart to their hearts” as Chip Candy, award winning physical education teacher from New Jersey said. The “flame” varies from teacher to teacher, but it is a large part love.
At Merritt Junior College in 1977, Lowell Cohn’s “flame” glowed as he taught Creative Writing. I loved his class. So did the “flame” of Henry Galas, as he taught geology at Merritt J.C. Mr. Kennedy’s “flame” for English when I attended Berkeley High School was humor, lots of questions and a love of words. Jack Norton, a Native American Professor at Humboldt state, had a cosmic truth flame to share with his students, and a love of the cycles of life on earth. I loved his class.
Peter Rich, owner of Velo Sport Cyclery, showed a bunch of teenagers his “flame” in the 1970s, and we learned how to race bikes faster and faster. He took us all over the USA and my love and flame came alive for bicycle racing.
Now, as a kindergarten teacher, my “flame” was growing. I was standing on the shoulders of all those people who had a love or passion for living, bike racing and teaching who had been in my life. The flame they shared was what I was passing along to Tarrissa and kindergartners, maybe the love would grow.
In my first year teaching I shared a classroom with Marlyce Bjeldanes, she set me off with the right tips and daily suggestions.
I learned much from Barbara McCormick, another Madera kindergarten teacher. For seven years we shared the same kindergarten classroom, I taught the “AM Kinder” class and she taught the “PM Kinder” class. She shared so many ideas and I learned so much working with such an outstanding teacher. When a new portable arrived in November of 2017, I moved into it. Barbara continued to share. Her wit and wisdom helped me move along with kindergarten teaching days with some perspective and understanding.
In the early 1990s, at the Bay Area Writing Project at U.C. Berkeley, my favorite presenter was Bob Tierney. He would tell us that the best teaching varied from classroom to classroom. It was hinged to the authentic personality of the teacher, mixed with the chemistry of the class of students. It blended the creative energy of teacher and students and created positive memories and stories. Bob always got us laughing with his teaching stories from Fremont High School, while he encouraged us to be true to ourselves.
Be yourself and grow closer to your true self each day. Be inspired by people who have shown you the way, carry them with you. They are part of you and guide you always. The good, the bad and the ugly things in the world will guide you too. Some big lessons come when the flame is just a flicker. Keep on keeping on, something will happen, and learning will move along at its own special speed. With any luck, the torch of love will be passed along.