Musings on Preschool and Preschoolers

Teaching preschool is insane. I completely recognize that. It takes more patience and energy than anyone in the world could ever muster, and I am probably not so slowly losing some part of my hearing from the volume and pitch levels kids can reach, and yet I continue. Sometimes, after a particularly hard day of whining and arguments and misplaced blame and yelling, I wonder why I'm still there, and then as soon as I'm out of that environment and can think about something else again, I remember how much I adore those kids. I can think about times when I notice changes happening in them, specific times when they've grown before my eyes, or times when they show me that they care about me too. A great example of that came from 4-year-old Owen today while picking walking partners for a trip to the park - "I want you to be my partner because I love you!"

The moments where I can bring Feldenkrais into my work there always sneak up on me and surprise me. They're always little things, such as asking myself, as I'm running around setting up morning snack, how easily can I pick up that surprisingly heavy stack of tiny chairs? While rubbing someone's back at nap time, wondering where my attention is and if my intention is actually to help that person fall asleep, to keep an eye on the other kids, somehow do both at once, or if it's somewhere else altogether (I've noticed that it's just as likely to be any one of those as another). I find myself catching moments where I'm physically uncomfortable and changing what I'm doing where I might not have before. Each of those moments makes the insanity a bit easier to handle, because in paying attention to what I'm actually doing, I'm better prepared to take on whatever comes at me. That could be grabbing a toy out of someone's hand as it's about to hit someone else. It could be a 3.5-year-old boy charging toward me in the yard, arms outstretched, wanting to be lifted into the air a split second before he rams into me. You just never know what to expect in a preschool. Rules barely apply. (Except for gravity. Lesson to be learned by 3-year-olds: if you lean way to the side in your chair, you WILL fall out and probably hurt yourself. Even 3-year-olds can't defy gravity.) Have to be ready for anything.

PS. Watching a kid get on their hands and knees, put the top of their head on the floor, and straighten their knees during a boring nap time looks suspiciously like some headstand ATMs we did...