Who's That?

Note: Teachers’ names are not intentionally misspelled.

Looking back, I’m not all that fond of my intermediate or primary school years. You never knew exactly who was in your class because you were only with a small group of maybe twenty kids at a time and met one class each year for a gym class once every few days. Friends you made in Kindergarten would change by the time you hit third grade not because you had a falling-out but because you weren’t in the same class. However, if I had to choose a favorite year, I would choose Kindergarten.

Unlike most of my town, I didn’t start out attending the local primary school. I actually grew up in a small town in Maryland, and that’s where I went to school. That being said, I don't expect anyone reading this blog to know of any of the teachers mentioned here. As the oldest child in my central family, I was the first one to attend any sort of school program. I remember my parents making a huge deal out of it, but I couldn’t figure out what the problem was. It was just school. A lot of characters that I watched on PBS Kids went to school, and it wasn’t that big of a deal. I remember being kind of freaked out on the first day of Kindergarten, though. I made my mom put my favorite stuffed animal at that time in my backpack so I could have something familiar while there.

My first teacher was named Mr. Kilduff. He seemed pretty nice, though I can’t really remember much about what he looked like. Truth be told, I never got to know him very well. I switched Kindergarten classes shortly after school started (my parents later told me that it was because I was too advanced for the class and sitting there bored would have done me no good). So, I was transferred to Mrs. Maditz’s class. She was pretty nice, though I don’t remember enough to give an accurate description. At first, I remember being really, really freaked out. I mean, I had just started making friends in Mr. Kilduff’s class and was getting used to the way that he taught, but then the next minute I was in a new classroom with a group of new kids and a new teacher. Mrs. Maditz was really, really nice about that, though. I don’t remember exactly what she did to help, but I know that if I had transferred to a classroom where the teacher was downright mean and didn’t give me transition time to get used to new rules and kids, I would have been less enthusiastic about going to school. Mrs. Maditz introduced to me that learning things could be fun, too. For example, I remember using the computers for the first time to learn things like math and basic grammar functions, and there was always time for fun. I think that’s what I liked most about Mrs. Madtiz’s class: even if there was work to be done, time could be made for us to have a good time while we learned.

Okay, this blog ended up being more about why Kindergarten was awesome than about why Mrs. Maditz was awesome… But I doubt I would have thought that it was awesome in the first place if I’d had a really crummy teacher.