What I Learned in Kindergarten

My kindergarten teacher, Altha Keith, died last week.

She was 93. As soon as I saw her photo and read her obituary, which you can find on page A5 of today’s newspaper, I was transported back the fall of 1983 and her classroom.

I have great memories of her.

She was serious, and firm, but helped a scared little boy, who had never set foot in a daycare or preschool – and who some days didn’t utter a single word in class – adjust to that new chapter of his life.

I’m 47 right now, so Mrs. Keith wasn’t much older than I am now when she was teaching us back in 1983. But she seemed so much older, so much wiser – gray hair, big glasses.

It’s funny the things that you remember from the early stages of your life.

I remember Mrs. Keith had a coloring contest for us in kindergarten of a Thanksgiving cornucopia. First place got a Hershey’s candy bar. Second place got a Skor candy bar.

I won second place, but I was even happier about that than getting first because I’d never eaten a Skor bar before.

In her class we really focused hard on our letters (each one was spotlighted one day at a time), and of course handwriting, and learning to read were of great importance.

There was not a computer in sight – but oh the joy on the rare day when she rolled the film projector into our classroom with something for us to watch.

We took naps on hand towels (putting our heads down on our desks). We had two recesses a day, and a snack/milk break every the afternoon.

Back in 1986 a best-selling book came out that was called “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.”

Among the major points of that book were

• Share everything.

• Play fair.

• Don’t hit people.

• Put things back where you found them.

• Clean Up Your Own Mess • Don’t take things that aren’t yours.

• Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.

• Flush.

• Live a balanced life learn some and drink some and draw some and paint some and sing and dance and play and work everyday some.

• Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.

• Remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - “LOOK.”

Anyway, I think we learned all that and more in Mrs. Keith’s class.

I hope you learned those things too and have clung to them all these years later.

I can still remember my first day of school lining up outside her room with my mom and waiting to get introduced to Mrs. Keith and then finding my desk, trying hard to stifle some tears – probably not unlike many of the kids who will go back to school themselves this week at La Grange Elementary.

I hope every kid has a good first day of school, and cries a little bit because they have a wonderful life at home they will miss, but then has a good teacher like Mrs. Keith to ease the transition.