One of my first years of teaching, I was able to have a teaching assistant in my first grade classroom. She was about five and a half years old, had a kindergarten education, and worked free of charge. When I met Traci (not her real name), her mother, and her grandmother at Open House before school started that year, I had no idea that Traci had plans to become my assistant. At Open House, they all told me that Traci had loved kindergarten and was very excited to start school again. The family was very sweet. I remember them so well because they looked like triplets of different ages! They had the same body shape and made the same movements and gestures. They wore similar clothes and their hairstyles were exactly the same. They were so cute.
Well, along came the first day of first grade and I managed to get all twenty-five or six of my kiddos down the long hallway to my classroom. The students all found their desks and I started to open my mouth to speak to them about what to do with all of their new supplies. Suddenly, I heard, “Boys and girls, head on back to the carpet. It’s circle time.” Circle time? What? Who said that? Did I say that? What’s circle time? I was very confused. I looked around. Some children were walking to the carpet. Standing back at the carpet was Traci. She had her hands on her hips. (I would come to find that she did that quite a lot.) “Traci, did you say that?” I asked. “Yes. It’s circle time,” she said. “No. No it’s not. Let’s all come back to our desks.” Hmmm. Odd. I hoped that was just a fluke.
A couple of days later we started calendar time. Traci seemed super excited about this. She had already told me that my calendar was missing lots of parts. As a matter of fact, my whole room was missing lots of things. Apparently her kindergarten room had been filled with things that I needed to acquire quickly in order to make my classroom a better learning environment. I always listened carefully to Traci, and I always tried to explain that we were in first grade now and we needed different learning materials. This part never seemed to resonate with Traci. So when I started with calendar time, she immediately started to notice huge gaps in my performance. Where was the Mystery Letter? When was Show & Tell? Where was the Estimation Jar? Aren’t we supposed to be singing this? Once again, I went into my little speech about being big first graders now. Traci had apparently had enough of my speeches. When I turned to write something on the calendar or move something on the calendar, Traci would immediately break into some sort of letter song or number song or some sort of finger play that they had learned in kindergarten. And not only would she be doing it, she would be leading all of the children sitting around her in doing it! This went on day after day, even after many attempts to change the behavior. I gave Traci a special calendar job to keep her busy and keep her occupied. Didn’t work. I told her that we would sing one of her favorite kindergarten songs every day at the end of calendar after we finished our first grade work. Nope. She still broke into song and dance throughout the entire time. If I asked Traci to remain at her seat during calendar, she put on a one woman show at her desk that was fit for Vegas.
It wasn’t just calendar that Traci felt the need to assist me with. She really thought that the first grade skills were a waste of time. She much preferred to review kindergarten skills. In the winter, when indoor recess was plentiful, I would often find Traci holding class during recess time. She would somehow corner several students and get them to spend their recess sitting at their desks while she made them write letters or numbers on whiteboards. She even tried to give them homework! When they had outside recess, she would conduct PE class. I stopped her whenever I saw it, but she would be right back at it whenever I walked away.
Traci’s favorite dance was the macarena. She could sing the days of the week and do the dance. She LOVED to do that. We did that at calendar time every week, but Traci did it pretty much all the time. Her favorite time to do it was when I was trying to actually teach something new. Many times I would be teaching my heart out just to look up and see Traci leading the entire back row in the days of the week macarena. Precious.
One day about mid-way through the year, Traci started turning in her papers with her name written as “Tracie.” Just out of the blue, she added an -e. I called her up (no doubt interrupting a dance) and asked about the spelling. She told me that she and her mom had decided that her name looked prettier that way, so now she was going to write it that way. By this time, nothing really surprised me about Traci(e), so I decided to just discuss it with her mom the next time I saw her. I saw her fairly often because she picked up Traci(e) from school early whenever she came into town to do the shopping. They liked to go to DQ after the shopping. (I can’t believe I still remember this stuff. No wonder I can’t remember where my keys are. My brain is completely full.) I did ask her mom about it and she backed up Traci(e)’s story. They thought it looked better with an e, so that’s how they were writing it now. I was young and I was a rule-follower, so this was not acceptable in my world. Traci’s birth certificate and social security card did not have an e. Therefore in my classroom there would be no e. Mom was fine with that. She just smiled. Then they left for shopping and ice cream.
Traci challenged me that entire school year- August thru May. She never conceded and let me be the sole teacher in that room. I have to admit that it aggravated me to no end at the time. She was a sweet girl and I liked her very much, but I wanted her to fit in my mold. She would not. If I could do it over, I would handle that situation totally differently. My job was never to mold my students. Good for Traci for refusing to allow me to do that. She taught me far more that year than I was able to teach her. I was stressing and lecturing and she was singing and dancing. I think she had it right…
