The first day of school.

A vignette.

Mrs. Flores, a pre-kindergarten teacher, sat on her stool and gazed lovingly at the children below her. She didn't know them yet, and they didn't know her, but she could already tell that they were bright and motivated. Children always were at this age.

A little dark-haired boy looked about the room, eyes-wide, trying to capture all the colors and shapes that brought life to the small classroom. At the top of the classroom there was a banner filled with all the letters in the alphabet. Each of these had a picture associated with it,”A” for apple, “B” for Bee, and “C” for Cookie.

As Mrs. Flores spoke about how they were going to learn to read and write, and how they were going to have a lot of fun that year, it occurred to the boy that he could already read and write! What was he going to do? School was supposed to be for learning! What could he learn if he already knew how to do the things that the teacher was going to teach?

“See mom, I told you learning to read was a bad idea now school won’t teach me anything!” thought the little boy, remembering how his mother had sat him down for hours teaching him to read and write in Spanish, and how his father, with his limited english, had taught him what he could, and bought him books and movies, and made him watch shows like Dora, and Sesame Street all so that he could learn English as well.

Worried, the boy tried looking around the room again, searching for something he didn’t know, for something he didn’t understand. There was a sink, but he knew how to use a sink! There were shapes, but he knew what they were called. There were numbers, all the way up to one-hundred, but he knew numbers up past one-hundred! He searched and he searched and found nothing.

At this point, a very serious feeling began to creep on the boy, a feeling that no four year old wants to be feeling, a feeling so terrible that he began to wonder how he was going to spend the rest of the day, much less his entire life in school.

Boredom.

“No, no, no!” thought the little boy, “There must be something!”

Bored, tired, and wanting to go home the little boy looked up at the banner filled with letters ready to endure a dull day at school. As he looked he noticed something. Each letter on the banner was printed in both the letters he knew and recognized, and in a funny little curly script that he had only seen his mother and father use when they signed their names on important papers. He realized he didn’t know how to write on important stuff! Only important people knew how to do that!

Maybe, just maybe this school thing was going to teach him how to write like important people! Maybe. Maybe he could even learn to be important himself.

“Yes, one day, I'll be important like mom and dad”, mused the excited little boy, “Maybe school won't be that bad.”

After all if he was going to be someone important, the little dark haired boy would have to learn to write like someone important. Maybe, just maybe school was where he would learn.