A new school year is just weeks away. It has been decades, but I still remember my kindergarten teacher. I never knew her last name – my classmates and I called her Katie, because she said we could. However, I called her Miss Katie because even though this was my first experience in public school, something felt weird about not having some sort of prefix before an adult’s name.
Miss Katie had long, blond, curly locks and she looked like one of my Barbies come to life. The main thing I remember is how kind she always was. She made me feel safe in my new, stormy little world.
I started kindergarten not long after my family arrived in Germany. The school we went to was American, and most of the kids who attended had parents serving in the military. Moving from place to place was par for the course for all of us; but I was the newest kid amongst the perpetual new kids. I got picked on quite a bit.
Miss Katie would not have any part of bullying in her class. This was back in the 1970s, when kids who fell victim were basically told to “walk it off,” which is why this new, young teacher stands out in my memory. She preached kindness.
In the book titled All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, kindness is one of the core lessons that author Robert Fulghum suggests we all re-visit from that era of childhood.
“We could learn a lot from crayons,” Fulghum wrote. “Some are sharp, some are pretty, some are dull, while others bright, some have weird names, but they all have learned to live together in the same box.”
Miss Katie did her best to show all her students how to coexist in that box. Kindness was the key, but there was more. In fact, she did her best to ingrain in us several of the core life lessons highlighted in Fulghum’s book, lessons the author stressed we should all consider practicing in our adult lives. Among my personal favorites are playing fair, sharing everything, saying you’re sorry when you hurt somebody, even taking daily naps.
“We could learn a lot from crayons. Some are sharp, some are pretty, some are dull, while others bright, some have weird names, but they all have learned to live together in the same box.”
Robert Fulghum
The simple truths teachers like Miss Katie so passionately worked to convey to a group of kids halfway around the world from home apply, no matter where you are. Holding hands and sticking together are not just rules for field trips– they are the stuff that real human bonds are made of.
What it really boils down to is being there for others. What good would crayons be if every one of them were the same color? We are all important. We all matter. We all contribute to the beauty of the big picture.
As Fulghum put it, “Every person passing through this life will unknowingly leave something and take something away. Most of this ‘something’ cannot be seen or heard or numbered or scientifically detected or counted. It’s what we leave in the minds of other people and what they leave in ours. Memory. The census doesn’t count it. Nothing counts without it.”
