Kindergarten

This week I have spent a lot of time in Markus' kindergarten class. I walked down to the fire station with him on his field trip day. I watched him hold hands with a little girl from his class that he loves to chase at recess named Mya and listened to him tell his friend Hudson that he is his best friend. They were just walking along talking to each other all the way.

I also helped with centers in his class yesterday and listened to all of his little friends talk excitedly about Halloween and what they were going to be. It is my favorite place to be right now, I can forget about myself and just watch, learn and listen to these little people, grow and live. I love it. It also made me start thinking about the following short story:

ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN
(a guide for Global Leadership)

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I
learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school
mountain, but there in the sand pile at school.These are the things I learned:

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.
Wash your hands
before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing
and dance and play and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick
together.
Be aware of wonder. 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.
Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the
little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we.
And then remember
the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all
- LOOK.
Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule
and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane
living.
Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated
adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or government or your
world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would
be if we all - the whole world - had cookies and milk at about 3 o'clock in the
afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments
had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to
clean up their own mess.
And it is still true, no matter how old you are,
when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

Source: "ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN" by Robert Fulghum