Venturing into school for the first time poses interesting questions–and answers.
During rest time, a little boy whispers to the girl next to him, “Will you marry me?” She flashes him a panicked look and responds,”No, thank you.”
Ask any 3-year-old how old he thinks you are, and he will say a number from one to 10. Ask a 4- or 5-year-old, and she will guess the biggest number she knows, whether it is 72 or 103. And, of course, in answer to the question, where does chocolate milk from, the answer is always brown cows.
For St. Cloud Area School District preschoolers, school is about fun, playtime and friends. For parents, it’s a time to watch their children spread their wings: to play, learn and interact with others. For teachers, preschool is about social-emotional and academic development, but most of all it’s about how their students’ faces light up when they walk in the room and the memories that are created.
“One day, I had a girl walk into the classroom,” laughs early childhood speech pathologist Melody Vachal at Oak Hill Community School. “She was all done up with her hair in a big, long braid. She sat down at circle time and said, ‘You can call me Anna today.’ Disney really has a big influence on our students. We see characters all the time.”
What Vachal has loved most in her 30 plus years of teaching is that kids are so excited and genuine.
“There is no pretense,” she says, smiling. “Everything is fresh, new and exciting for them.”
When she began teaching back in 1988, all of the early childhood teachers were in one room. Now there are several classes at nine school sites in addition to servicing the Reach-Up Head Start locations for special education. There are over 600 students registered in District 742 preschool with an additional 100 or more, birth to three years, with special needs.
As the program has grown, so have the expectations of preschoolers to be prepared for kindergarten.
“There is so much to offer families and [so many] services to provide. It’s so much larger than people imagine,” explains Vachal. “There are the social-emotional aspects of learning, how to be with other children and self-advocate, as well as the academic piece of learning the ABCs and their sounds, colors, shapes and numbers.”
Vachal has watched all three of her own children attend preschool through high school in District 742. With her son, Isaac, early childhood services began at 16-weeks-old. Isaac is blind and has cerebral palsy.
Vachal describes her son’s experiences and so many more. “It’s exciting to see preschoolers graduate, especially those in special education. You plant the seed and start to see the beginning stages of development. My own son [Isaac] started with saying the word ‘pop.’ Once he could say that word, he got to have a piece of popcorn. Now at 22, he sang happy birthday on his birthday. We may only see the dirt or a little sprout [when they are with us], but eventually, you get to see the whole garden.”
Vachal recalls other stories of students thriving as they get older. One student who had articulation problems now flourishes in music in junior high. She giggles as she recalls another.
“One morning, I had two students that I was working with,” she describes. “One boy was saying the word ‘little.’ However, it came out as ‘yiddo.’ The other boy said, ‘Hey, Teacher Melody, he just said, ‘yiddo’ not ‘yitto,’ not realizing, of course, that he could hear the incorrect pronunciation in the other boy but not himself.”
It’s stories like these that really warm her heart. Of course, there are sometimes stories that can’t be shared for fear of parent mortification. More than once, teachers have congratulated parents on new arrivals of little brothers and sisters that may not yet exist, but it always brings a smile.
“Sometimes, what happens in preschool, stays in preschool,” says Vachal.
Preschoolers eventually learn they really need to wait a few years before asking for a hand in marriage or that chocolate milk really doesn’t come from brown cows. Meanwhile, preschool is the place where imagination and early learning begin.