Kids show up worried about tax refunds, next meal. A Columbus teacher shifts their focus.

I vaguely remember being in kindergarten. I can recall going on a field trip to Stone Mountain, riding the train and getting to sit with the engineer up front. I also remember my teacher giving us square lollipops when we did something good. Sadly, that’s about it.

But I was only 5 years old.

In the first five years of my life, the only life challenge I had experienced was sitting down in an ant hill. My focus was playing outside and the monsters under my bed. But ask today’s local kindergarten teachers what kinds of challenges their students face, and I venture to say ant hills and make-believe monsters aren’t on the list.

Natalie Chandler, kindergarten teacher at Wynnton Arts Academy, knows all too well the reality of some 5-year-old lives, and these realities create abundant challenges for even the very best early childhood educators.

This is what we older generations think is Mrs. Chandler’s first day of school. She stands outside her decorated door and welcomes a bunch of little ones who barely come up to her waist. They are carrying cartoon backpacks that are bigger than they are, toting plastic lunch boxes with PB&Js cut in triangles and notes from mom, and wearing brand new outfits with tiny little pristine shoes. They calmly, quietly, attentively sit crisscross apple sauce on a patterned rug while Mrs. Chandler begins the very first lesson of their public school career. Most already know how to count to 10. Most can identify primary colors, and some can even sing the alphabet song and read a few words.

But sadly, things aren’t like that anymore. Nowadays, Mrs. Chandler can’t assume her students come to her with any base knowledge of letters, colors and numbers. They come to her with much different knowledge bases.

She has conversations that cut to the core, that one would expect to have with grown folks, not 5-year-olds. She once bent her ear to a student who couldn’t wait for tax time so her family could buy a car so mom could get a steady job. A 5-year-old making that sort of real world connection amazes me. I grew up playing Connect Four, not correlating tax refunds to cars to financial security.

Some of Mrs. Chandler’s students have not a single book at home, much less a parent who will read to them. Some make their own breakfast, dress themselves, and put themselves on the school bus in the morning and come home to an empty house in the afternoon. And as these little ones enter her classroom, the expectation is that Mrs. Chandler will work her magical miracle and bring them all up to kindergarten par.

Mrs. Chandler is a master teacher, though. Just as many of our kindergarten teachers do, she accepts the challenge because she knows she is the “gas that makes the car run,” as she puts it. Putting her job into perspective helps her be what her students need, every different student and every different need. From building a little guy’s confidence in reading and math by relating them to race cars to forming a healthy relationship with a behaviorally challenged little girl, Mrs. Chandler does what we hope and pray all foundational teachers do – teach our kids with compassion and understanding. It’s a difficult task only a chosen few accept. And the rest of us? We admire their resolve. So, thanks, Mrs. Chandler and all our kindergarten teachers. We don’t know half of what you guys do for our kids, but we sure do appreciate it all.

This story was originally published May 16, 2017 at 5:53 PM with the headline "Kids show up worried about tax refunds, next meal. A Columbus teacher shifts their focus.."