I’m entering my third week of elementary school. So far I’ve spent:

  • 3.5 days in one kindergarten class, beginning with the first day of school
  • 5 days rotating through five first grade rooms, spending the morning in one class and switching to another in the afternoon

I’ll spend this Tuesday through Thursday in second grade, and Friday through next Tuesday in third. (Yes, I’m moving quickly! The teachers think I may be a prodigy.) There are a couple of major changes I want to make:

1. Participate in the kids’ activities more than teaching them as a volunteer. So far, I’ve been experiencing my return to the classroom from an adult perspective, whereas the point is to reconnect with the joy, wonder, and intuition I had as a child. I can go volunteer anytime, anywhere, but this is my chance to learn to be a kid again. I plan to roll Play-Doh, read kids’ books, run around at recess, and build with Legos.

2. Write more about the feelings and memories triggered by being in my elementary school classrooms. I’ve written observations of my surroundings — the changes in the school since I was there, and amusing stories about the kids — but I haven’t yet shared the memories that are coming back to me. I’ll do that this week, along with posts about:

  • Eating hot lunch in the cafeteria for the first time in decades
  • Kids’ creative answers to “What’s the name of this letter of the alphabet?”
  • Recess, P.E., and other elementary school memories
  • More on IDEC, the amazing educators involved, and democratic education

If you can think of other things inquiring minds want to know, leave a comment or post on the new forums.

Flickr Creative Commons image courtesy of EJP Photo.

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