Do you ever wonder where certain expressions come from?  Well, according to the Urban Dictionary, the phrase “herding cats” comes from the common saying that something involving coordination of many different groups or people is as difficult as herding cats.  It refers to the idea that individualism is hard to manage, hence the comparison to cats.  Urban legend says it originated from someone describing computer programmers – hmmmm.  Well, that phrase aptly described Kindergarten again today.

I get the exciting opportunity of working with them not only in class but during lunch.  Today we had all 106 of them sitting on the gym floor going through common area expectations.  (I hear you laughing already).  But before that, we played a little game with them where they had to look at a picture and match it with a specialist teacher to get to know us a little better.  For instance, my pictures consisted of my car, a reference to my blog and a can of diet coke.  The older students played along and just pointed at the specialist with a little bit of talking or laughter.  However with Kindergarten, every time the correct teacher was revealed, they broke out into squeals of excited laughter, accompanied by much wiggling, touching of friends, etc.  As you can imagine, it took a while to get them back together after each picture and there were 15 of them.  Pretty sure we’ll have to rethink this one for next year.

Can you remember a time though when everything was NEW?  These little guys are having to learn routines with many details in a short amount of time.  Imagine one day you’re allowed to take as long as you want to eat, and mom, dad or caregiver clean up the mess.  All of a sudden you’re in a large building, having to walk down a long hallway to lunch, where you either have to find your lunchbox in the big tub or go through a lunch line to get your lunch.  You don’t know what color carton the chocolate milk comes in as compared to the white and you can choose between skim and 2%.  Then you have to choose your fruits, entrees, etc. and zip out of the lunch line, carrying a tray full of stuff, to find a seat in a big room where you’re too totally distracted by your friends to even EAT your lunch. When you’re finished, you have to know how and what to recycle and there are separate containers to take care of plastics, paper, etc.  You’re then sent through the next line where you go to the bathroom, to another line where you put your hopefully empty lunch box back in the big tub with your teacher’s name on it (which you can’t read because you’re in Kindergarten) and wait patiently for your teacher, whose name you still can’t remember, to go out to recess.  This has got to be the most traumatic 30 minutes of their lives.  And in the meantime, there are adults scurrying about, opening fruit and pudding cups, milk cartons and chip bags, peeling stuck paper off of taffy candy (I’m not kidding), answering questions, listening to stories, steering kids to the correct line at the correct time and reassuring them that their teacher knows just where to find them to take them out to recess.  All this while keeping some of the boys from playing like it’s recess in the hallway before they go out.  I’m exhausted just writing about it!

These little “cats” have fun doing the silliest things.  Turning the bathroom sign over to go use the bathroom is SO COOL that once someone starts, everyone needs to try it.  One little guy went to the bathroom right at the very end of class and was left behind (we knew where he was – he just took a while : ).  When he came out he tried to turn on the water to wash his hands, but it was one of those automatic faucets where it just starts when you place your hands in the right place.  After the PE teacher showed him how it worked, he did it, but he jumped each time the water popped on.  Imagine whole days of surprises and new experiences.  Imagine you’ve only been walking and talking for the last 3 1/2 or 4 years max and these crazy grown-ups are expecting you to walk in and behave like something other than a cat.

We forget how tactile they are and that it’s just automatic for them to want to get up and look at something closer and touch it.  We forget how excited they are to share something really important to them, so excited that they don’t know how to wait their turn. We forget how little they are until they ask to sit on your lap or give you a hug and a kiss on the cheek.  We forget that they have parents who send them to us and that they trust us to remember that they are children first and students second.  We need to treat them as wondrous and precious because we have a hand in taking all that they’ve learned in their short little lives and helping them towards their journey to adulthood.  Perhaps to become a computer programmer where maybe someone else will have to herd the cats.