On my third and final day at
Hathaway Brown, the students continued to amaze me. Immediately to the left
when you walk into Mrs. Pietrafese’s classroom, there is an arts and crafts
station set up for the students to use. When I walked in on the third day, Mrs.
Pietrafese and her helper set out on the table stamps of each letter of the
alphabet and an ink pad that the students were more than welcome to use. One of
the students, Thomas, invited me to sit down with him as he used the stamps. Thomas
shared with me that he wanted to make a person out of the letters. Thomas used
the letter O for the head and body, the letter I for the arms and legs, and the
letter E for the eyes. I was not sure how the E fit into the picture, but I did
not stop him from using the E. Witnessing Thomas discover that if he puts those
three letters together in a configuration that a person would form was a
profound experience for me. It blew my mind that this little five year old was
capable of that type of deductive knowledge.
That same morning, Reed’s mom brought
in homemade Play-Doh for the class to use; Reed is one of the girls in Mrs.
Pietrafese’s class. On a separate table in the arts and crafts station, Mrs.
Pietrafese put the three colors of Play-Doh on the table for the children to
play with. Multiple students asked Mrs. Pietrafese where the rolling pins were.
In response, Mrs. Pietrafese told her students that there are no rolling pins
and just to use their hands. I really liked how Mrs. Pietrafese encouraged her
students to create whatever they wanted to on their own, versus using a rolling
pin or some kind of other device. I feel like it really challenged the students
to use their imaginations.
Located at the arts and crafts
station was a single-hole puncher. One of the students, Kavya, using the single-hole
puncher approached me and asked if I would help her. Assuming Kavya realized
that she was not physically strong enough to use the single-hole puncher, I
proceeded to punch holes out of this magenta paper for her. I stopped only
after punching a few holes, but Kavya asked if I could keep going. Kavya shared
with me that the holes I was punching out for her was going to be the snow in
the picture she was creating. After that, I noticed her beginning to glue the
tiny circles on her picture. Kavya now had magenta “snowflakes” glued on her
picture. I thought how great it was that Kavya did not care what the color of
her snowflakes were, and I also thought how great it was that Kavya realized
that the circles produced by the single-hole puncher could be used as snow. Again,
the imaginations on these children blew my mind.
Overall, I really enjoyed the three
days I spent at Hathaway Brown. I was surprised at how quickly I learned all
fourteen names of the students, and I realized that I could see myself doing
this every day as a career. One question I wish I asked Mrs. Pietrafese is how
she goes from being around four and five year olds all day to going home and
being with her children. In reality, the only time it seems like she can relax
is at night when she would be asleep; she is just constantly surrounded by and
interacting with children. I guess I’m also wondering then if it gets to be too
much to handle. Considering I would like to be married and have children one
day, this is something I have to think about as I embark on this journey of
becoming a teacher.
