Life According to Kiera: How Do Teachers Do It?

Written by Rowonna McNeely – Everything has an explanation. EVERYTHING. It cracks me up. Well… most of the time. For instance, Monday night we had a Girl Scout meeting.  We picked Kiera up from daycare and since we don’t have a lot of time after the meeting we had Kiera read her homework to us on the way. It went something like this.

Opening her reader, Kiera read the title out loud. “A Note for Rose.”

Turning the page, she began reading. “Mom will make a snack. I…”

She paused, holding her bookmark in hand. “Now, when I am at daycare and read this, I hold my bookmark like this.” She said to us. I turned in my seat to see what she was talking about.

Kiera held her bookmark over all the words except for the first word. “If I hold it like this at daycare, then I don’t get sidetracked.”

Smiling, I responded, “That is a good plan, baby.”

She returned my smile, dropped her gaze back to the book and picked back up on her reading. “Mom will make a snack. I must get nuts.”

Switching out of her ‘reading’ voice, Kiera held the book up so I could see the picture above the words. “Now. If you look at the picture, you can see that the mom is cooking.”

“Got it.” I replied.

She placed the book back on her lap and began to read the second page. “Kate, take this note to Rose. I hope Rose has nuts.”

I held my breath and glanced sidelong at Aaron as we waited to see if she was going to explain something or continue on reading. Apparently, the picture was not interesting enough to give us detail on because she flipped to the third page and proceeded to read it.

“Now.” She stated. I closed my eyes and hid my smile as I prepared for her next explanation.

“If you look at this picture, can you tell which one is Rose?” She asked. Before I could answer, she continued on. “This one is Rose and the one with the bag is Kate. Over here is the dog Max. See? She is handing Max a bone.”

Honestly, I don’t even attempt to respond by this point. I nodded my head to acknowledge my understanding and she moved on to the next page to read. “Jan is jumping rope. Can I jump? Asks Kate.”

“Now, is that right? Should she be jumping rope when she is supposed to be taking that bag back to her Mom?” She quizzes us.

This is when I feel like I am in school. She actually knows the answer. She is just testing us to see how we would respond! And we were only on the fourth page, people! We still had three more pages to go plus a whole other story!

Later on that night, Kiera was sitting at the coffee table practicing her writing. Her teacher had assigned about twelve words. I sat at my desk, turned on my laptop and pondered what to write about.

“Mom. Why is there green tape on this pencil?” Kiera asked.

“I don’t know.” I responded.

She turned back to her page and wrote the first letter of the first word. “Look! Do you like this w?” She asked.

I stood and walked over to peer over her shoulder. “Very nice!” I said, complimenting her.

As she turned her focus back to her paper, I sat back down. There was a brief moment of silence.

“Mom? Can I take this tape off the pencil?” She inquired.

“Yes, baby.” I responded. “Keep doing your work.”

I peeked over at her and watched as she peeled the green tape off her pencil then leaned back over her paper. She began to write the second word.

“Did you know I hold my pencil like this? I think I hold it this way because…”

I will spare you the rest of that explanation. Thankfully, even though there were a few more explanations intertwined in the word writing process, she still managed to get done before bedtime and my quest for what to write on for the week was solved.

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