Teacher Feature: Kindergarten more dreadful for parents than kids
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“With the kids, everything is new and, for the most part, they enjoy it so much they don’t want to leave at the end of the day. It’s the parents who seem to have the hardest time with starting kindergarten,” Kirby said.
It was when her own children began their school careers Kirby decided once and for all she wanted to teach. After graduating high school in 1980, she had completed two years of college as an education major when she quit to get married and raise a family.
The itch to complete her education and earn her teaching certificate occurred when she substitute taught for almost an entire year in the first-grade class of her eldest son.
“Robbie Hitchcock and Marsha Taylor (the school’s kindergarten teachers at the time) told me I was good with the children and that I really needed to go back to school, so I did,” she said.
Beginning her 11th year, Kirby said doesn’t see teaching as a job. “I never say I’m going to work, I always say I’m going to school. Work is no fun, but I have fun,” she said.
While kindergarten has been required for a number of years, she said some people still have misconceptions about the first year of school. The biggest of these, she said, is that kindergarten teachers are just glorified baby-sitters who don’t really teach.
Truth be told, she said, today’s kindergarten curriculum teaches students, in addition to basic life skills, science, social studies and even the basics of reading through phonics, as well as writing. By the end of the kindergarten year, she added, most students are reading on a first-grade level.
“I’ve taken all of the toys out of my class room – there’s just so much curriculum to cover that we just don’t have time,” she said. “But I do make learning fun. At that age, if you make anything fun they’ll listen and remember it.”
In addition to her teaching duties, she sponsors Dibrell’s cheerleaders, is the school’s safety committee chairperson and is active in the school’s PTO.
When not at school, she enjoys spending time with her family, including husband Terry and sons Kyle and Brad, as well as reading and traveling.