The following is something I wrote two and half years ago when I first started teaching 3-5 year olds. It was a rough transition after years of teaching teenagers. At the time, I truly believed this was my worst day of teaching dance ever.
My threes, fours, and fives were outside the classroom, it was a cloudy Tuesday night, I said in a stern teacher voice, “Has everyone gone to the bathroom?” This is the cue, the obvious, the silent begging on my part: Please go to the bathroom now so you don’t start a chain-event where every little girl has to go to the bathroom at the same time. Wide-eyed, every girl, all seven of them, nodded, “Yes!” And so we enter the classroom, an unfamiliar girl trails in behind them in a green sweatsuit. She’s new…her mother looks about my age, she even looks a little like me, “This is Brianna’s first class, should I–do I stay out here?” It is so hard for the parents, I know, but I have to make them sit outside. “Yes, if she needs you we’ll call you in,” I say, cheerfully.
It is the beginning of a disaster. Brianna is the eigth student, one too many in a class already overflowing. Immediately she begins to nervously talk, while we do our foot flexes. She is a typical three-year-old in the sense that I can’t understand anything she is saying. This throws off some of the more serious, older girls, who rarely talk, especially during an exercise. This also encourages the younger girls, two very young three-year-olds in particular, to start talking as well. Soon I am stopping the exercise to explain focus and concentration, how we need to do our foot flexes together. Disaster is brewing, now they all want to talk, and are interrupting each other to tell me about their new shoes, their day, their ballet skirt.
Anna, my most aggressive student, starts ordering everyone around, attempting to teach the class for me. I’ve watched this girl go back and forth, on one hand she wants to please me, but on the other hand she desperately wants to prove that she knows how to be in charge. Losing Anna means losing her favor, which means one more thing to add to a disaster already brewing. Now Anna is being mean, vindictive, ordering the other little girls to sit next to her, hold still ,put their feet out straight. While I try to gently calm Anna down, I realize I am starting to have to discipline. But no one is listening to me, they don’t want to dance together and I can’t seem to get them to be quiet.
We move to the floor, they stand on their assigned spots. Brianna picks a spot but doesn’t understand the significance of it, she starts to crawl around the floor. She refuses to stand in first position, which causes a chain reaction. Madilyn starts doing spins, Anna sits down and sticks her thumb in her mouth, Jordan starts asking all sorts of questions, soon everyone is asking questions. I have to stop the exercise and explain that we can’t talk during class, that questions are reserved for important occasions, like going to the bathroom. This is a mistake. The moment I mention the bathroom, several hands shoot up, and those that forget to raise their hands belt out: “I have to go to the bathroom!” So we begin the slow process of one by one, each girl going to the bathroom. Disaster has struck.
At this point, I try to get them to hold hands in a circle. But there are mini-wars beginning, one girl doesn’t want to hold Anna’s hand, something that causes major offense. Madilyn picked her nose and now nobody wants to hold her hand. Brianna, the new girl, doesn’t understand what’s going on so she starts jumping up and down. Than Emma emerges from going to the bathroom crying. Now the class has to stop entirely as I go over and give Emma a hug. She is sobbing and tells me she wants to sit down. Jordon decides to sit with her. We try to resume the circle but the girls are too distracted to march. Madilyn decides she should sit out too, something I try to dispute. She ignores me. The questions start up again and yet another girl runs out to the bathroom.
I try to get them to slide across the room in a diagonal line. Just forming a straight line is a hassle, nobody wants to stand up, all of a sudden everyone wants to sit down, or lie down on the floor. One by one I get them to slide across the room. Isamaya falls down and starts to cry; I talk her out of her “injury” and send her across the floor again. The girls who were sitting on the sidelines join in, which is good but they’re unfocused and restless from sitting down and that bad energy is brought to the rest of the kids. The new girl starts telling me something and I can’t understand her, I don’t understand a word she is saying. I want to scream.
Suddenly Jordon is crying, someone else needs to go to the bathroom, and I want to tell one of them to shut-up and stop asking so many questions. They are telling me “no” which I am unused to. At this point I am no help either because I keep calling them by the wrong names, in my struggle every little blond girl looks the same. Finally we get into a circle and I try to talk to them seriously…which is hard considering Jordon has now refused to participate and is back on the sidelines. Kasumi has wiggled away from the group and is now standing on one of the chairs. The girls express mild interest in talking. They miss their Mom, they want to leave, they’re sad. I realize in a flood of rationalization what went wrong: Somewhere along the line, be it the crying, my stern “teacher voice,” or the cloudy weather, these girls felt threatened and unsafe in my class. We end the class with curtseys, something they usually love, but Anna, who has been rejuvenated starts yelling at Emma about how she’s curtseying “all wrong.” I give as many hugs as possible and let them go. They stagger outside to their parents and I am mortified. I am a terrible a teacher, I can’t face the parents, I escape to the bathroom.