Parishioner Profiles: Kindergarten teachers Alicia Wagner and Brian Balaskovits

Kindergarten teachers Alicia and Brian love teaching young children. In this interview, they discuss how parents can prepare their kids to start school in 2020.

 

 

Alicia, Brian, Kindergarten is ready to start with the fall 2020 semester but it’s going to look a little bit different this year.

Alicia: We normally would have four students sitting together at tables, but we’re going to distance them this year. We’ll have two students per table and more tables in the room so there’s more space between them.

Brian: There is another big change we are going to make. As a staff we decided all students K through eight will wear masks when six feet of social distancing is not possible. That’s going to be a challenge in the younger grades but hopefully one that kids have already become adjusted to throughout these last couple months.

 

How does a five-year-old perceive a pandemic?

Alicia: Obviously, they don’t have the depth of understanding that adults, elementary students, or middle school students might have. For them, they see this as a simple sickness. How the parents react to it helps determine how the child is going to understand it.

So in this age group, we give them more broad strokes: It’s a virus. We don’t want to spread it to other people so we’re going to have to take certain steps in order to understand it.

How the parents explain it is going to help the child to understand it because they don’t have the concepts to grasp the depth of it all.

 

What are some ways a parent can prepare a Kindergarten child to go off to school in 2020?

Brian: In 2020 we are in quite a different situation this coming school year. Parents can start by assuring them that everything that they’ve learned at home from their parents – who are their initial teachers – is going to be what we’re going to be doing and teaching here in our classrooms. This classroom is an extension of their home. It is extension of their church and their faith. We are going to keep them as safe as we possibly can with everything that we’re doing.

It relates to that idea of stewardship: doing for the good of all. It’s a hard concept for adults to understand sometimes let alone five-year-olds but I think it’s a wonderful opportunity for us to start that conversation. We’re not just doing these things for us; we’re doing these things for everyone. Much like in our faith, that’s what we strive for.

 

Is there a best routine that parents can establish with their kindergartener to prepare him or her to go off to school?

Alicia: The best way to get them ready to come to kindergarten is to keep the routines that we would be using in school to start doing them at home. They’re already doing more frequent hand washing so let them know that that’s something that they’re going to be doing in school more often too. They can practice social distancing when they’re around friends or family.

Those special routines would be on top of teaching them how to button their coat or their sweater, zipping, working their belts – the little things that they would normally need. Parents should let their children know that some of the things we’re doing at home to keep them safe we’re going to be doing at school.

Preparing them for school procedures will make it less scary when they come to school in person.

Brian: We have been out of routine since the end of May and maybe before that. These next couple weeks can be well spent working ourselves back into that sleep routine, the bedtime, the waking-up time so our bodies and our minds can start to get ready.

We keep them busy here in Kindergarten. The better they are physically and mentally coming in the better they’re going to be able to perform when they’re here.