Welcome to my blog. GoLowd is a combination of my maiden name and my married name. Furthermore, I am kinda’ loud. I’ll be writing about my love of substitute teaching (really, I’m serious), writing, history, and gardening, with a wee bit a’ politics thrown in.

On that subject. Well, on two subjects: teaching and politics. Today I subbed for the first time this school year. All day with 20 kindergarteners. Wow, do they have the energy. I’m not sure I’m young enough anymore to teach that age group. They are adorable though, for the most part. I love their non-linear thinking. Like today, in the middle of Math meeting when one little boy raised his hand to tell that he’s going to Disney World “sometime.” OK, but how does that relate to counting from one to ten exactly?

I had a particularly challenging little boy. I’m pretty sure he’d never been to preschool and didn’t get the whole “school idea.” He’d be fine for awhile, sweet even, then if something didn’t go his way, over went his classmates block tower. As we were trying to clean up to go to recess, he dumped out all the math counters just as his peers had finished picking them all up. Threatening him with no recess had no effect. He also had “sticky fingers” as teachers like to describe pint sized thieves. Wow, did he have me running.

But all in all, it was a good day. I love teaching. It’s that simple. The kids give me energy (well, most days anyway.) And when I connect with one child, one on one, and his eyes are alight with some new discovery, well, life doesn’t get any better than that. So it was with dismay on the way home that I heard, listening to my favorite progressive radio station, that Ann Coulter (of Fox News) made a really bizarre comment recently. Apparently she said something like this: Kindergarten teachers are “useless” (her word) public sector workers. What exactly is she talking about? She wants to do away with kindergarten? What does she think we do all day, play with clay? Color? Eat cookies?

In my next entry I will describe exactly what it is a kindergarten teacher does all day. In the mean time, I’d like to invite Ms. Coulter to the classroom in which I taught today and leave her alone with those 20 children. I suspect she wouldn’t last a half hour.