Greetings. This week, our friends at Silverbloggers invite us to remember our first day of school. Let me tell you...
When I was a child, it wasn't common to attend what we now call preschool or kindergarten. Some schools offered this level of education and others didn't. So it wasn't mandatory for children to attend before starting first grade.
Now it's different. All my children attended preschool before starting elementary school. And honestly, I think it's a necessary level because during those kindergarten years, children adapt to school, and when they reach first grade, it seems completely natural to them.
The school my mother enrolled us in did have a kindergarten level. I remember it very well because the children wore a different uniform from those in the elementary grades. In addition, the kindergarten area was in a separate section from where elementary school was taught. It was a different place, with round tables and chairs, which was very different from the other space where there were individual desks, one for each student, where everyone sat separately and we were arranged in long rows.
I don't know why my mother didn't enroll us in kindergarten. I imagine she didn't think it was important, maybe she thought it was a waste of time, or maybe it was because the school was far from home and she didn't think what we would learn there was worth the effort of taking us there. The fact is that all my siblings and I went straight into first grade without going to kindergarten first.
My first days of school were very traumatic. I had never been separated from my mother before. At that time, I was still very young, not yet six years old, and the idea of being separated from my mother seemed unthinkable.
I remember that I lost it on the first day. I started crying from the moment my mother told me she was taking me to school. I wasn't excited about it at all. All I could think about was that I was going to be alone in an unfamiliar place where I would have no one to protect me. And even though my mother told me that school was a wonderful place where I would surely have lots of friends to play with, I couldn't imagine it that way. That first day, my mother told me it was okay, to take it easy, that we wouldn't go to school that day but we would the next day.
When the next day came, I started crying again as my mother was getting me dressed for school. She told me to think about it carefully because, whether I cried or not, I would have to go that day. Seeing that there was no alternative, I had to accept it, but I cried on the bus during the whole long journey from my house to school.
When we got to school, I held my mother's hand tightly and refused to let go. I remember her going over to the teachers, asking which one was the first-grade teacher, and talking to her, explaining that I was a very shy and reserved child and had never been separated from her. The teacher would surely tell her that everything was fine, that many children had a hard time adjusting to school. The fact is that my mother kissed me on the cheek and left me with the teacher. I squeezed the teacher's hand as I watched my mother walk away...
For several days, I didn't want to play with the other children. I sat at my desk, tried to pay attention to the teacher's instructions, and stayed by her side during recess.
As time went by, I adapted, learned to share with my classmates, and understood something very important: that at school I had the opportunity to learn things that I had never been told before. That love of knowledge has stayed with me throughout my life, and to this day I still have an intact passion for learning new things.
The initiative proposed by our friends at Silverbloggers is still open to everyone. If you want to participate, click on the following link:.
Thank you for your time.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version).
