Barbara Lawlor, Nederland.  When you teach the children of students you have taught decades ago, you know what you do is successful. Last week seven students of Little Bear Preschool wore graduation caps and received their diplomas while proud parents applauded. Some of those parents remembered their passage to kindergarten back in the day.

The Class of 2031 squirmed and fidgeted and performed and tugged at their clothes and grinned. They sat in their chairs and received their custom made books. Director Karen Campbell and teacher Lisa McCoy announced the students plans for the future:

Alan Greentree wants to be a dad, Claire Hamburger, a scientist, Jade Padmore, a big girl who can sleep at night and not wiggle, Keegan Kafka, a painter, Luna Weeks a mama and a doctor, like Colleen, Nixon Dodge, a worker like my brother who works on houses and cars, and Silas Fitzer wants to be both a fireman and a policeman.

Little Bear’s music teacher Sarah Baker led the whole school in performing “The Magical Toy Store,” in which each student comes to life and dances to their own tunes. At the end, all of the students collectively demonstrate what a lively bunch of kids they are.

Spanish teacher Elizabeth Putnam guided the children through numbers and simple Spanish words that children seemed to delight in reciting as loud as possible.

After the ceremony, the kids and their parents paged through their graduation books together and then gathered to enjoy the traditional, delicious potluck dinner and share stories, and in a few cases, tears, as they realized that their children had left toddler-hood and were moving on into their academic childhood.

(Originally published in the May 31, 2018, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)