IN KINDERGARTEN, THERE'S ALWAYS LEARNING

SCOTT CITY -- The classroom is noisy and full of commotion constantly. But that's the way Sally Eaker likes her kindergarten classroom to be.

"I don't care how much noise and commotion there is," she said while checking handwriting exercises during her class in the Scott City school system. "There is always learning going on."

Eaker spoke during a break while her young charges checked out library books.

Of course, she said, kindergarten teachers need a fair amount of tolerance. "You have to be able to tolerate that noise and commotion or you'll never make it. If you walk into a kindergarten classroom and all of the children are still, I believe something is wrong."

The students in Eaker's class are rarely still.

"They are wonderful," she said. "They are very uninhibited and they all do their own things at their own times. That's fine. We have a lot of fun."

It is busy, though. In just one hour, Eaker's students completed a worksheet on learning sounds. "Jjj-jack-in-the-box, Jjj-jar," she told the children, who repeated the exercise aloud as they worked through a series of pictures themselves.

A counting project brought cheers from the youngsters.

"What do you smell in the classroom?" Eaker asked the students. "Popcorn!" they replied excitedly. Students then glued pieces of popcorn onto printed outlines of clouds and ate the leftover kernels.

"Glue first, then eat," Eaker reminded them.

Eaker read a few pages in a library book about dinosaurs. The kindergarteners remembered the complicated names of the beasts.

Every few minutes a youngster would pop over to Eaker for a hug or to kiss her on the cheek. "Everybody needs hugs," she said. "Everybody."

During a free period the children used a computer, worked puzzles, drew pictures and wrote on the chalkboard.

"I've been teaching kindergarten for 23 years," she said. "I never had any other desire. I went to college just to get my degree so I could teach. And I love it.

Eaker has a class of 19 students in the morning and 20 in the afternoon. "But I've had classes as high as 30 or 35," she said.

Each class is in session for about three hours, two of which are instructional time.

"They also have half an hour outside the classroom in music, art, gym or library," she said. "The rest of the time we call free time."

In 23 years Eaker has seen a lot of changes in methods of educating 5- and 6-year-olds.

"I think today we are pushing our kids a little too hard," she said. "It's pretty structured," Eaker said of the kindergarten curriculum. "I liked it better when we had more time to play games and sing songs. Now we teach reading; mostly we learn letters and sounds. But we do learn some words and do some reading.

"I think eventually it will swing back to less emphasis on academics," she said. "We are pushing too hard and fast. I know there is a lot more to learn today; but if we can teach them the basics, then they will know how to find out the information they need."

It's never boring in Eaker's class. "We try to have one special project every week," she said.

Often it is a cooking project. "We made purple cows (grape milkshakes). Now we're studying dinosaurs, so we'll have to do something special with that maybe dinosaur cookies. It's the fun things that help these kids remember. And it's what makes school exciting."

Eaker said she works to make her job interesting for the students and herself.

"I'm teaching the same old things, but I try to do it a little different. Every year something new comes up, and I wonder why I never thought of that before.

"My mother says I'm nothing but an overgrown 5-year-old. I guess there is a lot of truth to that, but we have a lot of fun."