Rules, rules and more rules

Jill Janet finds plenty to sing about in her kindergarten class, everything from days of the week to letters and numbers.

The 43-year-old Cape Girardeau school teacher has been teaching kindergartners in the local school district for 22 years. That's the longest tenure among kindergarten teachers in the school system.

"Music is probably my favorite part of kindergarten," Janet told her class on Monday as she led her students in a number song to the accompaniment of an old vinyl record.

Monday was the first day of a new school year in the Cape Girardeau public schools. A total of 4,031 students in kindergarten through high school showed up for the first day of classes in the Cape Girardeau public schools, district officials said.

For Janet, the first day was an occasion for enthusiasm even when explaining bathroom rules to the boys and girls.

"We are going to practice how to go to the big bathroom," she said with a smile as she prepared to walk her class of 17 students down the hall to the bathroom.

"We wash our hands. We dry our hands with a paper towel," she reminded the children as she sent them into the boy's and girl's bathroom three at a time.

"I hear some good flushing," she called out as other students waited their turn to enter the bathrooms.

Getting acclimated to school is the first order of business for kindergartners.

"They don't know their way around the building," she said.

There are rules to learn, everything from lining up for lunch to raising one's hand in class.

Shoes must stay on during nap time. Otherwise, there would be a lot of time wasted while the children put their shoes back on at the end of nap time, Janet said.

There are even playground rules. Kindergartners can't play on the larger set of monkey bars.

"I didn't expect that many rules," said Carson Retter, 5. "There are rules outside and inside," he said in a tone of amazement.

Classmate John Kiefner, 6, said it's hard to be quiet in class. "It's also tough not to get in trouble," he said.

But Janet said she focuses on positive reinforcement rather than punishment.

"You get positive reinforcement for doing the right thing," she said.

"My way of discipline is just rewarding positive behavior constantly," Janet said. "Yelling doesn't work."

Her students get rewarded with toys from the "surprise box," a plastic tub in the corner of the room. Children also are rewarded with play time in the play house, she said.

Kindergartner Olivia Saulsberry, 5, took the rules in stride.

"This means to hush," she said, holding her index finger in the air.

Saulsberry found plenty to like about her first day of class. "I like it when we color," she said.

Even eating pizza in the school cafeteria was fun, she said. "I got chocolate milk," she proudly remarked.

Olivia and her classmates focused on the first-day fun.

But teaching kindergarten means more than fun and games.

It's challenging because students come into their first year of school at different learning levels, Janet said.

"Some children come in not knowing one letter of the alphabet. Then again, we will have children coming in who are reading at the second-grade level," she said.

Language can be a challenge too. Janet said she often has Hispanic children in her class. She also has had a student from Poland and another from Bulgaria.

This year, she has one Hispanic student in her class.

But that could increase with last-minute enrollments that often occur over the course of the first week of classes, Janet said.

She had 23 students in her class last school year and could end up close to that again this year.

When she began teaching in the district, kindergarten was a half-day class. In those days, she would typically have 35 to 42 children in the class.

Back then, kindergarten wasn't as academically structured.

"We were not pressured to teach reading and writing 22 years ago," she said.

Janet believes parents are busier today. In most households, both parents now work full time, she said.

"We have lots of children going to day care," she said.

Janet said she never tires of teaching kindergartners.

"I think a lot of it is just their innocence. Kindergartners are so much fun," she said.

"I can act crazy and silly and funny," Janet said.

One of her favorite things to do is pretend to faint and fall on the classroom carpet when all the children in her class perform a certain task properly like marking their calendars.

On the last day of school this spring, Janet and her students temporarily took new names like Spongebob and Spiderman.

At the suggestion of students, Janet was called "Mrs. Gorgeous."

Such frivolity is hard to ignore.

Said Janet, "They love you no matter what at this age."

mbliss@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 123