“I failed kindergarten because I couldn’t break the graham crackers on the lines.”
If you were to ever get me to talk about my early days of education, I’d probably tell you that corny joke. While I don’t think that “graham cracker breaking” was or currently is an evaluated part of the kindergarten curriculum, a portion of that corny joke is true. You see, unlike most children who enter a kindergarten class in the fall, I did not move on to the first grade the following school year. So, I guess you could say that I failed kindergarten.
The reason that I didn’t move on to the first grade after kindergarten may vary depending on who you ask. I graduated high school at the age of 18, even with my “additional” year of education early on. My birthday is in December so doing a little mental math tells me that I started kindergarten at the age of 4. Maybe that had something to do with it but from my understanding, the main reason that I didn’t move on to the first grade was that I got very sick and had to miss more school than my still developing brain had the ability to recover from. Maybe that story is true, maybe my parents told me that to make me feel better, or maybe I made it up at some point in my life and repeated it until I believed it was true. Either way, I wasn’t quite ready for first grade and therefore my next school year was spent in transitional first grade, or T-1 as I remember.
At the time I had no idea what it meant to be in T-1 in relation to my friends in my neighborhood. I had never heard of T-1 prior to that school year and I don’t think they had either. But by going to T-1, I had to attend a different school because as you can probably imagine, T-1 wasn’t offered everywhere. So here I was, in a weird grade, going to a weird school but not knowing any better. I went on as most kids do and adapted to my new surroundings.
At the end of my year of T-1 I was finally ready for the first grade. I went on to my first-grade class and at the end of that school year another wrench was thrown into the equation. My first-grade teacher recommended to my parents that I attend a math and science summer camp at The College of William and Mary. ANOTHER thing their child needed? I’m sure by this time my parents had some thoughts about me and what the rest of my years of school would look like. My guess is they weren’t good thoughts, haha! But this time it was different. My first-grade teacher saw something in me that those before her didn’t. She saw a dim light that she knew would be eventually shine brighter. She saw potential. So, the summer camp recommendation wasn’t because I needed it to learn more...it was because I needed it to start to bring out my potential.
By the time I got through the second grade that dim light was getting a lot brighter. The kid who failed kindergarten was bringing home straight A’s on his report card. In fact, my 3rd grade teacher, Mrs. Brown, thought that I needed to be tested for the talented and gifted program (TAG) but there was one area in school that had my number. In the 3rd grade at Carver Elementary School, I couldn’t understand multiplication.
Well, actually I thought that I understood it perfectly, which is why it was so frustrating. I studied, I took my time, I even used my fingers to count. Time after time, problem after problem, I still got the wrong answer. When I multiplied 16x5 I would get 200 instead of 80. 22x8 would be 246 instead of 176 (any of my math wizards out there see what I was doing wrong?). I would cry because I didn’t know what I was doing wrong. Then, Mrs. Brown made me miss recess and stay inside to do math with her. I had to walk her through every problem on my last quiz and tell her (aloud and step by step) what I was doing the entire time. When I was done with retaking the quiz, I had gotten all of the same problems wrong. I put my pencil down and cried in frustration. Then, as if I had gotten a perfect score, my teacher smiled a big smile and told me that I had just made her day. I didn’t know how to respond. I had failed my math quiz AGAIN, and my teacher was smiling at me. Did she want me to fail or something? She picked my pencil up and asked me to do one of the problems again. This time she stopped me at the part that had been leading me astray. She explained it properly and then it clicked. I did the next problem and I got the right answer. Then the next. And the next. Mrs. Brown helped me conquer multiplication and I tested into the TAG program, where I began 4th grade. From that moment, the rest is literally history.
I’ve often heard the saying that the difference between a stumbling block and a steppingstone is how you use it. The adult me looks at that kid in T-1 and is so envious. He was oblivious to what was going on and therefore he didn’t allow his adversity to become a stumbling block. He built momentum and that propelled him mentally further than his little mind would have been able to comprehend.
How do you treat the stones that are placed in front of you? Do you complain about the adversity? Do you trip and fall over the opportunities that lie ahead? Or do you use adversity to your advantage? As a boost to get to the next level? Does it fuel and empower you? Don’t allow adversity to win. Without some sort of setback, there’s no opportunity to make a comeback. And who doesn’t like a good comeback?
Many of my friends that went to school with me through high school would give me a hard time. They would see me making good grades and think that things just came easy for me. Nah, trust me it wasn’t easy. Never has been and never will be. I mean come on; you’re talking about the kid who failed kindergarten.
