The Big Words

I once had a parent thank me for teaching about Martin Luther King Jr. when I taught kindergarten. I welcomed this sentiment, since thank you’s are not heard every day. She then followed it up with how brave I was to do that and wasn’t it a little taboo? I remember frowning. Taboo? You know because you are white, she told me.

While it may be true that sometimes I go into planning a topic or teaching a topic and I feel uneasy because I am not a full blown expert on that topic, I have never felt uneasy about using one of my favorite read aloud books, Martin’s Big Words. I don’t think you have to be black, in order to impress upon kids that all humans deserve the same rights, respect and compassion. I have used the same book with kindergarten and with second graders and IT ALWAYS holds their interest, even the naughty wiggly worms that don’t like to sit. I love the repetition in the language, I love the big bold too big for them words, but not really because they are that important words. When I was first teaching, I had a colleague say to me

“You are going to read them that book, it has the ugliness at the end, what if parents ask questions?”

I will say it is hard to read a book to six-year-olds and eight-year-olds where the main character dies. Whenever I get to that last page, and I read he was shot and killed, the kids are floored by this. But who did it? They want to know. And why did they do it? It is my belief to show kids that ugliness exists, even from an early age. You don’t have to agree. You can read The Very Hungry Caterpillar if you want and still do a great read aloud, but I think it’s okay to show kids that we still have people that hold that ugly right in their very core and we cannot breathe life into that ugly or stand by and watch it grow larger and larger. The standing by is a lot of what the kids in my room need to know. The police officers standing by and watching are just as guilty in the George Floyd murder as the one who has garnered the most attention. Although I do not teach a ton of kids of color, I teach a lot of kids who will go out in this world and make a decision, be in a parking lot, on a sidewalk and they will witness something similar and have to decide to participate in the ugly, watch it happen or do something about it. It’s an important job teachers, daycare providers, parents have. I didn’t even realize how big a task it was until the first time I read this book and I saw the faces and I fielded the questions. Can I be certain I answered them all the correct way? Probably not, but I can be certain that I took time away from other subjects, from other assessments, from other demands and said this is important and we will take time for this book.

My one biggest regret in reading it, is that I always tell them Martin did this work so that we could go to school, so that we could all exist together and now we all have that privilege. I wish I had said, he started this work, but we have to keep it going. The endurance of this plight has been ongoing and will be ongoing and one book is not enough to make all the changes, but if you are planning the lessons, someone just handed you an awful lot of power, so run with that.