She nurtures a love of learning
Teacher Marci Ritch eases children from home
to school
Some teachers bring a gift of nurturing into every classroom, warming up the curriculum they deliver, connecting to children's hearts as much as to their brains. These are the teachers children remember for years: they set the stage of life so that each child finds her own way to thrive.
Marci Ritch, a naturally gifted teacher who loves her job, worked mostly with kindergarten students for the first seven years of her career.
Sometimes teachers' jobs get chewed up by budget restrictions. Despite a following of adoring parents, Ritch found herself laid off because her school dropped from two kindergarten teachers to one. The other teacher had more seniority. Stunned, she took a few years off teaching before returning part time at first. Now she teaches 31 fourth graders in Santa Rosa.
"It's a really sweet group," Ritch says. "I like the kids. They are wonderful sweethearts."
As she adapts to fourth-grade curriculum, Ritch works many extra hours. In fourth grade, students shift from learning to read to reading to learn, according to Ritch. "It's huge," she says.
Socialization of children takes a high priority in kindergarten, though teachers feel constant pressure to stick to curriculum requirements. "We constantly assess children to see what they need to work on," she says.
"I want them to come away excited about learning," Ritch says, "wanting to come to school, feeling comfortable and safe. Kindergartners are really fun because they are open. Words that come out of their minds are fun and entertaining. The way they make sense of their world is very different from the adult sense of the world."
"I want them to come away excited about learning."
"It's really scary," Ritch says of children's first foray into the school environment. Especially for extremely shy children, she works to ease the transition from home to classroom.
A parent of two, she can feel children's anxiety, but also the angst of parents. "As a mom, it was hard for me to give my child to a stranger," she recalls. "I reassure parents that their children are in good hands. They're going to be well taken care of. Nurturing is one of my strengths."
One little boy was petrified. "He clung to his mother," Ritch says. "I had to pry him off every morning. He cried on my lap for a good hour or more every single morning." In preschool, that behavior lasted almost six months. With Ritch, the boy's crying spells continued for only a month. "That's a success," she says.
When she first taught kindergarten, Ritch had latitude to develop her own curriculum. She followed standards, but integrated them into themes. "That's more creative. It makes teaching more fun, and children have more fun."
She adopted a different theme every week, such as the story of the gingerbread boy who leaps out of an oven and gleefully eludes various pursuers: "Run, run as fast as you can; you can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread boy."
With kids in tow, Ritch hunts for the gingerbread rascal. The gingerbread boy becomes a playful imaginary guide who introduces children to the school environment. "They get to meet the librarian, the people in the office," she says. "They meet the principal, the school nurse. They see the cafeteria. I am storytelling all the while. We make cookies at the end."
Ritch would incorporate simple math concepts by having kids graph which part of the cookie they ate first. She would have children retell the story to hone their language skills, show them various art interpretations. "It's endless," she says of the learning potential. "It's very rich. That's how I taught." Whenever possible, she relates school learning to the real world.
"I had a little poetry book called Bear Hugs. One girl sent the bear back with a toothbrush."
In kindergarten she sent a stuffed brown bear home each week with a student, who would then chronicle the bear's experience in her home. "I had a little poetry book called Bear Hugs," Ritch says. "One girl sent the bear back with a toothbrush. People took pictures."
Teaching demands much of her. She brings work home in the evenings and almost every weekend but has never felt burned out by the job.
During years teaching kindergarten, her students enjoyed dramatic play, built bridges and forts together, and went for Friday afternoon walks on nearby forest trails. "They found bugs and things in the creeks," she says. "We took magnifying lenses and fishnets. We watched the seasons change."
Even in fourth grade she shows the pictures in books to children before they start to read. "It helps with comprehension," Ritch says. Some students read fast but comprehend little. Out of 31 students, all but one come from homes where the primary language is Spanish. She speaks no Spanish; the children are bilingual.
"Kindergartners are like marbles all over the place."
"It's a big jump from kindergarten," Ritch says, "but it's challenging and fun. The kindergarten challenge is that they have never been in school before and they are like marbles all over the place. They don't know how to sit together, stand in line, raise their hands." She had one student who did not know how to hold scissors or cut with them. Some have been to preschool; others have never spent time out of their homes.
Classroom management skills are essential to teaching, Ritch says, no matter what grade level. A few children demand extraordinary attention and can stir up trouble among their classmates. "They need to be reshaped into getting attention for positive behavior rather than negative behavior," she notes.
Ritch knew she wanted to be a teacher when she started taking junior college classes. "I've always been drawn to children and the field of education," she says. "As a teacher you get a new group every year. It's sometimes overwhelming but never dull. The key to teaching is to be organized, creative and flexible. Don't just teach them information. Teach them how to think. And love what you do."
—James Dunn
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