“No more school, no more books, no more teacher’s dirty looks,” the childhood rhyme echoed in my head as I faced the sea of parents, staring at me intently like sun flowers seeking the sun.

For a moment, terror washed over me, the terror you feel when you awake from a frightening dream in that moment when you realize that it was just a dream.

I knew what they wanted.

They wanted me fired.

I saw the Mom  in the back of the room.  She perched on the kindergarten sized chair like a petite vulture. I wondered how she had time to take care of her three rough and tumble young sons and a husband while waging the spiteful telephone campaign against me.

I had come to Florida full of excitement and promise.

 I had been hired me because the principal wanted to bring a more developmentally appropriate Kindergarten program to her school. Intelligent woman that she was, she realized that my young colleague conducted a Kindergarten program that was mired in practices long since discarded.

The kids in her classroom sat in chairs all day long, cutting and pasting while their young teacher went from child to child murmuring directions.

“Color inside the lines,” was her mantra.

The children produced a numbing number of projects each week- sometimes as many as 50 pieces of paper that they had colored and pasted were sent home each Friday for the parents’ approval. They completed this work under their teacher’s watchful eye—each child’s project was perfect. No one project looked any different from any other project. No one project was marked by any individuality. This was the result of the teacher’s persistent correction. For instance, if a child dared to paste an eye on a pumpkin face crookedly, they were shown how to place the eye in the exact place “it belonged.” The children smiled as she gave them a sticker when they produced a Stepford –like facsimile of the model project the teacher displayed prominently at the front of the room.

And my crime and misdemeanor, you ask?

Setting up a classroom with a painting easel and a playdoh station and (gasp!) blocks and a hands-on science table, among other play areas or stations.

I even worked with small instructional groups.

How dare I! Didn’t I know that the children needed to sit in chairs all day and learn like next door?

So the Mom got on her phone–calling and calling until her dialing finger was numb.

Oh, did I mention that Pamela’s son told me on a daily basis that he loved me and hugged me at every opportunity?

Meanwhile the children in my classroom continued to build with blocks and paint pictures at the easel…and learn, too. In fact, they learned as much or more than the other class did.

And after the first troubling year, parents began to appreciate what I did. Some even realized that for their active children, the environment that I provided was a far better fit than next door.

But the Mom would not stop…

Even after her son went on to first grade, she continued to solicit ill will against me, continuing her whisper campaign …on the phone and at school sports events.

And, of course, there is an ironic ending to this story.

Several years later, when I was no longer working full time, I came back and took over a faltering fifth grade with those same students who had been my first kindergarteners.

And those same parents who sat stuffed into the kindergarten sized chairs that night five years earlier were grateful that I did. I received a hero’s’ welcome, as if I had ridden up on a white horse.

What’s that old saying? He who laughs last laughs best?

Well, Mom, ha—ha–ha!