All I really need to know I learned from Mrs. Kresl – Amery Free Press

I have mentioned in columns before the people who have made the biggest impact on my life outside of my family, was by far my educators at the School District of Amery. I suppose that makes them like a second family. It makes me sad that recently I lost a member of that second family, my Kindergarten teacher-Lois Kresl.

A popular read entitled All I Really Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten is a book of short essays by American minister and author Robert Fulghum. It was first published in 1986.

The title of the book is taken from the first essay in the volume, in which Fulghum lists lessons normally learned in American kindergarten classrooms and explains how the world would be improved if adults adhered to the same basic rules as children, i.e. sharing, being kind to one another, cleaning up after themselves.

The essay based on Kindergarten takes me back to my early days in Mrs. Kresls class. Robert Fulghum was absolutely correct on his points about Kindergarten. While the points are important, what was even bigger to me was the person who instilled these values into her students.

Back in my day, there was no such thing as Pre-K. In fact, we only went to Kindergarten for a half day. Harvey Monson would drive me there in the mornings on Bus 14 and Martha Heiden would drive me home on Bus 6 at Noon.

I had never been to preschool. I was an only child who spent a majority of her time with adults, so school was a whole new world to me. Kindergarten was the roots of my learning experience and I believe it set me up for my love of school. Mrs. Kresl was the reason for all of this. She will always hold a special place in my heart.

In honor of the teacher who taught me the most important basics of life, here is an excerpt from All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sandpile at Sunday School. These are the things I learned:

Put things back where you found them.

Dont take things that arent yours.

Say youre sorry when you hurt somebody.

Wash your hands before you eat.

Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.

Live a balanced lifelearn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.

Take a nap every afternoon.

When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.

Wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.

Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cupthey all die. So do we.

And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learnedthe biggest word of allLOOK.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or your government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we allthe whole worldhad cookies and milk about three oclock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you arewhen you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

Thank you, Mrs. Kresl and all of the other educators and school staff who make a daily difference on childrens lives.

I enjoy sharing my thoughts with you and look forward to readers sharing their thoughts in return.

Feel free to email me at editor@theameryfreepress.com, write me at P.O. Box 424, Amery WI. 54001 or I can be reached by phone at 715-268-8101.

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All I really need to know I learned from Mrs. Kresl - Amery Free Press