See us as children. We are not small adults, but very young humans who are growing, blossoming, just beginning to know ourselves. We will only have this beginning once. Please treat us with care.
Accept that play is our most important way of learning and growing. Please don’t take up all our classroom time with the things you want to do. Leave time for our play so that we may surprise you and continue to love learning.
Help us to read, to write, and to love words and numbers. Teach us so that even when it is hard to learn we will feel good about ourselves. Please notice what we already know. Much of what we need is there naturally in our play.
Help us to feel safe. There are so many scary things on TV and sometimes grownups talk a lot about people hurting each other. We need for our classroom to be a friendly place where we can talk about our fears and even play with them.
Don’t make everything to fast. We need time to laugh, to make friends, and enjoy learning as children. We need to know that TIME IS OUR FRIEND; we are not in a race. When things go too fast we get anxious and we don’t like school.
Accept that sometimes our imagination and creativity shows us things that you could never teach us. Share our delight in these wonderful surprises and know that they are the most important part of our learning.
Know that some of us come to you with a lot of pain and fear. Most of the time it is too hard to tell you about these things. We need your smiles, encouragement, patience and hugs. You may be the only one there for us.
Understand that having friends is the most important thing to me. Please help us to find friends. Don’t make us look silly or stupid in front of other kids.
Know that our biggest worry besides not having friends is that we won’t “get things right”. That “we won’t do well enough”. Help us learn about the things we are good at as well as those that are hard. Please don’t make the things we do well the only important ones.
See all of us as having gifts and talents. Accept that even when you don’t see our gifts they are there waiting to come out when the time is right. Celebrate all our gifts with us not just the ones that you understand or like. Know that in some way each of us is special and “are different from all other children”.
We, at Advance, look forward to servicing your child.