I found my kindergarten teacher

Something kind of amazing happened last week.

After years of telling stories about my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Dubois, I received an email from her.

My former elementary school principal, Fred Hartnett, and I reconnected years ago after I told a story about him on the stage, and someone heard it and connected us. We’ve been exchanging messages ever since, and last week, he reconnected me with Mrs. Dubois, whom I remember well but could not locate.

Not knowing her first name made it especially difficult.

It’s Cora.

Among other things, Mrs. Dubois wrote:

“I can see you standing in line as we were ready to leave the room. You had a head full of darker-colored hair, and it was disheveled. You were quiet and well-behaved.”

My students and my own children couldn’t believe it.

“Quiet? Well behaved? A full head of hair? She must be remembering the wrong person!” my cruelest student spat.

Being remembered at all by someone so important to me both then and now means the world to me.

And I remember her and my kindergarten year so well, too.

I wrote to Mrs. Dubois about my love of the Letter People — inflatable personifications of each letter of the alphabet. On one of the most exciting days of my life, she gave me Mr. R — with rubber bands for hair — when he needed to be replaced.

I kept Mr. R for years.

She wrote:

“The Letter People! The children loved them, and I did, too, but they frequently had holes and deflated. I do remember giving them to the children who wanted them, and I’m glad that you enjoyed Mr. R with his Ripping Rubberbands.”

I also wrote her about my love for recess and center time on the sun-dappled linoleum. I reminded her about the time she sent me to the corner for failing to clean up at the end of recess, determined to use every block to make my tower as high as possible,

She apologized for punishing me in her email, but that moment changed my life. Before she sent me to the corner, I was terrified of being punished. I saw it as the worst possible thing that could ever happen to me. But while standing in that corner, beside the pencil sharpener and below the American flag, I came to realize that punishment is little more than an exchange of choice for time:

I do what I want. In return, an authority figure might punish me by stealing some of my time.

From that point on, my life became a constant balancing of that equation:

Choice for time.

I was suddenly able to do things I’d never done before:

Break rules.
Push through barriers.
Bend norms.
Disregard authority.

It was a defining moment of my life.

I continue to operate by a similar equation today.

I wrote to Mrs. Dubois about learning to tie my shoes — especially difficult being left-handed.

I wrote about learning to read and acquiring a copy of my kindergarten basal reader last year.

I wrote about the day math finally made sense to me. I was trying to solve problems in a math workbook that I can still see as clear as day in my mind’s eye. Ten turtles were on the page, and I was asked to draw a ring around them to make two equal groups.

I remember being so confused. How could ten turtles be divided into two equal groups? Then Mrs. Dubois came over, drew a ring around five of them, and asked me to draw a ring around the other five.

That was it. I suddenly understood. Ten is made of two fives. It sounds crazy, but I had never seen numbers as fungible in that way. It was the moment I understood that ten isn’t a singular, immutable number but a number comprised of other numbers.

That was the moment math started making sense to me.

Mrs. Dubois was surprised by how much I remembered from kindergarten—everything I wrote to her and so much more.

I think she had a lot to do with it. Every morning, I entered a classroom where a teacher opened the world to me and made me feel safe and loved.

How lucky I was to start my educational career at John F. Kennedy Elementary under the wise and gentle wing of Cora Dubois.