Tuesday, September 7, 2010

names

A little one arrived at our school today with a backpack stuffed with kindergarten school supplies, no parent, and no idea of where to go. Eventually someone lead him to our gym, where we were housing all of our kindergartners, and he was passed from teacher to teacher, everyone looking to see who he belonged to.

He couldn't really give anyone his name, but after unpacking his book bag a first name was found on one of his supplies. He didn't know his last name, so his first name was compared to each class list (we have 8 kindergartens) in search of his teacher. No luck.

Finally one of the instructional aides handed him to me to see what I could find out. We made the trek back to the office where we once again unpacked his bag in hopes of finding a last name, and had someone run searches of everyone with his first name at our school. Again, no luck.

"What's your dad's name?" someone asked.
"Carlos" he said, not giving us any information.
"What do people call him, Senior..."
"Carlos" the boy said again (which to his credit, is more information than he gave when asked his name.

We looked at our friend with his first name, no last name, no parent, no way to contact his parent, no way to identify his classroom, how to get him home, or what is ok to feed him, and wondered what on earth we would do.

Finally, we glanced once again at his supplies and noticed another name written below his first name on his snack. When we read this name his eyes lit up.

"Yeah, that's me!" he nodded happily. A search of that name led us to his class room. As I walked him down I asked him about the two names-

"My mom calls X" he explained, (X being what we'd been calling him all morning), "But Y is what my doctor called me."

Poor kid. The only other time when someone called him by his official first name was at a visit to the doctor's office, probably when he went for his pre-kindergarten visit. At least he could recognize it as a name that belonged to him.

He made an easy transition into his kindergarten class and had a great day, despite his early morning adventures.

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