February 22, 2016 - 13:24
Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: Ladybugs: our power
Chapter 2: Baby Goats: changing the classroom
Chapter 3: Jumping Off Swings: boys
Chapter 4: Diana’s Bath: the way I want to parent
Chapter 5: Fear: a novelty
Chapter 6: Fear Continued: math
Chapter 7: Team: so much of me
Chapter 8: Young Women’s Leadership Institute: beauty, feminism, and confidence
Chapter 2: Baby Goats: changing the classroom
My love for goats was born in my first floor kindergarten classroom in 2001. We assembled into our normal circle, our little knees bouncing and our fingers dancing on the carpet. We weren’t in our assigned order like we usually were for story time, so I wasn’t squished between Matt’s large knees on my left or overlapped by Rowan’s equally large knees on my right. I assume Mrs. K spoke to us about goats in the moments leading up to their arrival, but it didn’t matter because excitement and anticipation were the only things our brains could focus on. When Mrs. Strong walked through the classroom door flanked on either side by a blob of black and a blob of brown, the anticipation went out the window and the environment of the classroom shifted to one of transfixion. Our twenty pairs of eyes gazed wide and curious as the goats entered our circle and stared back at us with their own equally as wide and curious eyes.
Mrs. Strong introduced the goats, whose names I can’t remember now. Once we had all gotten used to their presence and they had gotten used to ours, Mrs. Strong started walking them around the circle. They inspected us with a curiosity akin to our own, and I wondered what they were thinking about us. The little black goat seemed to be the leader of the two, and as he sniffed along his sibling followed closely behind. When the black goat got to me he paused, looking straight at me with his deep, dark eyes. Before I knew what was happening, he was climbing into my lap and curling up, sitting right in the middle of my criss-cross applesauce. His body was warm like a heated blanket on top of mine, so warm that to this day I can remember wondering if he had peed on me. As he lay there I didn’t notice the jealous looks from the other kids who were eyeing the goat’s affection of me from around the circle. The only thing I could focus on was the fact that this goat had chosen me, that he had seen something in me that he hadn’t seen in the others, something that made my lap suitable for inhabiting. Without realizing it then, this goat gave me self confidence. He told me that I was good enough. That my lap was fine just the way it was. What that goat said to me was that he saw a connection in me between myself and nature. As I think about it now, as an eighteen year old adult, I think that goat stirred in me my love of nature and animals. He made me believe that I was able to connect with nature, and maybe that was my superpower, my ability to connect and feel.
As the goat’s occupation of my lap continued, I sat with the tensed anticipation and dread that he would soon tire of me and leave, but he seemed content in my lap and didn’t budge. In the moment what was, in reality, probably five minutes at the most, felt like an eternity to my young mind. The joy of the connection I was feeling with this creature slowed time, and provided me with one of my very first memories.
As I look back on it nearly fourteen years later, I think this experience was more educational than I ever realized, and helped shape who I am and what values I possess. It was in that small classroom with that black goat that I first realized I could truly connect with something other than human or pet. We couldn’t communicate through language, what we had was a more raw and natural connection. We were both living, our hearts beating inches from each other's, our two minds’ enjoying the presence of one another and our two little existences broadening and growing together. In that moment my five year old conscience didn’t know what was happening, but as I look back today I can see my soul opening and my perception of life and relationships developing. If I replay this memory in my mind using a bird’s eye view of that early 2000s classroom, I don’t so much see twenty children and two baby goats as I do twenty two young beings of life. This memory and this experience has taught me that there is something inherently similar and bonding between juveniles of any life form. They are curious and innocent, untainted and scarred by the rules of what it takes to survive. It wasn’t just us humans in that classroom who were experiencing something new, it was the baby goats too.
I’ve often wondered why this memory has stuck with me, so much so that I can remember thinking a goat had peed on me. The moment those goats walked through the doorway was the first time I was in a classroom that broke the traditional school environment. Even as early as my first year of structured K-12 school I was able to realize the uniqueness of the experience and the awe of having two farm animals in the classroom left an impression on me. In older grades we took field trips and excursions, and of course I've seen many goats over my lifetime, but never again in my thirteen years of school was a goat or anything of the sort brought into my classroom. I feel grateful for those goats, and awestruck by what they gave me. I never realized until writing this paper how much my experience with those goats went on to shape my educational and personal future. I can’t know if anything I’ve attributed to these goats is real, valid, or true. Maybe the goats didn’t have anything to do with my confidence, or love and understanding of nature. Maybe it was just a fun experience for a five year old. But whatever it was, I got to experience it, and that makes me lucky. The goats added diversity to my education. They added texture to my learning, and a disruption to my normal. And that makes me lucky. I believe that every classroom should be visited by a goat. Maybe that goat takes different forms. Maybe it’s a play shown to a group of seventh graders who have never seen one before. Maybe it’s a spontaneous dressup day in a first grade classroom. Or maybe for some, it’s as simple as moving the desks out of rows and into a circle. Whatever it is, whatever form it takes, every classroom and every student should experience a goat.