Kindergarten is perfect fit for teacher of the year

Becky Armstrong, Mustang Creek Elementary teacher of the year, was content for years to be a stay-athome mom and a pastor’s wife.

She substituted in the schools, but while her children were growing up, they were her job. For the past nine years, she has spent her weekdays with a room full of elementary students and believes she is exactly where God wants her to be.

Kindergarten, she said, is a perfect fit. It is the first year for parents to leave their children all day, and Armstrong has a heart for the plight of the kids, as well as the parents who struggle with the transition.

When she was a child, elementary school was brutal. Kindergarten was fine, but from first grade through fourth, she said, she cried every day.

“I would throw up, my mom would change my clothes and then send me back,” she said.

“I wanted to be here for the children who struggle leaving home. And I wanted to be here for the parents who had trouble putting their children in an academic or all-day setting away from them. That’s probably where my heart is and where it started.”

Besides her innate empathy for their difficulties, Armstrong recognizes day-to-day joys.

“You can do anything, and they love it,” she said. “You can be silly, you can get excited and they get so excited. They have compassion for one other. They are just amazing little creatures who absorb it all. One of them today hugged me and said "I miss my mom so I can just hug you, can't I?’ Where else do you get that?”

Armstrong believes her students who have challenges are meant to be there.

“Each year I pray that I get the kids I’m supposed to get,” she said.

Armstrong doesn’t allow her students to say they can’t do something when they haven’t tried. Kindergarten, above all else, is about trying.

“That's the bottom line, believing in themselves,” she said. “It’s so much fun to watch a child grasp something and they say, ‘I can read this, Mrs. Armstrong. I made it.’ They just beam and they

get so excited.”