On Friday morning, the warm sunshine poured into the yard, where a small group of children were playing. The other children in the class had already been divided into two groups and taken out for a walk by different teachers. When forming these groups, teachers often select children who do not usually play together. This meant that the children remaining in the yard had their usual playmates away on the walk.
Everly R. approached Penny, who was mixing flowers and plants on some plates on a table in the yard, and asked, “Do you want to play teeter-totter with me?”
Penny replied, “No.”
“Why?” asked Everly R.
Penny did not answer the question but suggested, “You can use one of these plates.”
Everly paused for a few seconds and then walked over to Jason, who was sitting inside a large plastic tube, filling small rocks into a broken plastic ball. She knelt down and leaned inside the tube, asking, “Do you want to play teeter-totter with me?”
Jason, focused on his activity, looked up briefly and said quietly, “No.”
Everly then approached Eva and Ella, who were sitting at opposite ends of another large blue plastic tube.
“Do you want to play teeter-totter?” she asked.
“No. You can’t join; we’re making a house for just the two of us,” they replied.
Finally, Everly returned to the teeter-totter alone. She sat at one end and waited quietly. I came over and said, “I’m too big to sit and play with you, but I can press the teeter-totter with my hands three times, okay?”
Everly looked at me gently and said, “I’m waiting for a friend!”
“Okay, thanks for letting me know,” I responded, and sat on the log beside the teeter-totter.
Not long after, Jason came to the teeter-totter and hopped onto the other end. The two children played and laughed together, but only a few minutes later, Jason returned to the tube. Everly sat alone for a while, then quickly got off the teeter-totter and ran to join him.
Throughout the morning, I observed Everly R. repeatedly inviting her peers to play on the teeter-totter. When no one joined, she calmly waited by herself, even declining the student teacher’s support. Her patience, independence, and composure demonstrated a growing sense of self-reliance, which quietly moved me.