Goynes, Clip 01

Well, when I came here I started teaching kindergarten. In 1964 we did not have all-day kindergartens and I was at Madison Elementary School where I shared a classroom with another lady and I would teach kindergarten from eight until twelve noon and then she would come in from twelve noon until four. I think it was four hours. We shared a classroom and we enjoyed it. She was a white teacher and I'm the black teacher. And we just had a grand time. In fact, we still communicate with each other. I tell you another thing when I came here, being a kindergarten teacher, I taught my students it was not a thing that you come in and play, and be quiet. We taught students. I did. In fact, I taught reading, writing, arithmetic. Were the kindergarten students ready for that? Yes, they are ready. But you have to get them ready, which I involved my parents. Now, this is something I always believe in. If you're going to educate my child, I need to be involved. So if I'm going to educate your child, you need to be involved. So I did get my parents involved. 49 Also, taught DISTAR Reading. I tell you every time I traveled I wanted to find teaching material for my students. When I traveled to Chicago, I had a friend there. She was a teacher and she taught DISTAR Reading. So would you spell that word? D-I-S-T-A-R. So I taught DISTAR Readingfor the first year. It was such an excellent program. I brought it to the district and they did adopt the program. So we did adopt DISTAR Reading for Clark County School District. I don't know how many schools used it. But my students were so advanced when you walked into my classroom, we did not play, we did not hit, we were working. See, we had learning stations and I would take those children and read. We would read DISTAR. It's a phonetic program. And we sound out everything and then we say it fast. My kids were reading.