Kindegarten Christmas

First, my mother's name was Elizabeth Jane, but all of her friends and family knew her as Bette. As I remember, when I was around 9 years old, she began substituting at a kindergarten class in Concord, just before you got to Clayton. She took on a long-term substituting job and at the end of the year they hired her. She taught kindergarten at Mount Diablo Elementary for 23 years before she retired. I remember helping her set up her classroom and that was fun, but the best part was when she came home at Christmas time with loads of presents from her students. We would have a mini Christmas helping her open (actually I think we did more opening than she did) presents. She had one mother that made delicious Swedish or Norwegian--I'm not sure which--Christmas cookies and we always loved to get those, made with a cookie press and decorated with chocolate and sprinkles and nuts. It seemed like for all those years she taught school, that the mother's loved her...even if they didn't have a child in kindergarten than year!

Carol Evans Smith