A Day in the Life of a DA Kindergartner
Video by Jesse Paddock
1-minute read | 4-minute watch
There are some near-universal truths about tadpoles along their journey to become a frog or toad. They have short oval-shaped bodies with broad tails, small mouths and internal gills. Most are vegetarians. All will stagger onto land, at the end of their metamorphosis, as a young froglet or toadlet. But they all grow at different speeds. Some tadpoles achieve maturity within two weeks. For others, it takes three years. And yet they all get there, on their own time, as they take their first cautious yet determined steps into the amphibious unknown.
Viktor can see this for himself. He is one of 19 Koalas — the mascot for his Durham Academy kindergarten class — seated on the carpet at the front of Dr. Theresa Shebalin’s Preschool science classroom. They pass among themselves a jar containing three tadpoles that have started to grow their hind legs, and they take turns walking up to a larger tank and observing tadpoles in various stages of development. Viktor and his classmates are, themselves, just weeks away from their Preschool graduation, after which they will take their first cautious yet determined steps toward the first grade pod, toward the DA Lower School, toward the rest of their lives.
But they are still, on a Monday morning in April, kindergartners with phonics and math and Spanish to learn. It was on this day that DA videographer and Upper School video production teacher Jesse Paddock tailed Viktor and the Koalas class to learn, exactly, what it’s like to be a DA kindergartner at this particular stage of their metamorphosis. He found, not surprisingly, that it’s much more than a tad exciting.