Five-year-old Kalix Booze-Byrd finally gets his wish: To go to... Real school

The first day of school at Heber Hunt Elementary School is tightly choreographed chaos.

Step through the doors where handshakes and hugs greet returning students. New students arrive toting brand-new backpacks full of crayons and pencils and expressions of excitement and trepidation.

Many have parents in tow, for emotional support and first-day pictures.

Students are shepherded into the gym, where they sit in lines by class.

Vanessa Hanson’s students sit in the very front of the huge, unfamiliar room, surrounded by the din of the school’s student, parent, teacher and staff population.

Kalix Booze-Byrd, 5, sits quietly Thursday morning with his new Iron Man backpack, green lunch bag, and sack of extra supplies. His mom, Alia Moore, 26, and dad, Michael Byrd, 26, come to make sure he’s settled in.

They take pictures together in the gym, posing together with big smiles. Moore and Byrd check to make sure Kalix’s collar is straight, give him hugs and take more pictures.

“I was a little nervous. I didn’t think I was going to make it,” said Byrd, 26, of Columbia.

The two shopped for school supplies, he said, and “we did a little bit of this, a little bit of that, to get him ready.”

Kalix had been up early that morning, ready to go to “real school,” Moore said. He was excited to tie his new shoes, a skill he recently learned.

“This is my last one going to school. It makes me want to cry,” said Moore, of Sedalia. Kalix’s sister, Jade Clay, is in first grade, and his brother, Kylen Moore, is in third.

“My baby’s going to kindergarten,” she said.

Moore brought Kalix to school, but he looks forward to riding the bus home with his brother, she said.

At 8:20 a.m., Kalix and his classmates march out of the gym and down the hall to class. Parents aren’t allowed to follow.

“You’re on your own, buddy!” Moore said. “I love you!”

“Be a good boy!” Byrd said.

Kalix enters the colorful classroom, decorated with letters and monkeys and palm trees. He finds his monkey-themed nameplate and takes his seat with four other new classmates: Keith Baker, Sakiah Parks, Gabriel Boone and David Wilson. They are the Blue Rectangles group.

Kindergarten begins. Students color while Hanson, in her first year at Heber Hunt, takes attendance, gives each child a “monkeyfied” name tag, and introduces the new friends to the class.

Then supplies and backpacks are put away, and the children play a response game. Hanson hears Kalix chant along: “I said a boom chicka boom!”

“Good job! Kalix is helping me!” she said.

The children move to a rug in the center of the tables, and each sits on different colored squares with letters and shapes. Hanson reads a welcome message, and then calls on students to recognize letters on the board.

Kalix circles a “K” with a pink marker.

Hanson moves on to reading the book “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom” to the class, where letters climb up and fall from a coconut tree. The classroom’s monkeys and palm trees reflect the book.

Hanson leads the class through a letter-recognition game based on the book, then the children are set loose on an ABC scavenger hunt.

Classmate Ally Woolery helps Kalix find a Y on one of the palm trees, then he finds another on the back wall.

“I found two more Ys,” he said to Hanson.

Then, it’s on to recess. The opportunity to move around freely and play excites the students.

“I’m hoping to see my brother and sister out there,” Kalix said.

The class practices walking in line outside, as they have during bathroom breaks and through the halls. A few students have problems with the idea, but Kalix manages to keep in line.

The three classes of kindergartners — no older students — get to run around, but not play on the wet playground equipment, a development Kalix doesn’t like, before they go in to lunch.

Kalix unpacks his green lunch bag, and eats his turkey sandwich, yogurt and juice.

How does he like kindergarten so far?

“Fine,” he said.

The students — “friends,” in schoolspeak — get a short rest after lunch. Hanson repeats the instructions and expectations for the friends endlessly, all day, but some friends can’t sit down.

Hanson said it takes about 30 repetitions for an average student to learn a rule.

Kalix puts his head down and taps his foot to the soft music.

His good behavior is rewarded, as he and Mikayla Sponder are chosen to sit in the special chairs for a story in the rear corner of the classroom. The other students sit on the rug to hear “The Kissing Hand” by Audrey Penn, about a bear cub nervous on his first day of school.

Kalix and most of his classmates raise their hands when Hanson asks if they were nervous that morning.

Music is on the schedule for the afternoon, and Hanson’s class lines up to make the trek to Michelle Gilger’s class in one of the trailers. Friends hear repeated directions and gentle corrections to their line skills.

There are still friends who can’t quite keep still in their seats, but Gilger leads the class through singing roll, a game of the Farmer in the Dell, and rounds of “Old McDonald” and “Johnny Works with a Hammer.”

The students practice their line skills again as they head back to Hanson’s class — with another stop at the bathroom first  — and then she tells friends to sit in their seats. Kalix is one of two students who remember, and gets a special Starburst candy for being a good friend.

The friends make a snack of palm trees and letters out of celery sticks, peanut butter and Alpha-Bits cereal. Kalix passes out the plates.

At Kalix’s table, the friends line up the cereal and name each other’s letters.

Next up is math. Kalix looks nervous.

“I don’t know math,” he said.

Hanson passes out handfuls of plastic shapes called manipulatives, and the students busily build things. Kalix takes several octagons and builds himself a monster truck.

He points to a tablemate’s creation. “That’s the obstacle course,” he said.

“We introduce the manipulatives to show them and get them used to them and the rules” before the lesson, Hanson said.
The volume increases as the students build, and Hanson reminds the friends about indoor voices to quiet them down.
“It wasn’t me,” Kalix mouths.

Recess comes again — with playground access this time — and the students race and play. Kalix asks to be timed as he runs back and forth.

Then, it’s back to the classroom to get backpacks and new name tags for bus students, and Kalix is dismissed to the cafeteria to await his bus.

“It’s been a long day at school today,” said Kalix. “A long day.”

His bus is one of the last to arrive, and he and other young bus riders karate-chop their backpacks while they wait.

When his bus is announced via the crackle of hand-held radios and the loudspeaker, Kalix shouts “Hooray!”
He heads out to the bus and climbs aboard.

One day down.