Day one on the road to high school graduation

The 15 fidgeting and excited 5-year-olds began their kindergarten through 12th-grade journey on Tuesday with La Conner Elementary teacher Judy Zimmerman.

Zimmerman, also known as “Mrs. Z,” corralled her rambunctious charges into a half circle, sitting quietly as she flipped through a picture book describing the story while animatedly explaining school rules.

She covered the basics — how to use the classroom bathroom, with its high-tech light sensors and automatic soap dispensers. She told them they will have to listen attentively as they grow accustomed to a new school routine and big building.

There’s a lot to look at in Mrs. Z’s classroom: an old bee’s nest dangles from the ceiling, the walls are hung with soft furs and pelts from her husband’s trappings, a desk is made from the old elementary school gym, a gaping puffer fish hangs high above the child-sized mock kitchen, and the posters and artwork range from Native American designs to hand-drawn dog portraits.

Parents say goodbye to their children at her door — a bittersweet parting moment that she understands completely.

After graduating from La Conner High School, Zimmerman earned a nursing degree at Skagit Valley College. Following her nursing career, she became a stay-at-home mom to her four children. When it was time to send her oldest daughter to kindergarten, she says she wasn’t at all ready to let go — she went to school every day to volunteer.

A teacher told her, “If you’re going to be here every day, why don’t you just get a job here?”

And so she did — working as an educational assistant for many years in nearly every grade in the La Conner Schools.

When she was told she’d make a good teacher, Zimmerman, who was 52 at the time, initially thought, “I’m too old to go back to college.”

But she did — for two more years in a teaching program.

“I applied for a job right away here; of course I wanted to work in La Conner,” she said.

She’s currently on her ninth year of teaching, and she says the job hasn’t lost its luster.

Her co-workers describe her as helpful and loving. To the new kindergarteners, she’s a towering authority figure inside an alien environment — so she works hard to make her classroom feel comfortable to them.

“I think we live in such a natural place in the Skagit Valley that it has to be reflected in the classroom,” Zimmerman said, “This classroom should look like something familiar to them, not a strange place they go to for a year.”

Sally Azure, her full-time educational aide, said Zimmerman “doesn’t treat them like babies. She pushes them and they’re ready for first grade by the time they get there.”

Teacher Katie Wigal and her aide Naomi Williams from the other kindergarten class say Zimmerman is a thoughtful, fun and creative teacher. Wigal says Zimmerman is good at differentiating between the children and their individual levels of learning.

“The kids love her,” Wigal said, and so do her colleagues, who are frequently treated with her home-baked treats. “She’s like everybody’s warm hug.”

Mrs. Z’s goals are holistic, and “more than just the ABC’s,” though her students do a lot of that, too. Ultimately, she wants them to learn to take care of each other, be kind, have high goals and a voice for themselves and to be productive members of their communities. She is especially grateful to be teaching the young children.

“Kindergarteners have so much faith. They have faith that each day I’ll be here, that the lights will be on. They believe that someone will love them and that their parents will pick them up,” she said. “They’ll hold hands with anyone — doesn’t matter if they’re a boy or girl. They’re just so brand new.”

“There’s a lot of joy in this job,” she said. “The best thing to spend on your children is time.”

She still gets weepy at the end of each year, she said, as she says goodbye to her “class family.” But she remains always ready to welcome her next crop of kindergartners to grow into students.

“When you get older,” she said, “you learn to appreciate the small things in life and these are the small things.”