His mother poured him a bowl of cereal and Tristan munched on his food silently. Nearby, 8-year-old brother Chase casually criticized the cereal selection, wishing the family pantry had Lucky Charms or Cocoa Puffs rather than bland Cheerios.
But Tristan was not chatty. Instead the blond boy stared solemnly at the final cereal rings in his milk before gulping down the bowl’s contents.
 New kindergartener Tristan Hofmann heads out the door of the family home Monday, bound for his first day of classes at Kings Mountain Elementary School. Kim Ritner / Review |
His mother zipped like a hummingbird through the kitchen, quickly clearing the empty cereal bowls, pulling a sweatshirt over Tristan’s head and handing him his Spiderman lunchbox.
“All right buddy, have fun today,” said his father, as Tristan climbed into the car.
Tristan, like 268 other new kindergarteners at Cabrillo Unified schools, was embarking on a big step of independence and maturity. With a new crop of children venturing away from home and the loving protection of their parents for the first time, students are experiencing a hodgepodge of emotions. Some children cry, others plead with their parents not to leave, and others are thrilled to be on their own.
Walking into the campus of Kings Mountain Elementary with dozens of older students, Tristan tightened the grip on his mother’s hand. He squeezed so hard that the whites of his knuckles showed.
Gathering in the kindergarten classroom at Kings Mountain, Tristan sat cross-legged with 18 other students and stared wide-eyed at the class’s new authority figure: Kindergarten teacher Barbara “Princess Barbie” Hutton, who introduced herself to the students in an airy voice dripping in honey.
“Here, we’ll learn how to share,” Hutton told her students. “We learn to use our nice voice, to be nice to each other, and we’ll learn to sit on the rug and raise our hands.”
More parents than students flanked the class from the back wall, almost every one of them snapping photos with digital cameras. After a few minutes, Hutton politely asked the parents — in the same soft voice — to go to the “Tea and Tissues” room — a separate room specially prepared for parents coping with leaving their children.
“This is my baby boy,” said Emma Hofmann, Tristan’s mom. “Once they’re in school they become so much more independent. They get into sports and playdates and sleepovers, and suddenly they’re entirely independent.”
Chewing a complimentary piece of honeydew, Alex Geranios looked a bit older than most of the other parents. He had come to see his grandson’s first day of school, and unlike many of the other parents, Geranios had been through all this before with his own children. He found the emotional parents to be a bit funny.
“At my age, you enjoy this more,” he said. “There’s less pressure, and I can see other parents making mistakes that I once did.”
In the classroom, Tristan was carefully writing his name in black crayon on his first work assignment, slowly drawing each memorized letter with his hand cupping his cheek.
Ms. Hutton announced to the class that it would have some “free time,” meaning the students could play with the various toys in the classroom. Tristan immediately went for the Legos, and two girls joined him in tinkering with the building blocks.
“They had these at my old school,” Tristan said. “Except that school had more.”
After scrounging through the Lego box, Tristan joined a nearby boy playing with plastic dinosaurs. The other boy had set up an entire forest of plastic trees for his big T-rex to strut through.
Grabbing a triceratops, Tristan began knocking down the forest, acting as if his plastic dinosaur was chewing on the trees. The other boy howled in protest, as if someone had just kicked down his sandcastle.
Later, Ms. Hutton told the students they could go outside and play on the schoolyard.
Chewing on the zipper of his sweatshirt, Tristan sat forlornly on the margin of the playground, observing the other students. His brother, Chase, shot hoops in the schoolyard, smiling and laughing out loud as he and his friends took turns hurling the heavy ball at the basket.
Tristan approached, and Chase stopped a wayward rebound, tossing his little brother the basketball.
Stepping over to the foul line, Tristan got a running start and hurled the ball, shot-put like, toward the basket.
The ball went wide and well under the basket, but Tristan smiled.
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