The First Thing Preschoolers Ever Taught Me

I first started running regular preschooler circle times as a 14-year-old baseball coach. It was an experiment by the Corvallis, Oregon Parks & Rec Department. They called it Snoopy League and I, along with another young colleague, were to "coach" four- and five-year-old baseball players.They gave us oversized plastic bats, tennis balls and a spare field in one of the parks. It was summer so they also gave us a plastic tarp and told us that we could use a garden hose to make a "slip-and-slide" on especially hot days. That was pretty much all the instruction.I was hired, I think, because I had experience with baseball, but also because I had a fairly extensive babysitting resume due to a dearth of willing 12-16 year-old girls in our immediate neighborhood. That had paid $1 per hour while this baseball gig was going to fill my pockets at the rate of $3.15 per hour. Woo hoo!I'd never coached before, but I had been coached since I was eight, so I had an idea of how it worked. Within the…