In the fall of 2023, I had the opportunity to teach transitional kindergarten for the first time. I had spent most of my career teaching kindergarten and didn't think this variation would prove to be so very different.

On the first day, after a quick breakfast and a walk down a hall that was relatively long for little legs, we made our way to the classroom. I had planned to begin our day with a read aloud, just as I had so many times before. When I invited the children to the rug, how-ever, many chose not to come and others stood up and walked away as I began to read. It was a tremendously humbling moment. Of the 16 students who had followed me to the classroom, only five were still sitting on the rug at the conclusion of our story. While serving as a Literacy Specialist for two years, I had observed similar situations in kindergarten through 5th-grade classrooms. It seemed that in every classroom I entered, I would see between two to five students opting out of whole-group learning. At times, these students would sit at their desks or in cozy nooks around the room displaying various degrees of engagement and disruption.