The Ice Cream Monster Anonymous

My day is sticky fingerprints on crisp notebook sheets; healing playground rifts and easing the transition from playtime to classwork; overcoming the ice cream monster. Had anyone told me ten years earlier that I would spend much of my time teaching toddlers the fundamental aspects of literary and numeracy, I would have been aghast.

As a young child, I disliked all facets of childhood, including my still developing form which masked my intelligence from the world. I slipped my mother's psychology texts out of her bookshelf when she wasn't looking and devoured studies of the African condition underneath the cover of my pastel pink duvet. I did not paint garish representations of my home in my sketchpad; I drew, instead, innovations such as children's cooking utensils which would be safe enough to allay my mother's apprehension of my presence in the kitchen. I was precocious but scowled when adults told me so, for it was considered 'exceptional' that I would know its meaning. Thus, my disdain for youth gradually evolved into a desire to eliminate the intellectual and creative confines which are inadvertently placed upon children.

I now work as a Learning Support Tutor for pupils aged four to seven. For four days a week, over six...