When Aubrey Bailey graduates from Tigard High School on June 5, she will be among the last batch of students to receive a collection of photos, tokens and kind wishes harking back to their time in Diane Bonica’s kindergarten classes.
That’s because Bonica retired after her kindergarten class at Deer Creek Elementary School ended in 2014. A dozen years later, graduates of the class are receiving their diplomas – and Bonica’s personalized gift packages.
In all, across 28 years of teaching kindergarten, Bonica distributed packages to about 570 former students, one graduating class at a time. Many students from the class ending in 2014 are graduating from Tigard-Tualatin, Beaverton and Sherwood school districts.
When Bonica’s gift arrived at Bailey’s home, the “heart-warming” package caught her by surprise, Bailey says. “I was very excited to see that she still cared about us and wanted to remind us of our time together,” she says.
The 18-year-old, who plans to study chemistry at Oregon State University starting in the fall, understood the package to be a gift of “life-long encouragement.”
For each former student, Bonica has painstakingly included a card featuring a personal message, a book containing photos of the student in kindergarten and a bag of a dozen tokens representing a host of best wishes.
As the students enter adulthood, Bonica says she wants to remind them one last time to keep stretching and bending as they grow, in keeping with the giraffe, an ever-present mascot in her classes.
In effect, she’s also exercising her belief that no act of kindness is wasted. “There’s always time for kindness for friends, your family and yourself,” Bonica says. “It’s just a small thing that can make such a big difference.”
Such gestures by kindergarten teachers everywhere are common, if not always overtly celebrated, Bonica says. “There are so many teachers that do this kind of stuff,” she says.
Nevertheless, Marie-Louise Shockloss, a retired head secretary who formerly helped distribute Bonica’s end-of-year packages to former students, calls Bonica’s traditional gesture “magical.”
“You could see the glow in their eyes and how much it meant to them,” Shockloss says. “It was just special for her to remember them – and show them that she remembered them.”
Considering how she feels about kindergartners, how could she not?
Bonica calls kindergartners “the world’s most perfect humans.” They try hard, they’re sunny in their curiosity and they wear their hearts on their sleeves, she says.
The bonds they form with their teachers could hardly be more intimate, as teachers wipe their noses, tie their shoes and pick them up when they fall. “You just took care of these kids,” Bonica says.
Bonica taught kindergarten in the Tigard-Tualatin School District for 20 years and, before that, in a Utah school district for eight years. Though opportunities to teach other grade levels arose, Bonica says, “I thought, if kindergarten has my heart, I should stay there.”
Each year, she has begun working on her packages in January.
For each, Bonica has included a copy of “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom,” a book by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault that established yearlong themes for her classes. On the surface, the book is about letters of the alphabet scrambling up and down a coconut tree – and then trying again.
Inside the book’s cover, Bonica has filled much of two pages with photos she took of the recipient a dozen years earlier, and in the process, she has revisited her fond memories of the former chicks in her chicken run. “Many of these kids I haven’t seen in 12 years, but I never forget them,” Bonica says.
She supplies a card with notes containing individual memories and encouragement, and a goodie bag full of a dozen tokens, along with a legend explaining their meaning – for instance, a key to unlock the senior’s potential, a penny to work good luck and a candle to foster guidance in dark times.
In some cases, Bonica says she has given her commemorative gifts to second- and third-siblings from the same family, who took turns moving through her kindergarten class.
Later, ex-students from many class years have invited Bonica to their athletic matches, musical recitals, commencements and weddings. Bonica says she’s still in touch with some former students from her first kindergarten class, ending in 1974. Last summer, she says, she attended the wedding of the daughter of one former student who had died.
Now 74, Bonica looks forward to next year with some apprehension, as she no longer will enjoy the work of preparing her gifts and revisiting her memories for another crop of former kindergartners receiving diplomas.
Why? “It was a work of love,” she says.
