When you want to understand kindergarten, the best thing you can do is ask a kindergartener.

The answers came quickly, and they came honestly: lunch, pizza, playing, friends, a teacher who reads books aloud, a teacher who gives candy, and one remarkable answer — a teacher who also happens to be your dad.

On a morning in late May, a small group of Du Quoin Elementary kindergarteners gathered around a table just a few days before the end of the school year. First grade was almost within sight. Principal Amanda Milam sat nearby, listening.

The conversation began with names — each child announcing their own with varying degrees of calm or enthusiasm — and soon turned into a lively debate about pizza, chicken strips, noodles, and whose mom makes the best food of all. That debate was inconclusive.

Then a child noticed the recorder.

"You're recording everything we say right here."

I confirmed it was gold. A child's eyes lit up.

"Hey, am I rich now?"

The logic was impeccable.

It was that kind of morning. At one point, something fluffy drifted past the window — cottony white shapes floating through the air. Several children thought it was snowing. One called it "cotton fest." I gently explained they were seed pods, and that some of them might turn into plants somewhere down the road. The lesson landed in about four seconds, then the conversation moved on.

That's kindergarten.

When the subject turned to teachers, each student spoke warmly about the adult who had guided their year. One loved that his teacher was also his dad. Another valued a teacher who helps her read. Several mentioned teachers who make learning feel safe and manageable — and more than one credited a supply of candy as a meaningful classroom strategy.

As they described first grade — now visible on the horizon — the group split into roughly equal parts excited and apprehensive. One child simply announced: "I'm not excited." Another wanted to be in the classroom her older brother had occupied, before realizing he'd be moving on too. A third said math was what she was looking forward to most.

One child, Ailani, volunteered to spell her own name when I asked. She did it confidently, one letter at a time: A-I-L-A-N-I. That, too, is kindergarten — a child who could not have done that nine months ago, doing it now without thinking.

Principal Milam joined the conversation midway through, and the students were asked to guess what she loves most about her job. They offered reasonable theories: keeping students safe, watching the security cameras, giving out candy. Then Milam asked the question herself.

"Can I ask you guys a question? Who's sitting around this table right now?"

One child answered: "Children."

"Do you think that's my favorite thing about this job?" she said. "Yes, it is. You all are my favorite thing."

I told the children how lucky that made them — that by some coincidence of the universe, the person who runs their school counts them as her favorite part of the day.

Before wrapping up, Superintendent Diana Rea, sitting quietly at an adjacent workspace, turned the tables one more time, asking the kindergarteners what they'd tell incoming students about what to expect.

One boy, whose younger brother will be arriving in kindergarten next fall, offered the most generous answer: "I'm just right across the hallway, so he can come."

That sense of belonging — that the building grows more familiar as you move through it, that someone is always nearby who knows you — may be the truest thing any of them said all morning.

I described it like this to the children: imagine the tallest skyscraper you can picture, all the way to the foundation it rests on. Kindergarten, he told them, is that foundation — what you're building right now is what everything else will stand on.

Margot considered it. Arlo considered it. Memphis considered it, briefly, before probably thinking about lunch.

They're five and six years old. The skyscraper has barely begun.

But the foundation looks strong.