A Close-Up Look At People Who Matter : For ‘Mrs. Pat,’ Teaching Kids Is Child’s Play

For “Mrs. Pat,” there is no place for dallying in preschool.

“We don’t take any naps,” said Patricia Watkins, a teacher in the preschool program at Shadow Ranch Park in Canoga Park for the last 15 years who is affectionately called “Mrs. Pat” by the children. “We don’t have time for that.”

For three hours each weekday, Watkins fills the worlds of the children in her care with gluing projects, lettering, books and games of “Duck, Duck, Goose.”

Watkins pays for the supplies herself and sometimes works for free when the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks’ annual budget falls short.

Indeed, she worked as a volunteer her first three years.

“I don’t need expensive clothes,” Watkins said. More important to her are school projects, such as helping kids make a pumpkin out of construction paper or draw the letters of the alphabet for the first time.

Other programs get by with simple games and other activities that need no supplies.

“I don’t believe in that,” Watkins said. “These kids are ready to learn.”

Watkins speaks plainly, with a Midwestern accent. She was born in Missouri, and her family moved to California when she was 6 months old. Her husband was in the Navy when they married in 1948, and they have two children. It was while watching the children of other Navy families and at schools at Navy bases that she learned her child-care skills.

The family moved to a house within walking distance of Shadow Ranch Park 30 years ago, and when Watkins’ granddaughter started going to the preschool program there, she started volunteering.

“She’s terrific,” said Tracie Field, director of Shadow Ranch Park since February. “She gives of her own time and uses her own resources. It would be a struggle to replace her.”

As Watkins works her way around the classroom, checking on the children and praising them on their attempts to glue together Halloween pumpkins made of construction paper, one little girl stands motionless with a sad face. Slowly, tears build up in her eyes.

“Tell me, what happened?” Watkins asks as she comforts the girl. They talk quietly for a while. Finally, Watkins says: “Come on, we’re going to do more work. You’re going to be fine.”

The girl visibly begins to feel better and after a few minutes rejoins the other students. “She just feels sad because her mother left,” Watkins explains.

Along with the half a dozen or so projects that Watkins presents in her classroom each day, she also has to handle complaints about hitting and being tired. But it all comes with the territory.

“I love children,” Watkins said. “I have the best job in the world.”

And the children seem to feel the same way about her. “You can hear them yourself, saying, ‘Mrs. Pat . . . Mrs. Pat,’ ” Field said.

Those are words that Watkins hears often from former students. They may spot her in a store, buying supplies for the class, and call out to her. Or they may see her picking up her granddaughters, one at Hale Middle School and the other at El Camino Real High School.

After teaching so many children over the years, Watkins may not immediately recognize every former student who approaches her. “But then they tell me some little thing they used to do, and I’ll remember them,” she said.

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