Call it homecoming.

Forty-one years ago, first-day kindergartener Kara Harmon stepped from the family’s Ford Pinto and posed happily for a photo in front of Walnut Avenue Elementary School.

In the fall, now Kara D’Amato, she stood for a photo by the same building wall, but this time as a teacher at the Chino school, where she teaches in the same classroom that she attended in 1975.

“I feel like this is where I’m meant to be,” said D’Amato, who has been teaching in her former kindergarten classroom since 2014. “I definitely feel like this is a strong place, there is a heart here.”

Much has changed, but much has not.

She believes the counter is the one that she sat on while her teacher Mrs. Gasman tested her. She remembers the metal “tunnels” on the playground, the place where she sat in the classroom, and the field where she and her classmates played “Duck, Duck, Goose.”

Growing up, she lived on Benson Avenue, less than a mile from Walnut Avenue Elementary. Across from her childhood home, a field of corn grew in what is now the Target shopping center.

D’Amato’s first teaching job in 1997 was the fourth grade at Borba Fundamental School in Chino. She also taught kindergarten at Borba. In 2013, she joined the staff at Walnut Avenue, teaching transitional kindergartners for a year in a different classroom. In summer 2014, she returned to her old kindergarten classroom.

In the early 2000s, D’Amato and her parents were all employed by CVUSD at the same time.

D’Amato and her mother, Trish Harmon, a retired emergency room nurse, were at Chaparral Elementary School in Chino Hills as a teacher and a health technician, respectively.

Her father, Jerry Harmon, also taught at Briggs Fundamental School in Chino, and was an administrator at Ramona Junior High in Chino and Townsend Junior High in Chino Hills.

She also loves when she sees or gets a visit from former students.

“I’ve gone to a wedding already, a baby shower, and a couple of graduations,” she said. A former student took her order at a fast food restaurant, another was her waitress, and another a school photographer on the job at Walnut Avenue Elementary.

D’Amato recalls her kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Gasman, leading students in art projects, reading simple rhyming books, and pinning notes onto kindergartners’ clothing with straight pins.

D’Amato’s parents often volunteer in her classroom. The children call them “Papa Jerry” and “Grandma Trish.”

“I never had children, so I tell (my parents) that these are your grandchildren,” D’Amato said.

– Submitted by Chino Valley Unified School District