Kindergarten Today

Spring Cleaning

I have begun a process that I should have started years ago. Teachers tend to be packrats and keep just about anything and everything that might be useful. However, there comes a time when you know the closet must be cleaned and the files must be thinned! So, I am cleaning out my curriculum files. I have long held on to lesson plans and ideas and patterns that I have never used. They are outdated and many are for higher grades. You know how it is: “I might use that someday.” Well, someday has come and gone and if I still haven’t used it, it’s going in the trash. Time to be selective and keep only the best materials. Time to make room for more Common Core lessons. Time to get rid of clutter before I start planning my retirement! 

What next?

I yelled at the television last night. I know…rookie mistake. Legislators don’t listen to real people anyway, much less those trying to talk to them through the screen. But seriously…what are going to do next to undermine education in this state?  

First we adopted Common Core without the money to fully implement it. We don’t have the money to update our technology and make computers available to all of our students, even though CC requires that we do so. We don’t have the money to hire more regular ed. teachers and reduce class sizes. We don’t have the money to hire more special ed. teachers and provide individual students with the added assistance they will need to pass the new expectations. We don’t have the money to hire more teaching assistants.   We don’t have the money for new materials and supplies. We don’t have the money for extra training.

Then we asked some school districts to teach the new CC goals and demand higher levels of performance from students while at the same time packing more of them into overcrowded classrooms with less and less one-to-one teacher time. Some elementary classes now boast 25-30 students! Most experts agree that 15-20 is the optimum class size for truly effective teaching. Most classrooms were designed for 15-20.

Now…now we are going to “allow” some schools to meet the requirements of Common Core in half the time???? Optional half-day kindergarten? What in the world are we thinking? I am a pretty good teacher and I have a difficult time teaching everything my students need in the time allotted to us from 7:45 to 2:45. By the time we subtract two meals, bathroom breaks, two recesses, and a little music, art, and science, we barely have enough time to fully teach the language, reading, writing, and math skills now required by the state. We don’t even have naps anymore! So how is a teacher going to accomplish just as much in half the time?? We can’t overlook anything in the curriculum or let students slide on any skill because mandatory retention (also passed as law) is just around the corner in third grade! These students must be fully prepared and capable of passing the state reading test. So are half-day kindergarten teachers going to completely give up on recess, art, music, and science in order to teach enough reading, writing, and math?

And what will the teachers do during the other half of the day? Teach another kindergarten class, thus doubling their planning and assessment time? Or teach another subject/class? I was once offered a job teaching kindergarten in the morning and three classes of fifth grade English in the afternoon. Does anyone understand how incredibly difficult it would be to do any of that effectively?

What will working parents do with their kindergarten children in the afternoon? Put them into a daycare that may or may not support our educational goals? Leave them with someone who parks them in front of a television or hands them a game device?

Of course this law is being proposed for the sake of the budget, not to improve the education of our children.

What next? What will the guys in the suits- who haven’t been near a real classroom in years- think of to undermine our attempts to educate our children to compete in a world that is plagued by financial and political problems created by more guys in suits? 

Here we go...

Last nine weeks! Each year I get to this point and ask “How did this happen?” Even though some weeks seem to drag on forever- usually due to bad weather, behavior problems, or some temporary stress- most seem to race by far too quickly. So much to learn…so little time!

During the next nine weeks we will be learning some new lessons about blends and contractions and grammar, but for the most part we will be working on reading fluency and comprehension. And there will be lots of review, testing, and tutoring. It’s time to make sure my little ones are ready for first grade!

One of the girls in another class asked me yesterday, “Is tutoring good or bad?”

I replied, “It isn’t good OR bad. It’s necessary.”

She wrinkled her brow and asked, “What does that mean?”

“It means if you need it, you get it.”

“Oh…” Big smile. “Good.”

I thought it best not to follow that with anything else. Lol

My colleagues and I have almost daily conversations during lunch and recess about the progress of our students. We give each other encouragement and ideas. We compare the success or failure of lessons and techniques. We plan ahead. Even though I am much older, I welcome their ideas and perspective. Not only are they excellent teachers, but they still have children at home. They are “in the trenches” planning lessons, grading papers, AND helping with homework each night. They are also much more technically adept and aware than I am. If I have a computer problem I know where to turn.

So…here we go…planning the last nine weeks of school. I can’t believe I will soon be standing in the front of the cafeteria handing out that last report card. 

Tell me what you know...

Report card testing is usually encouraging, sometimes surprising, always enlightening, and once in a while quite entertaining. Such was the case this week.

One of my students has made remarkable progress this year. She went from seldom following directions, often ignoring me, and barely understanding half of what we were doing to reading a book to me yesterday and passing her report card test with very little hesitation. And the sentences she wrote yesterday afternoon were outstanding! So proud of her.

Another of my students surprised me, but not in a good way. One of the concepts we have worked on since September is still beyond his grasp and I can’t seem to get through to him. Still pondering some alternate ways to explain it.

One of the more amusing aspects of testing is asking my students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. I think I’m saying it clearly each morning. I think we have read it. I think they understand it. But the recitations vary from unintelligible to hilarious. One child combined the pledge with something she has heard in church and came up with “one nation, under God, blessed and forever”. I think I like that better!

Of course the goal of this quarter’s testing is to analyze each student’s progress and figure out how to “tweak” them in the next nine weeks so they will be ready for first grade. Clearly some of my students need a lot more tweaking than others. Lots more work ahead of us!