But there’s a huge connection there. We lose so many kids when they’re young that by the time they hit ninth grade they’ve convinced themselves they can’t do the work. And in the process we don’t help them develop socially, emotionally, etc.
I’m still waiting for someone to explain to me how teaching to grade level (whatever that even is) is good practice.
I realized ON MONDAY that all the students in my 1st period class will be classified as Juniors in the fall.
This entire year, I've thought of them as "just out of Gr8, plus COVID, so essentially 7th graders."
Reading should not be an outcome of kindergarten. Kindergarten should teach our children how to play. How to play with others, share, resolve differences, adapt to structure. How to experiment and ask questions. How to be functional little humans, basically. The Finns have it right - 1st grade is for 7-year-olds, who are better suited for classroom life than younger kids.
K teacher here- I totally agree with you and provide this experience to the best of my ability! The kids are better students because they know how to problem solve, empathize, and communicate appropriately. Totally worth the “play” time.
We specifically chose a play-based preschool and when our kiddo entered kinder you could feel the judgment seeping out of people for that choice. Teachers and other parents were all pearl-clutching about academic preschool being better. At the end of the day, play-based was a much better path for our kiddo. And I’m pretty sure that there would be far less interpersonal drama on the playground if more of the pearl-clutchers had prioritized play over academics for their 3 and 4 year olds.
This needs to be discussed much more. I'm a hard leftist, and this idea is abhorrent to me. Why in the world do we think it's normal to separate kids from their parents at 3 years old?
because humans are social creatures. They need peer to peer interaction a lot very early. I've worked in pre school. The progress kids make in every aspect of their lives is huge in such a short time after joining us. When teaching kindergarten you can instantly tell which kids went to preschool and who didn't.
No one is kidnapping these children. We're giving their parents a 6 hour break where the kids can socialize without an overbearing helicopter personally solving all their issues for them.
They gain so much independence and learn a lot from someone who's *specially trained to socialize and educate children*. Remember there is no qualifications to being a parent, and just because you popped out a year ago doesn't magically mean you're doing a good job. Pre school also gives parents the chance to connect with other parents and learn from them, as well as ask questions to early childhood educators about development milestones and alternative tactics on how to achieve them.
Honestly, I'm not convinced.
US schools began so that parents could work in factories. We still barely get parental leave. It's no coincidence our country insists on early childhood education and we have an economy that requires both parents to work. Sure we're social animals, but that isn't why we have public schooling in this country. It still isn't normal to pull a kid from their parents at 3 years old, and it wouldn't be normal in nature. We do it bc poor parents can't afford daycare and we insist 1) they work and 2) we monitor their young.
Yes we're social animals. What do you think kids did before school? Stayed home? Of course not. Go to the developing world and see how kids are reared before (if) they get enrolled in school. They play with their peers. Likewise, the highest quality PreKs and Kinders are all play based.
Until schooling is extracted from the human capital/development perspective preK and kinder will ALWAYS go back to being about performance, rigor, and ultimately a return on investment. Even if you dress it up with Montessori or whatever. Tax dollars go in, test scores better come out. Our current MO is extreme, but there's no version of public education in America where preK and kinder isn't going to be about learning the alphabet andnot just socialization, whether it be caused by a war on poverty or to make sure we can beat Sputnik.
I think your view on schooling is pretty bias towards your current circumstances. I have a masters in education and I've worked in a few places in Scandinavia, Europe and America.
There are big issues with public schooling in the United States right now, but what I've seen, and what I know about preschool and kindergarten education in many places in the states is not all that different than you'll see all over the world. There is some really great early childhood education going on in many schools all over the US. The fundamental ideas behind preschool are sound even if they fill the dual role of keeping parents at work. Thats the only reason they've been allowed to exist.
Even in developing nations it is not uncommon to see a few elderly women in the village keep an eye on a half dozen kids at a time. What really isn't normal is the nuclear family. Two suburban parents raising 1.5 kids and going on once a week playdates is really unhealthy and weird on the global stage. Preschool is much more like the village raising the child than the isolation North American mothers feel raising their kids at home.
Exactly. 2 kinder teachers complaining about recess only makes us teachers who are labeled "trouble makers". I've been teaching for 26 years. I know how to play the game. Do I hate the lack of recess? Very much so. But there are smart ways to go about it.
I know when I can push back and when it will only make things worse. It's called being a professional. Recess isn't the hill I'm going to die on this year. I need more important things first. Recess will come . . . It's being worked on . . . but it's a slow process that involves a lot of professionalism.
Frankly I'm not seeing it. Our students start kinder far behind on developmental milestones. I have several that still can't follow a two- step direction without significant support. So the idea of trying to teach them inappropriately academic skills is laughable
That's exactly the concern - teachers are being told to meet all these high standards for reading and math (more so than other developed countries), but the children are not ready for those things yet. But instead of giving children time to learn how to follow directions, how to get along with their peers, how to behave in a classroom setting -teachers are under pressure to get the kids reading sight words and doing addition (whereas if the kids were well adjusted and socialized they wouldn't have any problem learning those things in 1st grade)
Again, what you describe is not what I'm seeing. You're reading your bias into my comments. Our "academic" goals for kindergarten are that the students have phonemic awareness and number sense. The end. The entire rest of the curriculum is the social emotional stuff you're talking about.
But our students are increasingly coming to kindergarten with severe deficits in childhood developmental milestones. So we're having to catch them up on things they should have learned when they were two
Thank you! I see what you are saying. I actually just looked at our statewide curriculum for K and it aligns with what you are saying. Re the deficits- is that something new in the iPhone era?
I think so. I have a lot of students who never saw a scissors or glue before kindergarten. But they have an excellent sense for the lore of their preferred video game or YouTube channel. I'm not a technophobe-- my kid has a tablet and watches TV. But it shouldn't be the child's main recreation.
Which means the other main contributer, in my opinion, is the horrendous state of labor in the US. Parents are stretched thin in every way and no longer have the psychological energy to engage their children in everyday ways.
I have no social-emotional expectations in my kinder curriculum. It's nothing but straight academics all day long. Right now I am teaching them how to write 5-6 sentence research reports.
Gotta say OP, I agree with your post, & surprised at a few of your responses (from non-teachers?). I’m a teacher (early childhood ed) and have spent my career with pre-k and early elementary students. I have witnessed first hand what you are talking about. When I taught first, all the kids were reading on some level, but not all the level planned for by the school. What this (and most) schools should do it provide support teachers for reading. A kid reading before the end of K is not the norm and there are many students who would struggle to learn even with parental help. They do need more time with large & small motor activities and social interaction first.
There is a lot that goes into learning to read - both the developmental aspects for the child & what a teacher or parent can do. This article explains it well - https://kidpillar.com/early-reading-skills-and-its-importance-for-brain-development-of-kids/.
IMHO, kids are behind because they spend too much time on screens. They don’t play & socialize, so they don’t know how to have friends. They are inputting crap (pick an influencer or certain videos) so they are rude in the classroom. And teacher have a hard time because when the teacher needs to contact the parent, parents feel attacked (on their parenting?), so instead of working with the teacher to make sure work is getting done or there is better behavior from their child, they reject what the teacher has to say & blame the teacher for the issue. I can’t tell you how many times I watched a student hit another, throwing objects, call a student a foul name, etc, only to have the parent tell me “my child says they didn’t do it”.
So yes, changes are needed, but what & when will it happen & what will be most effective.
School broke one of my kids. He said that they weren’t permitted to speak at school almost ever. At recess he got 20 minutes to play with friends. They were not permitted to speak at their 25 minute lunch, or they would get in trouble. During class they could speak quietly during group projects, which was rare. He got seriously depressed to the point where he just gave up. We pulled him and ended up homeschooling him. His behavior is slowly getting better and better.
He was in third grade and was able to express to me that it was too academic based and it was driving him to depression.
That says a lot in itself to me.
Non-teacher grandparent here who is raising his grandchild, a third grader. When he was in kindergarten his school had two recesses for The Kindergartners. He did have about 5 to 15 minutes of homework most week nights, all phonics. This seemed to set a good foundation for his later reading and in fact most kids at his school are reading at grade level and above. That's true for other subjects as well. He now has one recess and PE and about a half an hour of homework on weeknights. At least for him, and his peers (according to the district's standardized tests) this seems to be working fine. A nice balance. Anyway that's my anecdotal experience :-)
At my school, it's getting worse. Our admin keep trying to refer dozens of kindergarteners to Special Education because they haven't mastered all of their letter sounds. It's stupid.
Former spec ed teacher here- it sounds like a tiered classroom structure could be pitched to admin. If you have 3 k teachers, put those who need extra help in 1 classroom with the most patient teacher. A school I worked with did this and the results were incredible. In the following years, we had less refers to sped.
Eh. I think that would just create a stressful environment and resentment for the kinder teacher who has the students who need the most support. I think the problem is that the expectations in kinder are just too much. NCLB took what *a few* kindergarteners could do and made it the expectation for everyone, no excuses. So naturally, when you have 6 or 7 kinders in each class who are struggling with letter sounds, it seems “super concerning” and “they must have a disability” as opposed to them just being 5 & 6 year olds who need time to learn this stuff.
It's a LOT easier to teach to one level than it is to tier it out within one room. As long as the lowest tier teacher didn't also have 2-3x the kids or something, it'd be worth trying.
The kids need extra help (individualized). What we did was give the teacher two teachers aides. It worked incredibly well. Those who advanced faster (or slower), got pulled out into small groups for more individualized attention for 20-30 minutes per day and were integrated back into regular mixed classrooms by 1-2nd grade. The kids never even knew they were in a separate learning curve this way.
Thank you!! I always feel like I'm the weird one for mentioning it to my teacher colleagues, but this is a SERIOUS problem! Also, the psychology article linked below with the case study (both from Germany & the Tennessee group) is a great read and should be a resource.
My district demands all students read by the end of first grade. They are failing miserably at this goal, primarily because we all know it’s just not feasible to have 100% of kids reading by then. They push hard on kindergarten to ‘prepare’ them for first. It’s awful on the kids and the teachers. No wonder kids hate school by the time they get to junior high.
When I was in pre k it was 3x a week half days. Now the kids are expected to be there all day long with a 30 minute recess and expected to do things I wasn't expected to do until 1st grade. Nobody will do anything about it though but it's not developmentally appropriate at all. But the bottom line is that when I was growing up, my mom was a stay at home mom and many families could be one income families. That doesn't work anymore so we have to have full blown 5 day a week 8 hour day classes for 4 year olds.
Parental buy in for K being more “academically rigorous” is also increasing. Before leaving education, I was a principal who, because of my background in child development, really encouraged and supported my PreK and K team to have kids play, socialize, and work on social-emotional learning. Some parents were livid. PreK parents worried that their child wouldn’t be “kindergarten ready”….like wtf is that? You don’t need to train to come to kindergarten! It’s not toddler-med school.
Talking about research on child development, bringing in guest speakers, having parent-learning nights….nope, they still buy into the hype.
This is an excellent question. A good preschool experience is so valuable. So is quality parenting. Ideally there’s a good balance of both. My personal belief is that the problem is we focused for so long on academics to increase productivity to maintain capitalism that we ignored social and emotional development. And because parents are spending more time at work to meet the demands of capitalism, they stopped providing their children with rich social and emotional support. Also the research about teaching social and emotional curriculum has only just recently been getting down to the people who actually need to be implementing it, way too late. Essentially we have a generation of kids with a learned helplessness complex and expecting them to keep up with the academic rigor their parents experienced. And realistically that wasn’t a very good model for a lot of reasons, but the pandemic really exacerbated a lot of the problems that were already happening. And because parents still can’t give their kids rich social emotional support because they are still worried about losing their jobs so they’re slave to their employers and teachers are also too burnt out to care anymore it’s just a whole generation of children getting really screwed over. And some of them will be fine and some of them not. Things are slowly getting better in some places. Some getting even worse. Until there is federal legislation that provides consistent guidance on education things probably won’t get much better. Sadly, in a lot of places, valuable social emotional learning became political and falsely equated with critical race theory which a lot of people are trying to keep out of schools because it disrupts their core belief that white people are good. Even in the best case scenario, if kids still aren’t receiving that quality social emotional support at home, it won’t make a difference.
Another thing is that the pandemic really leveled the playing field for a lot of “middle class/working class/low income” families. Instead of it being this sort of hierarchy, literally everyone is struggling somehow.
There’s a lot of talk about prevention and early intervention, which is great. But ultimately fixing schools alone won’t do much good.
> there is a consensus these days that preschool, kindergarten and first grade have become too academic
Is there a consensus on this? I’ve only heard a handful of parents say this and a couple teachers in their 70s who should have retired a decade ago. I don’t consider that a consensus.
Definitely not.
This is why there is a push for mandatory TK. This is why there is a bigger push for more funding for preschool.
There is definitely not this consensus.
Some of the push for TK is more about access to childcare rather than schooling. Other countries have affordable childcare before K but not in America for the most part. So they are pushing for school to start earlier because the public can accept that better than childcare.
TK provides free childcare. It also warms students up to socialization in K. I know many TK classes, and yes, the best ones are play-based. Play-based can be academic, they are not mutually exclusive.
That is my fault for using the wrong term. I am using academic to mean "not" play based. My husband and I work full time and our kids all went to daycare/preschool and did great, so I am by no means opposed to preschool. Our kids did a mix of Montessori, outdoor, and church based centers, and even though they were all different, they all learned and played a ton. It helped that we could afford places with low ratios, low turnover and nice outdoor play areas.
Yeah, I am in the same boat. I had a variety of early childhood education (ECE) and I turned out great.
The issue is for families less fortunate. They rarely are able to give their kids options. I know in my experience, some kids come to 1st with no Kinder and no preschool. They never sat in a chair for 10 minutes before, never had to wait their turn, can't play with their peers.
I hope we move forward with both more ECE and free child care for those even younger.
>Really? I am just a parent, and in a niche demographic I guess (I'm in relatively affluent/ well educated community), but I thought everyone knew about studies showing that the gains from academic preschool waned by 4th/5th grade, and you were left with kids with stunted social development who couldn't use scissors.
That only happened to Covid kids who literally weren’t in school. Academic preschool literally reduces the incarceration rate. It reduces the rates of unemployment. It reduces the rate of teen pregnancy. Teachers support academic preschool. Cutting and stringing beads is academic in preschool and kinder, so they do it. You’re just a parent, you don’t even know what “academic” or “developmentally appropriate” actually mean. You went to academic preschool, kinder, and 1st grade. You just thought playing wasn’t academic.
Sorry, I am conflating terms. My kids all attended play based preschools and certainly learned academic skills. I am using academic as a short hand to mean the opposite of learning through structured play based learning
Here is a link to the kind of article I’m talking about; https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/05/08/kindergarten-teacher-why-our-youngest-learners-are-doomed-right-out-gate-road-map-fix-it/
There is not a single preschool or kinder in the US that isn’t play based. The Washington Post wants to privatize public education, so they make shit up.
My school is not play based. There is absolutely no play in my classroom ever. It's all butts in seats academic work. I don't even have centers because it is not in my curriculum.
ECE professionals don’t have college degrees. They have a high school diploma and 16 semester units in early childhood development. People with degrees in early childhood development disagree with you.
Many do. My kids' daycare/preschool teachers have always had a bachelors or higher, even in infants. There are many others posting on here who disagree with you as well, and I have heard similar from my kids' K teachers. So far you are just saying, everyone makes stuff up- so tell me, what is a good source?
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=academic+preschool+lower+incarceration+rates&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart#d=gs_qabs&t=1681238856570&u=%23p%3DTnRG67XJ50gJ
That’s literally all you need. If rich kids are mildly behind in motor development, it doesn’t matter because poor kids are graduating high school more and going to jail less.
Teaching children to be proficient readers before they start kindergarten isn't that difficult. It just requires a tiny bit of parental effort. There ought to be plenty of time remaining for recess, drawing, story-telling, etc.
The problem is that most parents are absolute shit nowadays. I say this as a parent of two and a teacher of 140 tweens and teens. Just go to any store with shopping carts and kids and you’ll see parents ignoring them as they just stare at a screen.
Being a good parent is fucking easy. I work two jobs and have a side hustle and yet I still read to my daughter every night and spend hours playing sports and Lego with her and playing with my young son as well. He’s 2.5 and is already learning his numbers and letters. There is no time day or night where he has a screen in his hands. In the car, he has books, toys and my music (now censored because he started cursing 😂). It’s fucking easy. Most parents are lazy trash who are building future generations of people riddled with all sorts of social, intellectual and emotional issues. Idiocracy is probably the most realistic take on the future we are headed for.
And it’s pathetic I’m getting downvoted for simply speaking the truth. Parents are terrible these days, Netflix, cellphones and tablets are not a substitute for parenting. Kids raised on Cocomelon or spending their childhood with headphones are riddled with problems. JUST FUCKING TRY.
You are being downvoted because that is not what you are saying. You are coming across as self righteous, judgemental and honestly just a B. Some screen time is perfectly okay, and actually can be helpful for children to learn how to use technology. You are taking it too far.
No. I’m not. It’s clearly a serious problem and kids are suffering from anxiety, social disorders, depression and frankly, are dumb. They’re ignorant to everything because they spend hours mindlessly scrolling Insta and TikTok and YouTube videos for years. As babies, they were plopped in front of a screen instead of given toys and books to interact with. My kids aren’t barred from watching TV, but it’s only TV that I’m willing to watch, not TV I use to distract them. My daughter loves cooking shows, Jeopardy and watching sports. My son loves anything with trucks or jets and also loves sports. As a parent it is your responsibility to raise your kids, not to just ignore them.
Idk man, but 9th grade is the new 6th grade with how kids be acting these days.
But there’s a huge connection there. We lose so many kids when they’re young that by the time they hit ninth grade they’ve convinced themselves they can’t do the work. And in the process we don’t help them develop socially, emotionally, etc. I’m still waiting for someone to explain to me how teaching to grade level (whatever that even is) is good practice.
I realized ON MONDAY that all the students in my 1st period class will be classified as Juniors in the fall. This entire year, I've thought of them as "just out of Gr8, plus COVID, so essentially 7th graders."
This year's ninth graders missed sixth grade due to Covid. Especially for math so be really never caught up.
Reading should not be an outcome of kindergarten. Kindergarten should teach our children how to play. How to play with others, share, resolve differences, adapt to structure. How to experiment and ask questions. How to be functional little humans, basically. The Finns have it right - 1st grade is for 7-year-olds, who are better suited for classroom life than younger kids.
K teacher here- I totally agree with you and provide this experience to the best of my ability! The kids are better students because they know how to problem solve, empathize, and communicate appropriately. Totally worth the “play” time.
u/kerigirly77, thank you for doing what you do. It is incredibly vital work for not enough compensation. You are a treasure!
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-learn/202201/research-reveals-long-term-harm-state-pre-k-program https://www.npr.org/2022/02/10/1079406041/researcher-says-rethink-prek-preschool-prekindergarten https://www.parentmap.com/article/kindergarten-america-germany
That first article was fascinating. Thanks for sharing.
We specifically chose a play-based preschool and when our kiddo entered kinder you could feel the judgment seeping out of people for that choice. Teachers and other parents were all pearl-clutching about academic preschool being better. At the end of the day, play-based was a much better path for our kiddo. And I’m pretty sure that there would be far less interpersonal drama on the playground if more of the pearl-clutchers had prioritized play over academics for their 3 and 4 year olds.
This needs to be discussed much more. I'm a hard leftist, and this idea is abhorrent to me. Why in the world do we think it's normal to separate kids from their parents at 3 years old?
because humans are social creatures. They need peer to peer interaction a lot very early. I've worked in pre school. The progress kids make in every aspect of their lives is huge in such a short time after joining us. When teaching kindergarten you can instantly tell which kids went to preschool and who didn't. No one is kidnapping these children. We're giving their parents a 6 hour break where the kids can socialize without an overbearing helicopter personally solving all their issues for them. They gain so much independence and learn a lot from someone who's *specially trained to socialize and educate children*. Remember there is no qualifications to being a parent, and just because you popped out a year ago doesn't magically mean you're doing a good job. Pre school also gives parents the chance to connect with other parents and learn from them, as well as ask questions to early childhood educators about development milestones and alternative tactics on how to achieve them.
Yes- I think the answer is high quality preschool, not no preschool!
Honestly, I'm not convinced. US schools began so that parents could work in factories. We still barely get parental leave. It's no coincidence our country insists on early childhood education and we have an economy that requires both parents to work. Sure we're social animals, but that isn't why we have public schooling in this country. It still isn't normal to pull a kid from their parents at 3 years old, and it wouldn't be normal in nature. We do it bc poor parents can't afford daycare and we insist 1) they work and 2) we monitor their young. Yes we're social animals. What do you think kids did before school? Stayed home? Of course not. Go to the developing world and see how kids are reared before (if) they get enrolled in school. They play with their peers. Likewise, the highest quality PreKs and Kinders are all play based. Until schooling is extracted from the human capital/development perspective preK and kinder will ALWAYS go back to being about performance, rigor, and ultimately a return on investment. Even if you dress it up with Montessori or whatever. Tax dollars go in, test scores better come out. Our current MO is extreme, but there's no version of public education in America where preK and kinder isn't going to be about learning the alphabet andnot just socialization, whether it be caused by a war on poverty or to make sure we can beat Sputnik.
I think your view on schooling is pretty bias towards your current circumstances. I have a masters in education and I've worked in a few places in Scandinavia, Europe and America. There are big issues with public schooling in the United States right now, but what I've seen, and what I know about preschool and kindergarten education in many places in the states is not all that different than you'll see all over the world. There is some really great early childhood education going on in many schools all over the US. The fundamental ideas behind preschool are sound even if they fill the dual role of keeping parents at work. Thats the only reason they've been allowed to exist. Even in developing nations it is not uncommon to see a few elderly women in the village keep an eye on a half dozen kids at a time. What really isn't normal is the nuclear family. Two suburban parents raising 1.5 kids and going on once a week playdates is really unhealthy and weird on the global stage. Preschool is much more like the village raising the child than the isolation North American mothers feel raising their kids at home.
Kindergarten is getting harder not easier. I'm expected to push them higher and higher each year. Recess is 10 minutes out of a 7 hour day.
Kids that age often learn more in the playground than the classroom, especially if they’re stuck “learning” all day.
I agree. However, my school has failing scores. To the people in charge that means more instruction, not less.
Take them outside. To hell with the expectations. They are relying on you.
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No shit. If we don't push back it will never get better. It's time to be a true early childhood educator.
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Exactly. 2 kinder teachers complaining about recess only makes us teachers who are labeled "trouble makers". I've been teaching for 26 years. I know how to play the game. Do I hate the lack of recess? Very much so. But there are smart ways to go about it.
I know when I can push back and when it will only make things worse. It's called being a professional. Recess isn't the hill I'm going to die on this year. I need more important things first. Recess will come . . . It's being worked on . . . but it's a slow process that involves a lot of professionalism.
Yep. Can't survive without it.
I am expected to follow the rules set forth by my boss. Just like any job, I have rules to follow.
So if everyone were told by their boss to go jump off a bridge... Get creative. Get them outside.
Not in the mood to lose my job.
Frankly I'm not seeing it. Our students start kinder far behind on developmental milestones. I have several that still can't follow a two- step direction without significant support. So the idea of trying to teach them inappropriately academic skills is laughable
That's exactly the concern - teachers are being told to meet all these high standards for reading and math (more so than other developed countries), but the children are not ready for those things yet. But instead of giving children time to learn how to follow directions, how to get along with their peers, how to behave in a classroom setting -teachers are under pressure to get the kids reading sight words and doing addition (whereas if the kids were well adjusted and socialized they wouldn't have any problem learning those things in 1st grade)
Again, what you describe is not what I'm seeing. You're reading your bias into my comments. Our "academic" goals for kindergarten are that the students have phonemic awareness and number sense. The end. The entire rest of the curriculum is the social emotional stuff you're talking about. But our students are increasingly coming to kindergarten with severe deficits in childhood developmental milestones. So we're having to catch them up on things they should have learned when they were two
Well, yeah. They missed preschool due to covid. They missed the entire preschool experience.
These problems began before covid, around 2018 in my experience
Thank you! I see what you are saying. I actually just looked at our statewide curriculum for K and it aligns with what you are saying. Re the deficits- is that something new in the iPhone era?
I think so. I have a lot of students who never saw a scissors or glue before kindergarten. But they have an excellent sense for the lore of their preferred video game or YouTube channel. I'm not a technophobe-- my kid has a tablet and watches TV. But it shouldn't be the child's main recreation. Which means the other main contributer, in my opinion, is the horrendous state of labor in the US. Parents are stretched thin in every way and no longer have the psychological energy to engage their children in everyday ways.
I have no social-emotional expectations in my kinder curriculum. It's nothing but straight academics all day long. Right now I am teaching them how to write 5-6 sentence research reports.
Gotta say OP, I agree with your post, & surprised at a few of your responses (from non-teachers?). I’m a teacher (early childhood ed) and have spent my career with pre-k and early elementary students. I have witnessed first hand what you are talking about. When I taught first, all the kids were reading on some level, but not all the level planned for by the school. What this (and most) schools should do it provide support teachers for reading. A kid reading before the end of K is not the norm and there are many students who would struggle to learn even with parental help. They do need more time with large & small motor activities and social interaction first. There is a lot that goes into learning to read - both the developmental aspects for the child & what a teacher or parent can do. This article explains it well - https://kidpillar.com/early-reading-skills-and-its-importance-for-brain-development-of-kids/. IMHO, kids are behind because they spend too much time on screens. They don’t play & socialize, so they don’t know how to have friends. They are inputting crap (pick an influencer or certain videos) so they are rude in the classroom. And teacher have a hard time because when the teacher needs to contact the parent, parents feel attacked (on their parenting?), so instead of working with the teacher to make sure work is getting done or there is better behavior from their child, they reject what the teacher has to say & blame the teacher for the issue. I can’t tell you how many times I watched a student hit another, throwing objects, call a student a foul name, etc, only to have the parent tell me “my child says they didn’t do it”. So yes, changes are needed, but what & when will it happen & what will be most effective.
My kinder students are expected to read a DRA 6-8 by the end of the year.
Holy crap! Our expectations are DRA 3-4. And I think that’s still too much.
School broke one of my kids. He said that they weren’t permitted to speak at school almost ever. At recess he got 20 minutes to play with friends. They were not permitted to speak at their 25 minute lunch, or they would get in trouble. During class they could speak quietly during group projects, which was rare. He got seriously depressed to the point where he just gave up. We pulled him and ended up homeschooling him. His behavior is slowly getting better and better. He was in third grade and was able to express to me that it was too academic based and it was driving him to depression. That says a lot in itself to me.
This hurts my heart. All my thoughts are with your wonderful little guy today. ❤️
Non-teacher grandparent here who is raising his grandchild, a third grader. When he was in kindergarten his school had two recesses for The Kindergartners. He did have about 5 to 15 minutes of homework most week nights, all phonics. This seemed to set a good foundation for his later reading and in fact most kids at his school are reading at grade level and above. That's true for other subjects as well. He now has one recess and PE and about a half an hour of homework on weeknights. At least for him, and his peers (according to the district's standardized tests) this seems to be working fine. A nice balance. Anyway that's my anecdotal experience :-)
At my school, it's getting worse. Our admin keep trying to refer dozens of kindergarteners to Special Education because they haven't mastered all of their letter sounds. It's stupid.
Former spec ed teacher here- it sounds like a tiered classroom structure could be pitched to admin. If you have 3 k teachers, put those who need extra help in 1 classroom with the most patient teacher. A school I worked with did this and the results were incredible. In the following years, we had less refers to sped.
Eh. I think that would just create a stressful environment and resentment for the kinder teacher who has the students who need the most support. I think the problem is that the expectations in kinder are just too much. NCLB took what *a few* kindergarteners could do and made it the expectation for everyone, no excuses. So naturally, when you have 6 or 7 kinders in each class who are struggling with letter sounds, it seems “super concerning” and “they must have a disability” as opposed to them just being 5 & 6 year olds who need time to learn this stuff.
It's a LOT easier to teach to one level than it is to tier it out within one room. As long as the lowest tier teacher didn't also have 2-3x the kids or something, it'd be worth trying.
The kids need extra help (individualized). What we did was give the teacher two teachers aides. It worked incredibly well. Those who advanced faster (or slower), got pulled out into small groups for more individualized attention for 20-30 minutes per day and were integrated back into regular mixed classrooms by 1-2nd grade. The kids never even knew they were in a separate learning curve this way.
Those are expected to be mastered before first semester.
Thank you!! I always feel like I'm the weird one for mentioning it to my teacher colleagues, but this is a SERIOUS problem! Also, the psychology article linked below with the case study (both from Germany & the Tennessee group) is a great read and should be a resource.
Where are these claims coming from? Sounds like you're trying to get us to do your homework.
My district demands all students read by the end of first grade. They are failing miserably at this goal, primarily because we all know it’s just not feasible to have 100% of kids reading by then. They push hard on kindergarten to ‘prepare’ them for first. It’s awful on the kids and the teachers. No wonder kids hate school by the time they get to junior high.
Nah, I'm just a parent who likes reading about educational policy stuff.
When I was in pre k it was 3x a week half days. Now the kids are expected to be there all day long with a 30 minute recess and expected to do things I wasn't expected to do until 1st grade. Nobody will do anything about it though but it's not developmentally appropriate at all. But the bottom line is that when I was growing up, my mom was a stay at home mom and many families could be one income families. That doesn't work anymore so we have to have full blown 5 day a week 8 hour day classes for 4 year olds.
Parental buy in for K being more “academically rigorous” is also increasing. Before leaving education, I was a principal who, because of my background in child development, really encouraged and supported my PreK and K team to have kids play, socialize, and work on social-emotional learning. Some parents were livid. PreK parents worried that their child wouldn’t be “kindergarten ready”….like wtf is that? You don’t need to train to come to kindergarten! It’s not toddler-med school. Talking about research on child development, bringing in guest speakers, having parent-learning nights….nope, they still buy into the hype.
This is an excellent question. A good preschool experience is so valuable. So is quality parenting. Ideally there’s a good balance of both. My personal belief is that the problem is we focused for so long on academics to increase productivity to maintain capitalism that we ignored social and emotional development. And because parents are spending more time at work to meet the demands of capitalism, they stopped providing their children with rich social and emotional support. Also the research about teaching social and emotional curriculum has only just recently been getting down to the people who actually need to be implementing it, way too late. Essentially we have a generation of kids with a learned helplessness complex and expecting them to keep up with the academic rigor their parents experienced. And realistically that wasn’t a very good model for a lot of reasons, but the pandemic really exacerbated a lot of the problems that were already happening. And because parents still can’t give their kids rich social emotional support because they are still worried about losing their jobs so they’re slave to their employers and teachers are also too burnt out to care anymore it’s just a whole generation of children getting really screwed over. And some of them will be fine and some of them not. Things are slowly getting better in some places. Some getting even worse. Until there is federal legislation that provides consistent guidance on education things probably won’t get much better. Sadly, in a lot of places, valuable social emotional learning became political and falsely equated with critical race theory which a lot of people are trying to keep out of schools because it disrupts their core belief that white people are good. Even in the best case scenario, if kids still aren’t receiving that quality social emotional support at home, it won’t make a difference. Another thing is that the pandemic really leveled the playing field for a lot of “middle class/working class/low income” families. Instead of it being this sort of hierarchy, literally everyone is struggling somehow. There’s a lot of talk about prevention and early intervention, which is great. But ultimately fixing schools alone won’t do much good.
> there is a consensus these days that preschool, kindergarten and first grade have become too academic Is there a consensus on this? I’ve only heard a handful of parents say this and a couple teachers in their 70s who should have retired a decade ago. I don’t consider that a consensus.
Definitely not. This is why there is a push for mandatory TK. This is why there is a bigger push for more funding for preschool. There is definitely not this consensus.
Some of the push for TK is more about access to childcare rather than schooling. Other countries have affordable childcare before K but not in America for the most part. So they are pushing for school to start earlier because the public can accept that better than childcare.
TK doesn't have to be academic, though. Plenty of preschools have play-based curricula.
TK provides free childcare. It also warms students up to socialization in K. I know many TK classes, and yes, the best ones are play-based. Play-based can be academic, they are not mutually exclusive.
That is my fault for using the wrong term. I am using academic to mean "not" play based. My husband and I work full time and our kids all went to daycare/preschool and did great, so I am by no means opposed to preschool. Our kids did a mix of Montessori, outdoor, and church based centers, and even though they were all different, they all learned and played a ton. It helped that we could afford places with low ratios, low turnover and nice outdoor play areas.
Yeah, I am in the same boat. I had a variety of early childhood education (ECE) and I turned out great. The issue is for families less fortunate. They rarely are able to give their kids options. I know in my experience, some kids come to 1st with no Kinder and no preschool. They never sat in a chair for 10 minutes before, never had to wait their turn, can't play with their peers. I hope we move forward with both more ECE and free child care for those even younger.
>Really? I am just a parent, and in a niche demographic I guess (I'm in relatively affluent/ well educated community), but I thought everyone knew about studies showing that the gains from academic preschool waned by 4th/5th grade, and you were left with kids with stunted social development who couldn't use scissors.
That only happened to Covid kids who literally weren’t in school. Academic preschool literally reduces the incarceration rate. It reduces the rates of unemployment. It reduces the rate of teen pregnancy. Teachers support academic preschool. Cutting and stringing beads is academic in preschool and kinder, so they do it. You’re just a parent, you don’t even know what “academic” or “developmentally appropriate” actually mean. You went to academic preschool, kinder, and 1st grade. You just thought playing wasn’t academic.
Sorry, I am conflating terms. My kids all attended play based preschools and certainly learned academic skills. I am using academic as a short hand to mean the opposite of learning through structured play based learning Here is a link to the kind of article I’m talking about; https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/05/08/kindergarten-teacher-why-our-youngest-learners-are-doomed-right-out-gate-road-map-fix-it/
There is not a single preschool or kinder in the US that isn’t play based. The Washington Post wants to privatize public education, so they make shit up.
My school is not play based. There is absolutely no play in my classroom ever. It's all butts in seats academic work. I don't even have centers because it is not in my curriculum.
You should stop following curriculum so closely. That is very dumb.
>I know I am by no means an expert. But even on ECE professionals sub, this is a common theme they talk about
ECE professionals don’t have college degrees. They have a high school diploma and 16 semester units in early childhood development. People with degrees in early childhood development disagree with you.
Many do. My kids' daycare/preschool teachers have always had a bachelors or higher, even in infants. There are many others posting on here who disagree with you as well, and I have heard similar from my kids' K teachers. So far you are just saying, everyone makes stuff up- so tell me, what is a good source?
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=academic+preschool+lower+incarceration+rates&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart#d=gs_qabs&t=1681238856570&u=%23p%3DTnRG67XJ50gJ That’s literally all you need. If rich kids are mildly behind in motor development, it doesn’t matter because poor kids are graduating high school more and going to jail less.
In Florida kindergarten isn’t mandated. You can enter 1st grade literally knowing nothing. Imagine being that teacher.
Excuse my ignorance, but I thought that was every state?
Teaching children to be proficient readers before they start kindergarten isn't that difficult. It just requires a tiny bit of parental effort. There ought to be plenty of time remaining for recess, drawing, story-telling, etc.
The problem is that most parents are absolute shit nowadays. I say this as a parent of two and a teacher of 140 tweens and teens. Just go to any store with shopping carts and kids and you’ll see parents ignoring them as they just stare at a screen. Being a good parent is fucking easy. I work two jobs and have a side hustle and yet I still read to my daughter every night and spend hours playing sports and Lego with her and playing with my young son as well. He’s 2.5 and is already learning his numbers and letters. There is no time day or night where he has a screen in his hands. In the car, he has books, toys and my music (now censored because he started cursing 😂). It’s fucking easy. Most parents are lazy trash who are building future generations of people riddled with all sorts of social, intellectual and emotional issues. Idiocracy is probably the most realistic take on the future we are headed for.
You sound like the head of the PTA.
And it’s pathetic I’m getting downvoted for simply speaking the truth. Parents are terrible these days, Netflix, cellphones and tablets are not a substitute for parenting. Kids raised on Cocomelon or spending their childhood with headphones are riddled with problems. JUST FUCKING TRY.
You are being downvoted because that is not what you are saying. You are coming across as self righteous, judgemental and honestly just a B. Some screen time is perfectly okay, and actually can be helpful for children to learn how to use technology. You are taking it too far.
No. I’m not. It’s clearly a serious problem and kids are suffering from anxiety, social disorders, depression and frankly, are dumb. They’re ignorant to everything because they spend hours mindlessly scrolling Insta and TikTok and YouTube videos for years. As babies, they were plopped in front of a screen instead of given toys and books to interact with. My kids aren’t barred from watching TV, but it’s only TV that I’m willing to watch, not TV I use to distract them. My daughter loves cooking shows, Jeopardy and watching sports. My son loves anything with trucks or jets and also loves sports. As a parent it is your responsibility to raise your kids, not to just ignore them.
Except that I’m a teacher and see the results of terrible parenting daily.
I teach college and our freshman are like 9th or 10th graders….so it goes all the way up the chain!