Children Have to Grow Up Too Fast
Something is lost when little red wagons and mud pies make way for worksheets and tests.
by M. Jones
Credit: Indigo Flores
She waltzes into my room on winged feet -- all 3 feet and a bit of her, with a pixie cut and huge brown eyes. She is Katy (not her real name), and she is in the first grade. As everyone else settles down, Katy twirls in a dizzying display of excess energy. She is wearing her favorite outfit -- a rainbow poncho and a tiara with pink feathers. The rest of the class sits on the rug, crisscross applesauce. They stare up at me expectantly. Katy is trying to lie across my lap and peer up into my face. She slithers down, bounces up again, and moves to her desk to see what treasures might be in her backpack. Her bottom has never touched her chair. I invite her back to the group and sit her right next to me -- her favorite place in the room.
A little young, I tell myself on the first day. Not ready for first grade and the rigors of state standards. I'm new to the school so I do not know her history. Perhaps she's just young for her age. I can't help thinking someone dropped the ball here. She's a kindergartner dressed in first-grade clothing.
When I check her file in the office, I am dumbfounded by an inch-thick IEP folder. This is not good news. An Individualized Education Program usually signals some serious area of concern. The plan spells out goals for the student and how the teacher will monitor and assess the accomplishment of those goals. Benchmarks are set. Meetings are held. I've never had a first grader with an IEP. Most students come equipped with a slim folder holding their vaccination records and birth certificate. What could possibly be wrong with this girl that warrants this level of scrutiny?
The answer: nothing. She has an older brother with a learning disability and anxious parents who want to make sure Katy doesn't "fall through the cracks." I keep reading, looking for a diagnosis, some indication that there is something wrong with this sprite. But the only thing I see is that she "doesn't know her entire alphabet." She can't write all her numbers to thirty. She's "inattentive" during instruction.
There is nothing wrong with Katy except that she is a kindergartner deprived of kindergarten. Ten years ago she would have been in the dress-up corner in front of the mirror, draping feather boas across her thin shoulders. But on this particular day, she's a first grader with an IEP and goals that are unattainable for someone at her stage of development. She will go to special classes three times a week to make up for her "deficits." She will continue to smile boldly, but soon she will start to wonder what is wrong with her. She will leave our classroom three times a week and trudge, not dance, down to room 15. She will start to feel the weight of those goals. The benchmarks will pinch just a bit.
Katy is not my first kindergartner. In the past five years, as expectations have continued to expand at each grade level, teachers have scrambled to help students feel successful. A good proportion of my class is not at grade level. They are taking multiple-choice tests and filling in bubbles with the anxiety of their older siblings. We throw around terms like "algebra" and "response to literature" to six-year-olds who are barely decoding words. We push and cajole and yes, sometimes secretly curse the child with her head in the clouds. We are accountable. We are observed. Our jobs may depend on the ability of our students to understand the subtle distinction between strategies like "predict" and "infer."
There is no kindergarten. It has gone the way of the little red wagon and mud pies. The time when children learned how to go to school, how to use a tricycle, or wait their turn on the swing is gone. These were important skills -- vital to success in the grades to come. We do not have time to teach them now. We have worksheets that need completing. We have take-home books to copy and homework packets to staple. We have accountability.
I look down at Katy while she copies the words from the whiteboard. Every now and then, she holds up her paper for me to see, and smiles. I love how the light dances off the rhinestones on her tiara. And I wonder how long it will be before someone tells her that she can't wear hats in class and she can't dance in the hallways. I will miss the pink feathers and rainbow poncho. But while she is mine, I will dance around the rules just a little and find places for her to stand, not sit. I will teach her what I can to the best of my ability. I will hold off, as long as I can, the weight of the file that dogs her footsteps. And I'll look for a rainbow poncho of my own to remind me that the Katys of this world just might be on the brink of extinction.
Credit: Indigo Flores
M. Jones is a pseudonym for an elementary school teacher in northern California.
This article was also published in the April 2008 issue of Edutopia magazine.
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Comments & Responses
This story is exactly one of
This story is exactly one of the reasons we are homeschooling our two boys. Kids are expected to grow up too fast. So what if they don't know their abc's or can memorize their multiplication tables, what's important is that they know how to be kind to others, tell the truth, explore to learn, come up with new ideas, work as part of a group (family)...not conform to what some degreed professional says they should be. My boys play outside, have no homework, build things, and love each other and their frieds to a fault. They are kind, they can speak to any adult in very articulate ways, they are honest and helpful. I say all kids should be kept home until they are ready to face the world. For us, that may not be until college, for now, my 3 and 6 year old boys will be just that...boys.
My daughter is in 1st grade
My daughter is in 1st grade & I am still stunned by what they expected from children this young. As a kindergartener, she had to give oral presentations w/ visual aides and had quite a bit of homework every night. This year she continues to have increasing amounts of homework. Although she does well, my poor daughter has hardly any time to just be a kid anymore. When I was in 1st grade I remember coming home & riding my bike, but my daughter has homework plus reading assignments every night. I watch her become more tired & grumpy as the week progresses....understandably so. She is way too young for these pressures. Our school system also has an accelerated reader program which is meant to encourage reading. I understand the direction they were trying to take with this program. However, I watch this program zap the fun out of reading in child after child. They have to read books to take tests (everyday) & earn points. It is a competition for them....all about the points. Plus...if enough points are not earned, a child will be excluded from a dance party held during school hours! Punishment for difficulty in reading.....it really blows my mind. Reading is supposed to be fun....not a chore....especially when you are 5, 6, & 7 years old! Encouragement not exclusion should be the motivators. What do you do & where do you start to encourage a more child centered approach in the schools?
Throw creativity out the
Throw creativity out the window- we need conformity and standardized benchmarks. Why teach creativity or conceptual understanding when you can have teachers "teach" memorization to optimize standardized test scores. All in all we're just another brick in the wall.
I remember when I was in
I remember when I was in elementary school in the 1940s. It was a no pressure atmosphere where I was able to grow up feeling the love of my family and a sense of community. But today I look at my grandchildren and I see that they are being deprived of a childhood by unfair pressure their schools- and parents- put on them. I was able to do fine in High School and college despite not having a super- pressure Elementary school experience. America is really stabbing itself in the back- starting to pressure kids at such a young age takes away from the love of America kids who have a good public school experience have.
Worksheet Education
I appreciate the comments made by previous posters about the connection between lost childhood and added pressure from state assessments. The environment in which I teach seems to have particular pressure because of the school districts continual low performance. The students I now teach (10th grade) have faced pressure from middle school assessments, and in many cases elementary. Having faced this pressure for so many years of their school career, the students have come to expect this kind of education. This has to my detriment affected the kind of teacher I have to be. Ideally, teachers will lead profound discussions in class with full participation. Now we are faced with students who only want worksheets and review questions with simple answers. Provoking discussion is painstaking. I can recall several particular students of mine who, when absent, would return asking for "packets" of make-up work, rather than attending coach class to receive the education they would have, and deserve to have gotten. They don't have the desire to learn, just to get passing grades. State standards and assessments has robbed children of their natural inquiry and replaced it with demands for standardized performance.
Ending too soon!!
My school has just changed over from 3/4 day Kindergarten to Full day Kindergarten. I am absolutely loving the extra time at the end of the day. My students are finally “allowed” to play. For 1 hour I lay out materials, games, activities, paint, and let them “go at it”!!! They have come up with the most creative activities and many of my brainstorming ideas come from my students at that time. It gives me a chance to see who my students are and listen to them without the feeling of being RUSHED through the academic part of the morning.
If I spent that hour for what the district wants me to do, I would be progress monitoring for the DIBLES tests and making sure they are “ready for 1st grade”. I have to slow down and remember that I am only 6 weeks into my school year with these kids. And that is just what they are… KIDS.
Is there anything that we can do? Write our politicians? Make this a public issue? Discuss our frustrations at a state level!?!? I want to know what I can do to make a change and a difference for our students! I agree with some of the other bloggers that Mom’s and Dad’s used to spend time with their children teaching them their letters, numbers, shapes, colors, and the correct ways to play. I have found from my experience lately that parents are spending LESS time with their children. My parents at my school are too busy working three jobs to keep food on the tables or uneducated on how to raise their children. I would love to see our country take three steps back and start educating the parents on how to educate and nurture our students.
Kindergarten Teacher
I taught Kindergarten last year. I work in East Baltimore and as teachers we are told from the first day that our students are already at a disadvantage in terms of vocabulary, exposure to books and print and in the ways they communicate. I remember the sense of urgency that I used to feel. I often felt as if there was no time for them to play. As the year went on, I realized how important play time was. I realized how much more I could actually get out of them if I gave them time to be themselves, run, play and relax. I also loved to see them play. They were so happy on the playground. I saw how much they cared about each other. It is sad that we have gotten to the point where children are no longer encouraged to be children in the fullest sense. Having said that, I also realize how much further behind my kindergarteners were than their more affluent counterparts. I wouldn't exactly argue that I'd rather they play than be taught to read. Now that I teach third grade, I have to remind myself even more that these are kids. I take them to the playground once a week. I'm always looking for more ways to let them be nine year olds and meet the goals set out for me by my school.
Your kids only go to the
Your kids only go to the playground once a WEEK?! If my schools are like that, I hope I have the opportunity to homeschool when I have kids so I can take them to the playground/park/zoo/museum/lake/river/etc daily when possible. How often do they take gym class? I hope that that is more often! Good luck with your kids - I hope you're able to find indoor time that can be play time for them.
I teach 2s, and we are on the playground pretty much all the time - I often think we don't have enough time playing with the inside toys. But there's only so much time in the day - and kids need time to be kids and play and have fun.
Childhood's End
We all seem to agree that we are stealing the childhood away from our children. Why do we continue to do it? We do it because the people who develop state standards and researched based curriculums have never been in the classroom with 4-6 year olds or have been out of the classroom for so long that they are clueless. I teach a full day kindergarten. At least that's what it's called because I feel as if I am teaching 1st and 2nd grade to my 5 year olds. They have to be reading, writing, and doing simple math problem solving by the end of the year. Every year something new is pushed into kindergarten. Last year it was a spelling program, including tests, for the last third of the school year. I can only imagine what they will tell us to do this year. To make things worse - our district just started a full day 3 & 4 year old program. I don't understand why 3 year olds have to be in school all day five days a week.
Melissa - I think having a
Melissa -
I think having a full day 3s and 4s program is a good idea. From my understanding, these programs are available for parents that choose to use them, but they are not required like school for older children. Many parents need full day care, and having it provided by the public schools helps to insure that it's affordable and that kids are doing activities that prepare them for elementary school. I don't know how the teachers in the 3s and 4s classes teach and therefore cannot say that they are wonderful or awful teachers, but it is good that the children have the opportunity to be in a classroom. They don't have to be in school 5 days a week, but it certainly makes it easier for parents, who presumably work full time. I teach two-year-olds at a full day private preschool, and some of the kids come 2 or 3 days a week, but the rest come 5 days a week. The kids who come part-time often don't know the schedule or don't know other important things, like their friends' names. I hope that the 3s and 4s teachers at your school focus on a lot of play and that those children are enjoying their first school experience.
Denny
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