It’s Okay That Your Kindergartener Can’t Read

It’s been awhile since I wrote a post, but I was inspired recently by several parents of children that used to be in my class, worried about their child’s inability to read. From what I gathered, at least in the local school district, kindergarten is impressing upon these children to learn a certain number of sight words by a given date, and be on their way to early reading by another date. Succeed, and you’re “on track”; fail, and be labeled as “falling behind”, and in need of special tutoring. They beautify this curriculum by calling it something fun, like “rainbow words”, but in reality, the expectation put upon these five-year-olds not only sucks the necessary fun out of reading, but mislabels them as falling behind, when in reality, they are developing perfectly naturally.

There’s a gravitational force in the elementary school system that brings milestones that were once for older kids ever downward. Kindergarteners are expected to do what second graders were, barely a decade ago. When looked at it medically, according to what’s known about child development and how the brain naturally develops to support reading skills, it’s reasonable to expect a fairly fluent reader by third grade, and manage the easiest of books by the end of first grade, or age 7.

Sight Words vs. Phonics

The problem with forcing kindergarteners to memorize sight words, and judging their reading ability on how many they know, is that memorization is a complete different part of the brain than understanding language. As you get older, several different parts of your brain work together to “read”, and sight words definitely play a role into how quickly we can read, but measuring a five-year-olds ability to memorize sight words is just that: measuring their memorization. It has nothing to do with their language and reading development, which is still developing. At this age, it is developmentally appropriate to begin learning letters and basic phonics (letter and word sounds), and piecing together very simple words whose sounds are easy to decode (“cat”, “run”, “sit”, and so on).

Expecting a reader at five is irresponsible.

This year, I have two children in their older-fours who can read. They are the exception. Why some children can read early, and some can’t, is a mystery to me, but there is no shame in not being the exception. We all excel at something, whether it’s reading or something else. Embrace the gifts your child has, and continue to encourage them in all the areas of learning that they’re working on. As long as your child is developing at a healthy pace, try not to worry when their kindergarten teacher comes to you saying they’re “falling behind”; it’s the curriculum raising the bar far beyond their reach, and making them jump for it. Take the help they offer, but don’t take it personally. Hopefully, someday, they will realize that their strategy is ineffective, and until then, all we can do is meet the child where they’re at, and continue to support them as best we can.

 

A Matter Of Respect

In January of next year, I will be going back to school.

I graduated Cal Poly Pomona with my BA in Liberal Studies, the track for elementary school teachers. At the time, that was my goal, but the classes I was taking gave me insight into how schools are run nowadays. It left a bitter taste in my mouth. As you might know, there is a heavy emphasis on the standardized tests children are required to take at the end of the year, so much so that I’ve heard horror stories of teachers’ jobs hinging on their performance.

I was also volunteering at my university’s preschool, which led me ultimately to where I am today. I found teachers who taught for the love of teaching, and I learned what an academic environment tailor-made to be developmentally appropriate looks like. You will never find a test or exam in any preschool worth their salt. You won’t find worksheets, you won’t find flash cards, and if elementary schools were built to be true to how a child is meant to learn, they wouldn’t either. They were at one point poised to look much like preschool does today, but time and tide changed our course.

The combination of the two led me to take my Bachelor’s degree but not continue on with my credential. I love preschool; I agree with NAEYC’s philosophy, and I like watching their little brains blossom. It’s where my heart lies. But I’m having some adult realizations, such as “you need money to live”. As little respect as our country has for teachers as a rule, preschool teachers and quality early education has even less. I would be hard-pressed to find a teaching position that pays better than the one I have now, which itself won’t help me much trying to live in Southern California.

However I may be criticized for it, I love Pinterest. I have been accused of being a middle-aged mom in this respect. My dashboard is covered exclusively in preschool activities, ideas, and classroom decor, but to get me in the spirit of starting to think like an elementary school teacher, I tailored my experience to see boards dedicated to the older-kid crowd. Something that began popping up immediately was ClassDojo, and I was transfixed. My heart skips a beat around technology that’s both useful and accessible in the education world; I’ve spent more time than I should have trying to convince my education coordinator to fight for iPads for the classroom. Pinterest is covered with ideas on integrating ClassDojo into the room, and one of the most popular ideas is reward tiers. 500 “positive points” per class means a no homework day, 2000 points gets you a pizza party, and so on. The more the ideas flowed, though, the more hesitant I became.

I had a child last year that our mental health coordinator described as having “severe emotional disturbance”. My co-teacher and I have both bled on account of him, and our other children have had their share of run-ins. Our entire science shelf, on at least one occasion, had been toppled by his efforts. He would bolt out of the door at any slight provocation. Regardless, I was his primary teacher, and we grew to have a trusting, if rocky, relationship; we did eventually get to the point where I could talk him down, sometimes. His mother rarely saw eye-to-eye with us (the school at large) on what the appropriate way to deal with his outbursts was. One of her ideas was to implement a sticker chart, which I largely disagree with in general, but was especially reluctant to implement long-term in the classroom. It had little effect in the first couple weeks of implementing it (whether he was too impulsive to be able to rationally control his behavior, he simply didn’t care, or both, is unclear), but his mother insisted on it, saying that it was the only way that he would behave and she wanted a visual reference of us holding him accountable.

My approach was one of respect: I tried not to yell at him, or quash his emotions. I gave him occasional space to vent his anger however he wished (short of hurting himself or someone else), and while the situation didn’t get better, he did begin to trust me. Looking back, I was a brand new teacher, and probably too unwilling to compromise; it wouldn’t have hurt me to implement it long-term and it would have made his mother happy, but I found that making an honest, respectful connection worked much better.

Once I realized the similarity in ClassDojo, my interest in it was immediately extinguished. This will likely be my last year as a preschool teacher, but I hope to carry the philosophy that drives it into elementary school. Teaching preschool has given me solid ground to keep my feet on as I continue upward. I hope to bring developmentally appropriate practice into my elementary classroom as much as is possible, and not be swayed by the glamour of fancy gimmicks or ideas without seeing its true viability. I hope that I can teach in a way that I earn the respect of my students. There is no point in teaching any other way.

I find myself with  a new understanding that I don’t have to like, or even agree, with every aspect of my job. I can be an elementary school teacher without agreeing with the system in place, and I can teach a grade without standardized testing. It is unfortunate that our nation doesn’t respect its teachers enough to allow us to assess on a large scale in a developmentally appropriate way, such as projects, student demonstration, or (Heaven forbid) simple direct teacher observation. There isn’t much space for what I’m looking for, but I hope to create the space for change myself, on whatever scale I can. I cannot see a future in which public educators are shown the respect they deserve without being on the front lines, and maybe, in a small way, with my future colleagues, I can help create one.

In Defense of Coddling

Every month, our site director leads a “Courtyard Gathering”. The whole school comes together on the lawn in the middle of the campus (or the meeting hall in the church we rent space from), and she reads a story to the children and leads some kind of activity for them.

This month, the church’s meeting hall was decorated in pinks and reds, with heart-shaped plates bearing enough pieces of chalk for the whole school. We took our seats, and the music began. The children instantly began rocking and clapping to the music, some of them even standing up and really showing off their moves. The song in question, in fitting with our Friendship Day theme– not to be confused with Valentine’s Day, which Head Start does not celebrate– was “You’ve Got A Friend In Me”.

For her part, our director is a very charismatic person. When she leads an activity, she takes charge, infusing it with vibrancy and a sort of infectious energy that cannot be contained. The children respond to it in kind, but not all kids like that kind of noise. Most do, but one child in particular sat the whole time with his hands over his ears. I’ve never suspected any kind of sensory processing issue with him until now, but looking back on it, he does not do well in any kind of loud situation. I find it funny, with him being such an outgoing individual.

Anyway, hands over his ears. He sat there for maybe ten minutes as the children danced, and our director moved onto reading “Guess How Much I Love You” with equal gusto and sound. With the other children adding their claps and shouts, the volume slowly grew to a dull roar, which prompted him to walk over to me, head down, and crawl into my lap. For a four-year-old, he’s surprisingly big and heavy. I scooped him up and we sat together, for the whole half-hour length of the program, in quiet observance as our friends let loose.

I’m the kind of teacher that joins right into the cacophony, but I wasn’t always like that. I was very much like this child when I was younger, and to a degree, I still am. Loud noises make me anxious, and I can only take overstimulating environments such as shopping malls in small doses before I end up leaving. As I got older, I grew into knowing how to “be a child” (a concept I’ll make a post about later on), and found the fun in raucous– though safe– environments.

Were it not for the child on my lap, I’d be up and dancing with the rest of them, but he had come to me seeking shelter. I saw that he was having a hard time, but I didn’t go to him, knowing that if he needed me, he would come and find me. I find that in the field of child development, and the much larger world of parenting, there’s an unspoken but very prevalent push to get our kids to “grow up”. This idea of “growing up” says that we as adults are doing children a disservice by coddling them, by treating them as babies. There’s a drive to get them to mature as fast as possible, and indeed, faster than they’re ready. I’ve had conversations with my coworkers about our children’s self-comforting skills and what that term means.

I argue that the child made a very mature choice in coming to an adult when he was stressed. He knew what he needed to be comforted. He didn’t scream, or cry, or dash out of the room. He knew what was expected of him (to stay there), but he knew he was uncomfortable, and he knew what would make him feel better. Were I able to take him out of the room, I would have, but we had too many children present and for me to leave with just one would cause us to be out of ratio.

Children who have moved beyond their toddler years that come to us and want to be held, comforted or otherwise “babied” are, for the most part, acting according to their needs, but I see parents and early childhood professionals alike shoo them away, insisting they aren’t a baby anymore. The irony is, the more we push them away, the more they seek to cling. To shame them for deciding for themselves what they need emotionally only increases their anxiety, and their need for comfort becomes an obsession for attention. The insistence that this “coddling” will lead them to be babyish and spoiled later on is unfounded. I think a lot of the problems people have could have been prevented in early childhood by a little more genuine love. We just need to place ourselves in their shoes. What you see as clingy, they see as necessity. Breathe through it; we’re not crippling them. There will be plenty of time for them to distance themselves from their caretakers all on their own as they get older. For now, we build trust.