Family Interviews
Since I am doing my research paper on trickle-down academics (pushing education on younger children), I spoke with two different parents who have children that could go to kindergarten next year to ask their feelings on the reasons why they are making the decisions they are about kindergarten for their child.
The first parent has a daughter who will be five on September 1. Our school district has a cut-off date for kindergarten as August 15. Her daughter is academically ready for kindergarten and she has attended two years of preschool. She has decided to keep her in preschool for another year because she herself is a teacher and has seen the impact that academics has on children at many levels. Currently she teaches kindergarten but in the past has taught 8th grade, 3rd grade, and 1st grade. She based her decision on the social readiness and the fact that as children get older, the age difference really starts to show in their maturity level as well as their academic skills. She stated that the children that are behind in kindergarten are the same ones that are behind in 3rd grade and the same ones that are behind in 8th grade. She wants to make sure her child succeeds in school and knows the importance of giving her time to grow and learn.
The other parent I talked to has a daughter who will be five on August 27. This parent has decided to push to get her daughter in kindergarten next year. She feels that it would be easier on her as she is a working parent and would like the benefits of placing her in the all day program. While I feel that this child is academically ready, I wonder if the parent is just looking at the "day care" benefits; she won't have to bring her to school and will have somewhere to keep her all day. She has been working with her daughter at home to get her ready for kindergarten and her daughter is very smart.
I wonder why some parents want to be in such a hurry for their child to grow up. They don't realize how fast the time goes as their child grows and before long they will be old enough to move out of the house and go to college. While I don't think that the second child will struggle in kindergarten, I wish I could convince the parent that it is just as important to allow her time to grow and develop socially and emotionally. I encourage all of my parents to visit kindergarten classrooms so that they have the opportunity to see how academic kindergarten is now compared to when they went to school.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Monday, February 13, 2012
Observation #3
Over the last 2 weeks, I have had many conversations with my internship supervisor about her feelings on the possibility of implementing a junior kindergarten. This is something that she is very interested in and would love to get the principal on board to start in our school. There are several children who are ready for more than a typical 3-5 year old preschool classroom but not ready for the academics of kindergarten. She also feels that this would be a great solution to parents who struggle with waiting another year to put their child in kindergarten.
We have been offered an opportunity to pilot a kindergarten program using Teaching Strategies Gold and she thinks that this would be a great opportunity to implement that program. The structure would be much less stressful on the children than the current kindergarten curriculum. I look forward to seeing how this process goes and if it proves to be implemented successfully. I hope it does because it would be a great benefit to the children.
Mrs. Walton feels that this would be a great service to provide for children who are not proficient in English, children who are just not developmentally ready for kindergarten, and for children who are not old enough for kindergarten but are more advanced in their thinking. She feels that this would provide a great balance of children so that the class did not just end up being the lower level children without role models.
I was also able to spend time with two kindergarten teachers who had breaks between parent/teacher conferences. They were sharing their feelings about the parents that do not come to conferences and how it relates to how their children are doing in school. They both felt that there is a direct correlation between lack of parental involvement and the child's success in school. Every year the children who struggle in kindergarten seem to be from families that lack the time or abilities to support their child in school. They would like to see some changes to this. They were both pleasantly surprised by the number of parents who have been attending a reading workshop that is being offered at our school at night. They hope that some of these programs can help make positive changes in the lives of the children attending our school.
Over the last 2 weeks, I have had many conversations with my internship supervisor about her feelings on the possibility of implementing a junior kindergarten. This is something that she is very interested in and would love to get the principal on board to start in our school. There are several children who are ready for more than a typical 3-5 year old preschool classroom but not ready for the academics of kindergarten. She also feels that this would be a great solution to parents who struggle with waiting another year to put their child in kindergarten.
We have been offered an opportunity to pilot a kindergarten program using Teaching Strategies Gold and she thinks that this would be a great opportunity to implement that program. The structure would be much less stressful on the children than the current kindergarten curriculum. I look forward to seeing how this process goes and if it proves to be implemented successfully. I hope it does because it would be a great benefit to the children.
Mrs. Walton feels that this would be a great service to provide for children who are not proficient in English, children who are just not developmentally ready for kindergarten, and for children who are not old enough for kindergarten but are more advanced in their thinking. She feels that this would provide a great balance of children so that the class did not just end up being the lower level children without role models.
I was also able to spend time with two kindergarten teachers who had breaks between parent/teacher conferences. They were sharing their feelings about the parents that do not come to conferences and how it relates to how their children are doing in school. They both felt that there is a direct correlation between lack of parental involvement and the child's success in school. Every year the children who struggle in kindergarten seem to be from families that lack the time or abilities to support their child in school. They would like to see some changes to this. They were both pleasantly surprised by the number of parents who have been attending a reading workshop that is being offered at our school at night. They hope that some of these programs can help make positive changes in the lives of the children attending our school.
Monday, January 30, 2012
The program where I am doing my internship is also the facility where I work. It is the Grand Valley Center for Family Learning (big name for a school for small children), located in Parachute, Colorado. The school has three preschool classrooms, two Head Start classrooms (one is an all-day program for four-year olds), three kindergarten classrooms, and also is the location of our school district's teen parent program which includes a nursery for the children of the teens in the program.
For this module, I spoke with and observed two different individuals. The first person is a kindergarten teacher who teaches one of our two full-day programs. She has been teaching for over 25 years and really enjoys teaching kindergarten. The other individual is the special education teacher for our building. It was a joy to watch both of these teachers in action and they showed great examples of teaching young children.
In the kindergarten classroom, I observed different groups of children during literacy time. The first observation was a boy reading with the teacher on his own. He read the words fairly easily and did not require much support from the teacher. After reading the book, the teacher asked him what the book was about and he could not answer any questions about the book he had just read. The teacher showed him each page and asked him what happened on that page - he had no comprehension over what he just read. The teacher then talked with him about how reading is more than just saying the words on the page. In order to read you must be able to re-tell what story you just read. After my observation, I talked with the teacher about this experience and I was surprised that this boy had no idea what he had just read even though he read the book quite well. She said that this has been struggle with this particular boy all year. He can read words but cannot recall anything that he read. She has worked with him on strategies but he still struggles with comprehension. As an observer, I would have guessed by the way he easily read the words on the pages that he could comprehend the story. The insight that I gained from this experience is that just because a child can read it does not mean that they will remember or be able to re-tell what they just read. This is just as important as learning to read because if you do not comprehend what you read, what is the purpose of reading.
In the observation of the special education teacher, I observed her working one on one with a little boy who is diagnosed with ADHD. To say that this little boy is active would be an understatement! I really enjoyed this observation and how engaged she kept him even though he was all over the place most of the time. He has only been enrolled at our school for about 1 month and he is doing wonderful. After my observation, I spoke with the special education teacher and she said that when he arrived at our school he only knew 2 letters of the alphabet and now he knows 9. During my observation, she read a book to him called "Truckery Rhymes" that takes familiar nursery rhymes and changes the words to different types of trucks. She had only read this book to him one time and he could repeat almost every nursery rhyme in the book. He pointed to words and asked what the word said and was really engaged in the book. One conversation that stands out to me between the boy and the teacher was about his grandma. He talked about how he missed his grandma and how she looked like the teacher. This brought me to realize how important it really is to connect with the children in our care. I think that this little boy is doing so well because he has someone teaching him that really cares about him and that he relates to someone important in his life. This made me realize how important the relationships we form with the children in our care are and what an impact it can have in their lives. I always knew that this was important but hearing how much he has grown in the short time he has been here and seeing how he reacted with this teacher made me realize just how important this is.
For this module, I spoke with and observed two different individuals. The first person is a kindergarten teacher who teaches one of our two full-day programs. She has been teaching for over 25 years and really enjoys teaching kindergarten. The other individual is the special education teacher for our building. It was a joy to watch both of these teachers in action and they showed great examples of teaching young children.
In the kindergarten classroom, I observed different groups of children during literacy time. The first observation was a boy reading with the teacher on his own. He read the words fairly easily and did not require much support from the teacher. After reading the book, the teacher asked him what the book was about and he could not answer any questions about the book he had just read. The teacher showed him each page and asked him what happened on that page - he had no comprehension over what he just read. The teacher then talked with him about how reading is more than just saying the words on the page. In order to read you must be able to re-tell what story you just read. After my observation, I talked with the teacher about this experience and I was surprised that this boy had no idea what he had just read even though he read the book quite well. She said that this has been struggle with this particular boy all year. He can read words but cannot recall anything that he read. She has worked with him on strategies but he still struggles with comprehension. As an observer, I would have guessed by the way he easily read the words on the pages that he could comprehend the story. The insight that I gained from this experience is that just because a child can read it does not mean that they will remember or be able to re-tell what they just read. This is just as important as learning to read because if you do not comprehend what you read, what is the purpose of reading.
In the observation of the special education teacher, I observed her working one on one with a little boy who is diagnosed with ADHD. To say that this little boy is active would be an understatement! I really enjoyed this observation and how engaged she kept him even though he was all over the place most of the time. He has only been enrolled at our school for about 1 month and he is doing wonderful. After my observation, I spoke with the special education teacher and she said that when he arrived at our school he only knew 2 letters of the alphabet and now he knows 9. During my observation, she read a book to him called "Truckery Rhymes" that takes familiar nursery rhymes and changes the words to different types of trucks. She had only read this book to him one time and he could repeat almost every nursery rhyme in the book. He pointed to words and asked what the word said and was really engaged in the book. One conversation that stands out to me between the boy and the teacher was about his grandma. He talked about how he missed his grandma and how she looked like the teacher. This brought me to realize how important it really is to connect with the children in our care. I think that this little boy is doing so well because he has someone teaching him that really cares about him and that he relates to someone important in his life. This made me realize how important the relationships we form with the children in our care are and what an impact it can have in their lives. I always knew that this was important but hearing how much he has grown in the short time he has been here and seeing how he reacted with this teacher made me realize just how important this is.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
To add to the stress of trying to figure out the whole blogging thing, my computer crashed and I had to order a new hard drive. Got the new hard drive and finally got most of my programs re-installed. I am not sure I am loving technology right now!! I can attest to the drawbacks of living in a rural area and working with technology. Nobody around here sells computer parts and everything has to be ordered so I was at the mercy of the delivery trucks. Thank goodness they came through!
Interview
I am looking at focusing my research paper on the trickle down of academics in early childhood education. I interviewed two individuals that have over 25 years of experience in the field of early childhood. During their duration they have seen many changes in the academic expectations of young children and question the ability of the children's learning - are they learning or are they memorizing. They both agreed that this is a very good topic to focus on since there seems to be a return of DAP questioning. Some of the issues commonly encountered with this topic are questioning whether we are forcing young children to grow up too fast, are these activities really developmentally appropriate, and are we really focusing on their Zone of Proximal Development. Some areas of advocacy related to this topic include the importance of all day kindergarten and refining goals and objectives based on the standards set forth. There is also a focus to make sure that preschool remains child directed more than teacher directed. Some concerns that both individuals expressed are if we are trying to teach children this information too early does it stay with them or do they forget it and have to be re-instructed on the same topics year after year and they also are worried about how this affects the children. By teaching them too much too soon are we stressing them out (or making them become overwhelmed). There are also concerns as to how this affects children if they do not understand the information being presented to them - do they shut down or do they get upset and feel as though they are a failure.
Questions I have for my classmates are:
Questions I have for my classmates are:
- How do you feel about trickle-down academics?
- What do you remember about your early childhood experiences when you started school?
- What do you expect from children in your early childhood classes?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)