When thinking about school readiness, I feel the pressure, as a teacher that I have to get the children to be able to do this before they are ready to go to the next grade. Then it just makes it harder for the child because I am forcing the child to do things to show parents that the child is doing these things. How do you know if a child is "ready?" A child may be the smartest in the class, knows his or her letters, and listens well, but that does not mean they are ready; what if they are not socially ready?
I feel that children are ready for anything that life gives them, as long as they get practice and soon they will get the hang of things. Even as adults, I feel that we make many trials and errors before making things right. When we get a new job, we go through training, and even when we are on our own after; there is leeway because we are new workers. However, we put so much pressure in the children to have to know certain things before starting kindergarten.
Parents often are stressed about if a child is ready for kindergarten and feel that their child would fail. As teachers, we want whats best for the child and want them to learn in the best possible way; however, with so much pressure and making the child feel forced to learn, where does that lead the child? They wouldn't want to learn or wouldn't want to do activities.
With school readiness, companies provide assessment tools for teachers to use, but who does it really benefit? As I look at TS Gold, which is what I also use at work; it does not benefit the child at all. It benefits the company. Even with this assessment tool, I feel that it does not truly identify that the child is ready for school.
When I use the TS Gold tool, I use it to put my documentations, but I also provide summaries and a portfolio for the parents to see, because the program is so difficult to navigate around, and the terms are complex; it is better to put things into a portfolio for the parents to better understand what I have learned about their child. I feel that using this tool does not get to know the child, it just shows what the child does at school and it is simply just meeting standards. But it doesn't show true personality. It doesn't show a child's interest or personality at all.
I feel that a child who is willing to learn and is excited about learning is a child that is ready for school.
Aloha Monica!
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your post. Overall, I think all teachers feel the same pressure as you. We honestly will not know when a child will be ready until we do our observations. We may know that a child is ready but what happens when they move on to the next grade level? They may show their teacher that they are ready for the grade level or they might not act like they're ready for the grade level. How can we help a child that is unwilling to learn to be ready for school?
Monica,
ReplyDeleteI liked how you mentioned how parents can be really stressed out about their children being prepared for kindergarten, the pressure for academic success can both pressure the child and the parent into un-reasonable efforts to advance their child academic skills. What ways can we help show parents that skills come in developmental process? With our knowledge of early childhood are there methods we can include in our practice to help relieve the stresses of kindergarten readiness. Thanks for your pose Monica.
I thoroughly enjoyed your post - your first paragraph got me! As I TOTALLY agree! Throughout all of our ECE courses, it's been drilled in our heads that children learn best through play, yet there are these outside standards that are being thrown at us that children apparently need to meet in order to be listed as "ready" for the next level of education. It's frustrating and definitely puts that added pressure on us as teachers because like you said, it's feels as if we're forcing the child to learn these things just to show. I particularly liked your statement, "A child may be the smartest in the class, knows his or her letters, and listens well, but that does not mean they are ready; what if they are not socially ready?" - totally!! Such standardized tests only look at, what pretty much is, only their memorization skills instead of the child as a whole, as they should be doing. Thank you for your post!
ReplyDeleteHi Monica,
ReplyDeleteYou make a strong point about the pressures teachers feel working with young children today. Kindergarten teachers feel pressure from first grade teachers and their districts, and they pass that pressure down to preschool teachers who may or may not pass that pressure down to the children and parents. Where has this pressure come from? Has it always been so serious? What does it mean to be a "child?" Have we lost sight of what childhood means and should be, or is childhood simply a stage to be preparing the next round of workers in our society? How does childhood fit into being a "good" citizen in our country, and how can we work towards bringing children back into the focus of what it means to be a child?
In terms of TS Gold, while I have my own issues with these types of systems, how can you use the tool to bring the focus back towards the children you work with? Since you have to use it at your center, is there a way for you to re-frame the program to put the child back into the center of its focus? In other words, how can you use the information you gather to help students reach the next steps of their learning and development?
Thanks for sharing your thoughts this week!