Readiness

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Home : 2002 : February : 6

Readiness
By L.P.

I teach in a low socio-economic area and I was not surprised to see that some of my kids couldn't write their names. A lot of our kids are mono-lingual migrant children or are just from homes where they have been neglected
or worse. I am not blaming the parents, I know that many of our families work very hard just to get by. I was making a point about the children not wanting to do the work. These are new skills I am asking them to do and many find it hard and don't want to do them. I know that some of my students are not developmentally ready for such tasks. In fact, I was explaining developmental

fine motor skills just today to my assistant who didn't understand why the kids had such sloppy handwriting. It wasn't sloppy to me, I just ask them to try their best. I would love to teach a kindergarten where we only went half a day, played, and did art. However, my district expects me to teach them to read and write regardless. There is a constant push-push for the kids to learn more at this young age. We start them on Reading Mastery, a direct instruction program the second week of school. My principal, who knows nothing of kindergarten, is a major proponent of this reading program and expects them to make progress in it. If they don't, they are retained. I have two retained children in my classroom from the teacher who taught there last year. Get this, one was retained so he wouldn't be in the same grade as his brother who was also retained! Arrgh! It's become so run of the mill to retain the children that I am receiving flack for not doing so! My kids are learning, and even my lowest kids know nearly all their letters and quite a few sounds. One of my colleagues put FIVE kids on her list to be retained. The K-teacher across the hall and I think something is dead wrong with this woman's teaching if she has that many kids to be retained. And this woman is one of the people pressuring me!
Oops, got off on a vent there but I just wanted you to know that when I talked about the kids not being worked with or not knowing letters, it was just a statement of fact and not blaming the parents.