being ready or getting ready

Thinking more on the idea of readiness for school. 

How do we make the change from five years old as the ideal time to enter school to either making as assessment of each child (complicated) or making more pre-K opportunities available for all young students? 

Assessing each child is too risky: those who are found wanting are starting out behind and they or their families may be the least able to cope with that. I’m sure in many cases, getting a child off to school is considered liberating. Maybe not ideal but it is what it is. So making sure they’re ready makes more sense. 

So what does an incoming kindergartener need to know? 

  • their letters, both as memorized symbols and as sounds. We perhaps forget that singing the ABCs is nothing more than memorization without any real value beyond that. 
  • numbers: 1-10 or 20 is good. Surprising how many get tripped up on fifteen as it breaks the naming pattern. And simple addition/subtraction as well: if you have seven pieces of candy, I have three, and I give you two more, how many do you have and how many do I have? 
  • shapes and colors are also valuable. These can be combined with the numbers, as in “bring me three red shapes” or “bring me six triangles.” 

Doing some some interviews with K/1s today, I was glad to see so many enjoyed math games and simple math work. The challenge is to keep that going: mathematics is a language and the only way to master a language is to use it. Written and oral language will come, unless there is some profound learning disorder or impairment but math can easily be neglected. And with math comes science, another subject that got a lot of interest. 

Do they need to know how to read? No, though some can. But a mastery of the fundamentals, of letters and sounds, and the idea that those arcane squiggles make up words and sentences and books is important. 

what determines readiness for school?

So what’s magical about the age of five for children to enter school? And what should they be expected to do and know at that age? Are there any entry requirements for entering school? We have a lot of assessments of kids at various levels, both formal and informal, from daily/weekly checkins to report cards and standardized tests. And of course we have graduation requirements. But do we ever assess a child’s readiness for school before they arrive? 

Why not? 

We do require an assessment if a child wants to be admitted before their fifth birthday. But what’s so magical about being five? It seems to be an open question. 

Or we could learn this example, formerly used in New Zealand:

Children entered school on their fifth birthday, whenever that fell in the year. They were then moved along to the “primary” grades when they were considered ready, whether that was the June after they entered or at the end of the next year. That seemed to allow for those students who were developmentally ready to begin earlier and those who were not to have more time without any attached stigma.

Consider that a 5 year old has 20% more life experience than a 4 year old, that much more time observing, absorbing, questioning, and just being. A lot happens in those years, lots of teeth coming and going, more language skills, more activities (learning to ride a bike and swim, first exposure to organized team sports). Could those used as part of the assessment for readiness? Could a child’s ability to manage their behavior on a sports field or control their body enough to swim or bike be used to gauge their readiness for the classroom? 

Even at the purely academic level, what skills should they have? Their letters and numbers (how far? to 100?), their colors and shapes? Should they understand that letters make sounds as a foundation for phonics and learning to read? Or is just knowing the 26 symbols enough? Is knowing 1-10 enough? Or should they know that some numbers are bigger: if you give a child 10 pieces of candy and ask for three 3, will they count three out or just push the pile across to you? 

For all the talk about graduation requirements and declining performance of college freshmen, maybe it’s time we looked at how prepared kids are to enter school as a way of ensuring they have what they need for a fulfilling life when they leave school.  

NPR 600 word story entry 2

Some people swore that the house was haunted.

Haunted? Like, by ghosts? No, it wasn’t like that. But “having or showing signs of mental anguish or torment” as the definition reads? That’s more accurate.

But how does that work for an inanimate object, like a house? Well, if you consider that a house is made of wood and wood comes from trees and trees are living things, can’t living things be unhappy, maybe even very unhappy? If a house was made of wood from trees that were unhappy in life, does the wood remember? Can you expect those warped gnarled timbers to hold their shape, bear that load, to shed weather any better after being harvested than it did before?

This house was built from wood that should have been plowed into a slash pile and burned before anyone relied on it for anything but heat. The trees were bent and twisted from weather and wind over many years and had been left standing when others around them had been harvested.

After years of standing as a windbreak and being used as a living fenceline, having gradually engulfed wires and staples, the land was cleared and no one related their story to the new owner. New to the territory, they pulled the trees down and piled them up for burning. But before the wood was dry enough, someone took the bigger pieces and built the house — the one we’re talking about — from the lumber they trimmed from them. No one knew who took the wood or who built the house. We don’t know how they milled it, as crooked and dangerous as it was. No one ever saw it in its intended location. We never saw it til it got here, where you see it now.

It moved itself here, where the trees came from. We never figured out how. It left some marks behind, of course. Nothing that big moves without leaving some trace. That gate you came through? Demolished. Knocked flat with 20 feet of hedge on either side of it. Some gouges in the lawn there, too. But we never found where it started from. And no one claimed it. Can you imagine a “Lost: house” posted on a telephone pole? See a milk carton with “Have you seen my house?” printed on it?

Next morning, the coast watchers came out to check the beach and do their usual weather observations and look for any problems. And there it sat. Right on that cliff as if it had been built there. The old fellow who was first to see it, well, he didn’t know any better, so he went up to it and tried to open the door. It was locked or somehow held shut. He kept on pulling and knocking and for some reason it finally opened (according to the fellow with him that morning). He went in and the door slammed so hard, the house jumped off the ground. And out through the front door, on the opposite side, he came flying out and ended up out in the channel, about where you see those gulls. Fully 20 yards.

His partner rescued him, as they had a boat and life-rings right there, but he quit that day and never came back. Haven’t had a coast watcher here since. No one will take the job.

Time was, we had a swimming beach and a boat launch here and some picnic tables and fire rings for families to enjoy. But then that house arrived.

Nothing was ever the same again after that.

NPR 600 word story entry 1

Some people swore that the house was haunted. We never believed it but we were happy to let others think so.

The house’s appearance helped. It was right out of the props department of a movie studio. A tall, narrow, wooden house with shutters hanging by a corner, swinging and slamming in the slightest breeze, slats missing, standing alone on a treeless hill at the end of a street. Rotten steps leading to a front door that was missing most of its paint. Broken windows, loose trim, odd sounds and smells. Some said there had been trees near it at at one time but they got scared away.

OK. Not all of that was done by supernatural forces. Unless you count teenage boys and girls. The windows were broken as far back as I remember. And the strange smells could be from garbage — or worse — thrown through those windows. We never figured out where the sounds came from but we never looked that hard. No one I knew ever went into the old place.

The history of the old place went back a few generations, with the usual story of well-heeled gentry building a house to match their status followed by the family slowly slipping down the ladder of respectability. Throw in a few cases of madness and it’s a cliched pulp novel. But this family didn’t dwindle into obscurity. They just vanished. They had been seen out and about in the town one day, with dinner and some shopping in the evening, and the next day they disappeared. No wagon came for them, their own carriages and horses stood waiting. The servants came to an empty house that morning but never returned, not even to collect their wages.

There it stood for years, decades even, brooding and deteriorating on its empty hillside, its only companions bats, pigeons, stray cats, bored teenagers.

Then one day a car drove up to the old house, an old car no one could recall seeing or even identify, long, black, curved, with wire wheels. It drove slowly through the town, whining in the wrong gear as it were being punished for wanting to go faster, and turned down the road to the house. We followed as closely as we dared, on foot, on bicycles, wondering what this was about.

We waited at the end of the drive, sitting, squatting, hiding behind our bicycles and each other. The car lurched to a halt and backfired, so loud we could hear it echo. The driver got out, so tall he unfolded as he came, and turned to open the rear door. After a pause, he closed it again, straightened his coat, and walked up the steps, his hands folded behind his back. The front door opened as he was halfway up the stairs and he walked in, closing it behind him.

Half the watchers left, as fast as they could go, mumbling to themselves and waving away things only they could see.As the rest of us watched, the house seemed to shimmer and blur ever so slightly, and as we looked it got straighter, taller, less slumped. Windows were opened and were once again windows with unbroken glass. Lamps were lit, and loud thumps and deep vibrating hums came from the earth under and around the house.

When we saw the trees slowly walking across the hillside, slumped as if in shame at their faithlessness, we all backed up slowly and made our way back to town, never once turning our backs on the house.

Nothing was ever the same again after that.

The drugs we really need wouldn’t make us high, rather reliably connect us with whom we already are at our best.

Alain de Botton (@alaindebotton)

the conscience of a public school parent

Talking with a parent whose kids went to preschool with ours and found her kids are moving out of a high-quality Catholic school to one of the premier private schools: she urged me to get ours assessed with the ISEE exam. Her oldest says he is being challenged for the first time, after spending elementary school in a well-regarded Montessori program and then Catholic school for middle school. Hmmm. 

If they did well on the assessment, would we abandon public school? Assuming we could afford it, with financial aid etc., would we do it? 

The advantages:

  • High academic rigor
  • High expectations (college prep, professional careers)
  • Contacts. Steve Ballmer didn’t get to run MSFT based on his personal charm or good looks

The negatives:

  • Expensive
  • Insular: private school goes against a lot of what I believe in. I don’t want my kids exposed to a country club atmosphere or hanging with kids who feel entitled
  • Am I wrong to be more concerned about the social dynamics of a rich school than a good middle class public school? Popular fiction notwithstanding, I’d have to think about it. 

I think the assessment might be as far as this goes. Though I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the scores are shared with the schools and if they’re good, that we hear from them. Oh, well, better to be asked than ignored. 

More numbers

I wonder:

  • How many school-age kids regularly see a parent or role model reading, be it Rolling Stone, Sports Illustrated, the NYTimes or the PennySaver  
  • How many books kids have at home
  • How many cable channels kids know by name and number 
  • If children watch TV or listen to the radio with adults 
  • If they are read to, even if they can read already

Modeling the behavior we want to see is so important. 

Another video and talk from Sir Ken Robinson on the need to change pretty much everything about education. The agrarian schedule and industrial management techniques are outmoded and do more harm than good. 

He gets off track pretty badly when he rails against ADHD meds, not realizing that they are not sedatives and do not desensitize the kids who take them: they’re stimulants. If they work, if they allow the person taking them to have better control of their brain’s executive function, to prioritize and manage themselves, they need them. If they make a kid (or adult) wiggly, they don’t need ‘em. What he should complain about is the overuse of adult-strength anti-psychotics and other behavior modifiers: those are dangerous. And their overuse is directly related to poor training, zealous marketing, and under-resourced school health departments and social services. 

anonymity

So why aren’t there any names or places mentioned here? Are you famililar with the term “dooced?”

Not that I plan to go on the rampage but one can never tell what someone else will find critical or offensive. Freedom of speech is a core American value but protecting/defending it can be a lot of work.

So in the tradition of many anonymous contributors, I’d rather these words stand on their own with no way to infer any additional meaning from the author’s personal situation or characteristics.