When I Was In Kindergarten, Carter was Inaugurated

There’s lots I want to blog about, but the only thing I’m compelled to write about today is kindergarten.

It’s depressing.

I just spent two days substitute teaching in kindergarten. That makes six days I’ve subbed since August in kindergarten alone.

Kindergarten is hard.

There’s always a lot of talk between parents of four- and five-year-old kids around kindergarten time. Are you sending your kid? Are you waiting a year? Will you -- horrors -- hold them back? No, I’m giving them the gift of time. Up until now I had no real opinions on the matter. I figured every parent should evaluate his or her child’s emotional and academic aptitude, as well as their age, and sometimes even their size, and make the decision they thought was best for their kid.

I don’t believe that anymore.

My new opinion, at least in my school, in my county, in my state, is this: kindergarten is for six-year-olds.

Not that my daughter is six. She’s barely four months into being five. And she’s doing well. Exceptionally well, in fact. She’s in full-day kindergarten and loves every inch of school, every day. Wishes she could go on weekends. And she’s smart. She’s the only kindergartener in the school to skip on down the hall to first grade for reading.

On the surface, that’s a bragfest. But stay with me. Even though my daughter loves school, even though she’s doing incredibly well, had I known then what I know now, I would have had her wait a year.

Do you know what they do in kindergarten these days? Since my only mode of comparison was thirty-year-old memories, I did not. But I’m here to tell you: they work. They have homework. They have reading lessons and math lessons and limited recess (again, my school) because they have so much they need to get done to move to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing so they can do well in testing. Testing, testing, testing.

One-two-three?

There are also no naps and no snack time -- both of which were in place as recently as last year.

In our school -– which has full-day kindergarten –- we also have something euphemistically called the “after-school program” where the lowest third of kindergarteners (and they determine this how?) are pretty much required to keep working after school. Yep. Send the underachievers to the equivalent of summer school while the rest of the kids go out to play. That’ll foster a love of learning.

Gah.

That's all I can say at this point. I'm monosyllabic. I just finished two days of teaching in kindergarten. Gah. Gah gah gah. If I fail my life this time around, I’m coming back as a kindergarten teacher. I just know it.

I’ll probably delete this post eventually for confidentiality purposes (yeah, I know, good luck with that) so enjoy it while you can.