Kindergarten? Really?

[eldirector]

MAN kindergarten has changed! Working with LaDirectorette this evening, starting her SECOND hour of homework. She attends 1/2 day K, and then we spend another 2 hours EVERY weeknight, plus an hour each weekend day, on her lessons. Numbers, simple addition/subtraction, letters, sight words (3 new per week), colors, her name, my name, mom's name, last name, etc... and we are in week 6. At this rate, we will start Calculus and reading Moby Dick by Christmas!

Anyone else with a kiddo in K? Am I nuts?

 

[MTN]

Mines in 3rd grade and I can't figure out the crazy formula they for them to do double digit adding and subtracting. The wife just showed her the old way we were taught in school.

 

[HoughMade]

I didn't have homework until 7th Grade.

Somehow I manage.

 

[terrehautian]

I didn't have homework until 7th Grade.

Somehow I manage.

But did the schools have standardized testing, school A-F grades that determine funding and teacher pay and iRead test? That is why they are doing so much homework and such, have to get that test scores up because that determines many things to the schools.

 

[Tyler-The-Piker]

I did my homework earlier then sat down to help my daughter with her 2nd grade math. Mine was easier lol.

 

[Bfish]

I teach at a private school and the kids there do not have homework like you are talking about, but they also go all day. However, they are not subject to all of the state testing in the same way... The state is super jacked up with education right now to say the least!

 

[TB1999]

Mine goes full time k and the homework is about 20 mins.

 

[eldirector]

I teach at a private school and the kids there do not have homework like you are talking about, but they also go all day. However, they are not subject to all of the state testing in the same way... The state is super jacked up with education right now to say the least!

I'm thinking that may be our issue.

We are in 1/2 day K, but the ENTIRE required curriculum is done in that 1/2 day, with a recess. The afternoon is art, theater, Spanish, and such. I am starting to guess that her homework is what FULL DAY kids would do in their afternoon, if the curriculum was spread across the day.

Either that, or she just isn't picking up what they are putting down.

 

[danielocean03]

I'm thinking that may be our issue.

We are in 1/2 day K, but the ENTIRE required curriculum is done in that 1/2 day, with a recess. The afternoon is art, theater, Spanish, and such. I am starting to guess that her homework is what FULL DAY kids would do in their afternoon, if the curriculum was spread across the day.

Either that, or she just isn't picking up what they are putting down.

My son just started Kindergarten a few weeks ago, he goes full time and has yet to have any homework that couldn't be completed in 15-20 minutes.

I think you're on the right track with your little one getting a full day curriculum load in a 1/2 day format.

 

[eric001]

On one hand, that much homework for a kindergartener sounds crazy...but on the other hand, it's giving you a much better picture of where she's at and how well she's doing with her work. Not only are you getting to spend interactive and productive time with her, but she will probably be much less intimidated by homework in future grades, and may even do better in those grades because of the way she and you have got her used to being productive instead of doing it halfway or not at all.

It's a stretch, but I'm just trying to find a bright side to look on here.

 

[HoughMade]

But did the schools have standardized testing, school A-F grades that determine funding and teacher pay and iRead test? That is why they are doing so much homework and such, have to get that test scores up because that determines many things to the schools.

Standardized testing? Yes. The rest, of course not. We actually learned the 3 Rs in school during the day. Silly me thinking that graduating high school, college and law school with honors would be any evidence that homework in elementary school is unnecessary.

 

[IndyDave1776]

Answer me this: How is it that they are shoving things down her throat in Kindergarten that most of us antiques didn't see for at least another year or two, and the concept of homework was not broached until at least 3rd grade, yet they are constantly turning out even worse results? By the end of Kindergarten, I knew the alphabet (to this day, I remember a few of the teacher's inflatable number characters including 'Mr. T' who had tall teeth), I could count, and of course could deal with the obligatory 'artwork' which make up much of kindergarten. Arithmetic wasn't introduced until first grade.

So far as I can tell between the tales of parents of children now in school and an aunt who teaches, the system of standardized tests is a circle jerk and just keeps getting worse.

 

[devious169]

I know what ya mean. My youngest son started kindergarten this year and he's wiped out afterwards. He came home last Wednesday and done homework till 8:00 pm. Friday we found out his teacher had been out sick and his substitute gave him all his homework for the month! Like a champ he completed it all. Fast forward to this week he's bring 4 pages of homework home with him.

 

[OutdoorDad]

My daughter started out in an elementary school international baccalaureate program.

Her Kindergarten teacher told us she would be reading by Christmas when she first enrolled.
I was skeptical at the time. I am skeptical no longer.

She, and everyone in her school, is comfortable in standing before a group of a hundred people and giving a presentation.

My mother was an educator for 40+ years. And she always said "Its not what you know, but who you know".


It pains me. But I think my Mom was wrong.


I think things are more "Its how well you present what you know to who you know". That's the key to success in the future.

Work with her. As IndyDave says, the testing process is ineffective. But every second you spend with her in reading, writing and arithmetic is money in the bank.

IIRC, in Kindergarten, spelling doesn't count. If she can read it back to you, its good.




What a wonderful time for you both!!! I miss it.

 

[IndyDave1776]

OutdoorDad raises some excellent points. I have no doubt that such things can be accomplished, but the other side of the coin is that I wonder how many students this teacher was teaching and the quality of those other students. I am well aware that education, like most other human endeavors, is subject to the fashionable thoughts of the day.

When I took my methods courses some 20 years ago, the prevailing fashion was 'mastery learning'. In theory, it sounds great. The problems inherent to it are that the overall pace of the class is set by the slowest student, and the larger and more intellectually diverse your class is, the more problematic this becomes. Also, it roughly triples the amount of work necessary to teach since you have to plan the core curriculum, plus have at least two rounds of secondary exercises for your better students while the slower ones do it again and again until they manage to get it right, and this was before the NCLB nonsense in which a teacher WILL spend more time writing about it than doing about it. For the record, I am thankful that even though I really did want to teach, life took me a different direction!

In today's environment, my concern is that much of the homework at earlier and earlier ages is engineered to compensate for the unrealistic expectations placed on teachers. I do not condone lazy teachers. I do not condone teachers who do not make an effort to make the curriculum palatable to their students. On a classroom observation I recall, this middle school teacher had filled blackboards at both the front and back of the room with small banknote-quality material for the students to copy down, was the most boring speaker I had ever heard, did nothing to even try to keep even the most dedicated student able to focus, and had me fighting to remain awake and attentive in spite of being more mature and more motivated than the poor students who had to deal with this in spite of not having near the motivation I had. I wish to emphasize that this is NOT what I am addressing! The unrealistic expectation comes from a combination of outcome based evaluation, the educational manifestation of egalitarianism, meeting the the reality on the street that not every child can be transformed into Einstein.

Back when, students typically dropped out at the highest grade level they were capable of completing. Also true is that my great-grandfather, who dropped at the end of 8th grade had a better education than most people with a 4 year college degree today. More important yet, others who matter, like potential employers, had a very good idea of what they were getting based on the grade level a person completed since it really meant something, unlike the 'everybody gets a trophy' diplomas handed out today. In fact, I was reading this week that California found a unique solution to the federal standards in handing out diplomas to students who did NOT meet, or come anywhere near meeting, the requirements to graduate, but were able to turn in 100% graduation with sheepskins that are 100% meaningless.

Establishing some 'truth in advertising' for grade levels and academic credentials would be a good start. Accepting the truth that not all are going to be scholars would be a good start. Returning to a system in which one's completed grade level gave the evaluator an excellent idea of the capabilities of the person being evaluated would be a good start. Dividing children and teaching them subject matter based on their aptitudes rather than the wishful thoughts of their parents or worse yet a bunch of pointy-headed idiots in an ivory tower would be a good start. Please note that I really do mean to divide them by their actual aptitude, not the standard of the Prussian schools on which our public schools were modeled to produce the people that the government decided that it needed which is no better than using the wishful thinking of parents for a standard. Seriously, if your child has a great deal of aptitude in, say, welding, do you really want him in an advanced biology class in which the only thing he is going to learn is an expanded vocabulary of swear words? Conversely, if your child can speak calculus more fluently than most people can speak English, do you really want him crashing and burning learning Shakespeare? Most important, do we really want 'everyone gets a trophy' diplomas rather than honest and useful evaluations which really mean something?

I would have a hard time criticizing OutdoorDad's mom. His experiences may differ from hers, but the ultimate result of Political Correctness is that it is no longer acceptable to convey the truth about events, the participants, or even the standards being used to measure any of the above. This really brings to mind several past employers who would not tell the truth about what they wanted and then took umbrage at not getting it. If you really want sycophants who don't contribute any thoughts, all you have to do is say so. I will be more than happy to stop fretting over making things work better. If you are into ass kissing, speak up. I will probably leave now rather than stretch it out over a time which irritates the hell out of both of us. If you consider me hired from the neck down, I can work with that. My head will probably be focused on the door, but I won't irritate you by trying to be conscientious. Of course, there are some who want the type of employee that they can send to go do something and stop thinking about it knowing that the project is in good hands, which also demands that the employee bring good hands to the table. All told, mom is right part of the time but not always.

This is pure gold:

But every second you spend with her in reading, writing and arithmetic is money in the bank.

Everything you teach your child can be useful at some time, even if it never moves beyond personal edification. Think back through your own life at the unlikely things you learned from some unlikely people which have proven very useful. Now think of what a deliberate effort to teach this type of thing could have done for you.

In the mean time, especially in a public school, be prepared for an onslaught of homework and unnecessarily wasted time because the system is designed around the lowest common denominator and makes everyone else suffer for it.

 

[chef1231]

I just tell my kid to wait till mom comes home

 

[Hoosierkav]

Their brains will develop at the rate they develop, not at the rate the curriculum says it will.

We have Pre-K to get kids to where "they should be" for kindergarten, yet who says they should be wherever? 3rd graders are doing multiplication before mastering addition. It is a big, big mess.

Enjoy the quality time with her. My son ended up with performance anxiety from the timed reading assessments (do you mis-pronounce a word and keep on going, or work to pronounce it properly and lose time?)--it took a year of work at home to get him past it; he is a much better reader now that he can take his time and focus on getting the words correct, and he enjoys reading, versus him definitely disliking it.

The only homework at the OP's level should be whatever time is spent with the child at home. Read, play games, identify letters as you go down the road... fun stuff, not scripted. A conversation with the school might yield some interesting comments (fodder for a follow-up post?).

 

[eldirector]

A few comments, well, just because.

1) This is a private, Christian school. Class size is 12 kids, with one teacher. We intentionally chose this school to help AVOID many of these issues. A better curriculum, more individual attention, better policies/procedures, and more direct communication from us parents to the teacher/administration. After talking to friends/neighbors who are in the local PUBLIC school, they are having FEWER of the issues I am describing.

2) I spend a GREAT deal of time with my daughter already. EVERY DAY is a learning day, regardless of what we are doing. I would MUCH rather be out and about, doing REAL math (that squirrel has 2 acorns, and can hold 4 in its cheeks. How many more does he need to find?), than sitting at the table churning through workbooks. All summer we read together, played number and memory games, colored, counted, and applied what we knew to problems in our lives (she helped build a fence by measuring and counting, for example).

3) My wife is a full time domestic engineer. No "waiting for mom to come home". She works with her as much (or more) than I do. We split the "homework". An hour with mom after lunch, and an hour with dad after dinner.

Gah! Thanks for letting me vent. I'm sure we'll figure it out. Luckily, the kiddo is resilient and has an AWESOME attitude. Every day she is up, fed, dressed, and out the door with a smile.

 

[IndyDave1776]

A few comments, well, just because.

1) This is a private, Christian school. Class size is 12 kids, with one teacher. We intentionally chose this school to help AVOID many of these issues. A better curriculum, more individual attention, better policies/procedures, and more direct communication from us parents to the teacher/administration. After talking to friends/neighbors who are in the local PUBLIC school, they are having FEWER of the issues I am describing.

2) I spend a GREAT deal of time with my daughter already. EVERY DAY is a learning day, regardless of what we are doing. I would MUCH rather be out and about, doing REAL math (that squirrel has 2 acorns, and can hold 4 in its cheeks. How many more does he need to find?), than sitting at the table churning through workbooks. All summer we read together, played number and memory games, colored, counted, and applied what we knew to problems in our lives (she helped build a fence by measuring and counting, for example).

3) My wife is a full time domestic engineer. No "waiting for mom to come home". She works with her as much (or more) than I do. We split the "homework". An hour with mom after lunch, and an hour with dad after dinner.

Gah! Thanks for letting me vent. I'm sure we'll figure it out. Luckily, the kiddo is resilient and has an AWESOME attitude. Every day she is up, fed, dressed, and out the door with a smile.

1. Now that you share this, my guess is that the curriculum is geared toward parents who want their child ready to enter a PhD program before they hit puberty.

2. You have discovered a critical truth that many never learn, even by the time their great-grandchildren come along, which is that real learning happens where rubber meets the road.

3. Your wife deserves a commendation for doing this and you deserve one for facilitating it, superfluous homework notwithstanding.

4. It sounds like you have an awesome daughter!

 

[eldirector]

Thanks, IndyDave... Truly.

And thanks to everyone else for your comments and for listening to (well, reading about) me.

We had our parent/teacher conference last week. My wife and I were in too much shock to ask good questions. Definitely going for a follow-up. I am 100% convinced that it will be one-sided: the school will only be so accommodating. We will be expected to get with the program.