4 - EASTERN OREGON PARENT - November 2018
Then & Now: Kindergarten’s taking big baby steps
By JENNIFER COLTON
Once upon a time – back
in the middle of the last
century – kindergarten was
option and many school dis-
tricts didn’t offer a program.
Thirty years ago, kindergar-
ten involved naps, snacks,
and story time for a couple
hours before five-year-olds
headed back home. Today,
kindergarten is full-day, full
of structured play and looks a
lot like the first-grade class-
room of the past.
Originally designed as a
school program to bridge
home and school, kindergar-
tens have become part of
primary education (after all,
it is the K-12 system) and the
plastic naptime mats are gone.
In 2016, researchers from the
University of Virginia announced
that, from 1998 to 2011, kinder-
garten had become first-grade, and
preschool has become kindergar-
ten. In that study, 31 percent of
kindergarten teachers in 1998 said
a child should know how to read
by the time he or she left kinder-
garten; 80 percent of teachers
gave that same answer in 2010.
Tracy Culligan is a kindergarten
teacher at Highland Hills Elementa-
ry in Hermiston. Although she has
20 years in public education, this is
her first year back in the classroom
after taking an eight-year break to
raise a child and teach preschool.
“So much has changed in just
eight years,” she says. “Technology
is huge. It is unfathomable to me
knowing what these five-year-olds
can do with an iPad.”
Culligan says when she taught
half-day preschool before, things
felt rushed because they had so
many academic benchmarks to
meet in such a short period of
time. During the No Child Left
Behind era, even kindergarten felt
the need to meet benchmarks on
academic assessments. Now, with
a swing in education policy and
full-day kindergarten across the
state, kindergarten is changing
again, making time for more struc-
tured play, science, and music.
“If you walk into a kindergarten
classroom, what may seem like
play to you is actually education-
based play,” Culligan notes. “Play
is great. I don’t want kids coming
to school feeling pressured. The
curiosity at this age is just phe-
nomenal.”
Those are good skills to have in
an educational arena where kin-
dergarteners are expected to know
how to add and subtract, sight
read words, and identify letter
sounds by the time they finish the
school year.
With kindergarten becoming an
academic classroom, some of the
preparation work has moved down
to preschool classrooms. Umatilla-
Morrow County Head Start began
early childhood services almost 40
years ago and Executive Director
Maureen McGrath says although
the focus is still the same – insur-
ing children and families are well
equipped for learning and life –
the approaches to learning have
changed.
“Today, there is so much science
backing up every aspect of each
approach we take to child devel-
opment, learning, environments,
and the preparation of teachers,”
McGrath says. “Our work has
become specialized and steeped in
insuring our practices are designed
to assure children are truly ready
to learn by the time they reach
kindergarten.”
That work is leading to the cre-
ation of a “Kinderbridge” in Head
Start to help children smoothly
transition to kindergarten.
What does kindergarten in 2018
look like?
Most classes begin with
some sort of circle and wel-
come time. In Culligan’s class-
room, students sing a welcome
song, do breathing exercises
and interact with each other.
They’ll do an hour of read-
ing, then an hour of writing,
before moving on to the first
recess. Skill groups target spe-
cific reading skills before lunch,
and after the meal and recess,
students will spend time to-
gether going over the calendar,
math and practice writing.
They’ll have an hour of math
groups, then time in centers
before a second recess. The
afternoon involves explora-
tion time, whether it’s science,
art, library, or structured play,
and they’ll end the day with Early
Reading Intervention programs.
Snacks don’t have their own
time slot in the schedule, but Cul-
ligan says they are still worked in.
To help students prepare for
kindergarten, parents can teach
shapes and colors, how to spell
their name, and how to interact
with others and listen to adults.
Ideally, they’d also be able to
count to 20 and recognize some
letters, but the educators say not
to push too hard.
“I don’t want parents to stress
if their child isn’t responding to
it yet,” Culligan says. “They might
not be ready.”
And educators all agree on the
most important piece: reading
with your child as often as you can
and making it fun.
________
Jennifer Colton is news director of
KOHU and KQFM, and mother of
three, based in Pendleton.