Let’s make kindergarten engaging again
In a Texas kindergarten classroom, 22 children spend their day participating in more than 10 different teacher-led activities in seven hours. They write in journals, do math, practice spelling and phonics, learn to read and more. They are just 5 years old.
Across the country, kindergartners are being told what to do and how to do it, every single step along the way, all day long. They play less and study more than they did 20 years ago. This is what kindergarten has become, and this shift is not a good thing.
Besides diminishing children’s sense of wonder and their ability to see themselves as learners, this constant push for children to learn academics through routinized activities can negatively impact their learning in elementary school and even through high school.
So, why is this happening, and what can we do to make kindergarten an engaging place for learning again?
During the past few years, I and members of my research team have interviewed education stakeholders: kindergarteners, their families, teachers, school administrators, university educators and researchers, policy analysts, policymakers and lobbyists.
We’ve done our research in Texas, West Virginia and Washington, D.C. Our goal is to make sense of these classroom changes and how they might alter the kindergarten experience.
We found that almost everyone we talked to was worried about what kindergarten has become. A principal in Texas told us: “We’re killing their joy for school in kindergarten. We have to ask ourselves, ‘What are we setting children up for later?’”
To make kindergarten more engaging for children, these stakeholders offered a range of suggestions including more recess, more play, more conversation with and among the kids so that teachers can build children’s creativity, sense of wonder, inquiry, interest and their engagement in learning for themselves.
Stakeholders also pushed for less testing since “kindergarten should never be like first grade. That doesn't make any sense.”
While these research participants want change, they also know how important a good year in kindergarten can be for children’s academic success.
How can we help kindergarteners be little and successful?
To make kindergarten engaging again requires reform of not only the kindergarten classroom but also of how we view kindergarten itself.
The stakeholders in our study want policymakers and school administrators to put in place reforms that provide more time across the day for social and emotional learning and more opportunities for children to play and interact with one another.
They also want to improve teacher training so that educators can develop the professional knowledge needed to provide all kindergarteners with learning experiences that can support their cognitive, emotional, physical and social learning while increasing their academic achievement.
In terms of state and national policy change, stakeholders want new content and program standards implemented across the entire K—12 education system. The standards should focus on developing the whole child while limiting the impact of standardized testing on children, teachers and their schools.
Based on our conversations, everyone would benefit if we all stop thinking that being ready for kindergarten and school success means children must acquire specific academic skills and knowledge by a specific grade.
Instead, we should consider how families, teachers and schools can work together with students to create an engaging learning environment that helps all children become — and see themselves as — competent, lifelong learners. Brown is a professor of early childhood education in the College of Education at The University of Texas at Austin.