How many times have you been to your kids' Kindy classroom?
My mom recently told me a funny (well, not funny-ha-ha, more like funny-hmmmmm) story about the time she got a peek into my younger brother’s kindergarten classroom. Seems that one day, my brother missed the bus, so my mom drove him.
After leaving him inside the school to be walked to his class by the secretary, she was about to hop in our 1974 Caprice Classic station wagon (with the fake-wood-grain panel outside and green shag rug in the way back) and head home, when she had an idea. What if she snuck around the building and just sorta peeked in the window to see what it all looked like?
See what it looked like?! Snuck around the building?!
These days, not only would she not have to crawl through bushes to peer through glass at her son, she’d probably be in the classroom, distributing snack, reading a book, or helping the kids glue ears on the lion art projects they hadn’t had time to finish yesterday. These days, at least where I live, kindergarten parents are nearly as involved in the day-to-day of their children’s classrooms as, well, their kids are.
Anyway, mom peeked in and what do you think she saw? Kids at their tables, tracing the letter “T” or coloring? Kids in the block corner, stacking and learning math at the same time? Kids on the cheerful carpet, discussing the day’s weather? Nope. She saw a teacher — who just happened to be our across-the-street neighbor — sitting behind her desk and screaming her head off at the unruly gaggle of 5-year-olds running around unfettered. Nice.
Of course, bad teachers (or teachers having a bad day, to be fair) are everywhere, just as good teachers are everywhere. But I can guarantee you that there’s No. Way. On. Earth that this teacher’s classroom style would not be known, down to the last detail, by every parent who’d ever had a child go through that school.
We all know. Some parents know more than others — in fact, there are some parents these days who keep Excel spreadsheets of teachers to track the endless who-had-whom and who was in who’s class and who is best for Their Little Darlings.
We’ve come a looong way from a time when moms like mine had virtually no idea about their kids’ school days, to now, when parents are partners from day one. I remember remarking to a dad in my son’s first grade class last year — it was either at the butter-making Thanksgiving party, or perhaps the reception after the winter concert — that I’d already been inside this classroom more times than my parents had set foot in my elementary school, ever.
Don’t even get me started on the last-day-of school hoopla. Oh, okay — get me started! In our primary schools, kids find out on their final report card who their next year’s teacher will be. Immediately — like, within the hour — phones and emails are buzzing all over town. One mom in my son’s class (who was both the class mom and the PTA president) emailed asking everyone who their child got. Once she had all the responses she was going to get, she sent out another message with a spreadsheet detailing which kids were in which second-grade classrooms. So you could see who your child’s classroom buddies would be the following year.
As it happens, Daniel was the only kid on that list from his first grade class who didn’t know who else would be in his second-grade class. I said, “well, you’ll make new friends, and see all your old friends in the cafeteria, right?” Right.
I actually have my own, foxes-in-charge-of-the-hen-house kindergarten story. When I was in my half-day K, back when what kids did in kindergarten was roughly equivalent to what my boys did in daycare when they were two years old (you know, coloring, playing, eating snacks, napping), I endured the Tommy Smith and the Milk incident. In our school, you had a little container of milk to go with your from-home snack. I was 10 seconds late to the snack table one day, and arrived at my seat to find Tommy Smith sitting there, drinking my milk! I alerted the teacher, who told Tommy to go to his own seat. Which he did. And where he proceeded to start drinking his milk.
Suffice to say I didn’t drink my milk that day.
And my parents never knew. No incident report sent home, no note in the backpack (in fact, no backpack).
I’m not advocating a return to those (dark? more independent? more separation-between-kids-and-parents?) days. If someone takes my kid’s milk today, you can bet I want to hear about it. If one of them gets hurt on the playground or in the cafeteria, I want a call from the nurse (which I got, last year, when Daniel got a “suspicious bruise” when he fell onto a cafeteria bench. Not only did I get a call from the nurse, but she explained how the principal — the principal! — had walked him back to the offending bench to describe how it happened, just to be sure no one had pushed him. No one had. He’s just clumsy).
But do I want to pore over spreadsheets? Spend my summer agonizing over Who They Got next year? Or if Mrs. So-and-so is a good fit?
As a friend of mine, who is actually an educator in our district and as such has the privilege of actually choosing her daughter’s teachers (she declines), said on this subject: “If she gets a teacher she clashes with, it’s an opportunity for us to teach her how to get along and deal with it.”
Exactly!
And for all the apparent chaos of my brother’s K classroom, he’s turned out okay. But I wonder what ever happened to Tommy Smith?
[photo: everystockphoto.com]
I agree: no need to pore or agonize. At the same time, those of my daughter’s teachers who have invited parents to participate (not gossip, judge or idly spectate) really need the help in these times of strained classroom resources. In spite of our over-involvement, not many parents show up to do the stapling.
I’m the kind of mom who’s more apt to be hands-off, leave it to the teachers for the most part, and have them let me know when I need to get involved and what I need to do (especially if you’re in private school because why else are you paying all that money?!) But this whole system makes you feel like you have to be super-involved or else you’re not looked on favorably — by other parents or the school. I’m in the midst of going through the “separation process” at my son’s 3′s program (he’s three-and-a-half) and the whole thing stresses me out!
A few years ago, there was a mom who volunteered to help in the kindergarten classroom. Only it was her son’s kindergarten class from the previous year! The boy was in first grade, but the mom liked volunteering there and the teacher asked her for help. So we had this mom and her 3 year old in there several times a week (for the full 4 hours). Apparently the year before she volunteered several times a week too – did she have nothing else to do with her time? But that’s nothing compared to a neighboring district, where the kindergarten teachers had 5 (yes five) moms volunteering each day for different stations. Many of these moms would get babysitters for the younger siblings so they could be there for that hour of station time. How this teacher managed to get five parents in a classroom daily is beyond me, but apparently the schedule filled up so quickly many were left out.
Totally agree, Denise. I know parents who obsess over which teacher their kids get/have to the point of insanity. I think I’ve been lucky, because my kids have only had a few duds, but I can’t imagine going to the lengths some parents go to to ensure that their little darlings are with the right teacher, the right kids, the right number of friends, the right girl/boy ratio. It’s ridiculous!
Wow – I can’t imagine taking the time to create a spreadsheet of class assignments! I’ve been fairly hands off when it’s come to my kids’ teachers. Some have been great, some not so great, and some that I thought would be wonderful ended up being so-so and v.v. And, my kids have been in classes where they’ve been mainly among their friends and some where they haven’t. While it’s nice to see a few familiar faces on the first day, there’s something to be said for being more or less forced to get to know others.
Karen
As a middle school teacher in FL, I have SEEN coworkers who are not fit to be teaching, including incompetent folks who don’t know their subject matter or pedagogy, to people who actually DO pick on/bully/genuinely dislike children. If my (future) child, or nieces, nephews, etc, ever get one of those kinds of teachers, I will be sure to have them changed. It is important to investigate if your child repeatedly says things like “Ms. X doesn’t like me,” or “Mr. X always makes me last” and such… sometimes your kid understands more than a parent wants to admit. I agree that it is usually just whining and that kids need to learn to get along with people who rub them the wrong way, but not at the expense of a whole year’s worth of education.
Hey, at least you didn’t do what I did… I was the first kid in kindergarten to take off all her clothes. Or maybe that was pre-school, I can’t remember…. I can remember the teacher convincing me to put my clothes back on so that she could have a place to pin my name tag.
Amen! I remember my first day at kindergarten. I had never met the teacher at a “Get-to-Know-You Tea.” I had never even been in the school before. It just wasn’t done. Moms (or Dads) weren’t allowed in the classroom on that first day either. You said good-bye at the door and then took your seat! At my children’s elementary school, however, there’s a core of “Uber Moms” who take over every classroom, project, holiday party, and field trip all in the name of volunteering. I never bought it–I think they’re a bit too controlling!
kindergarten parents are nearly as involved in the day-to-day of their children’s classrooms as, well, their kids are.
My friend Laura was thrilled to move to France for a year with her husband’s job. “I drop the kids off at school and I’m done!” she said. “The parents are not involved. It’s great!”
why else are you paying all that money
As in, even for public school, aren’t you already paying all that money in your taxes? Heck, I’M paying and I don’t even have kids!
[...] long while ago, I wrote a post about how much more involved parents of my generation are in our kids’ schooling and schools than my parents — well meaning as they were — ever were in mine. As my kids [...]