An Early Childhood Teacher-Activist Documents the Damage

I recently spent a morning in Geralyn McLaughlin’s three-year-old classroom at Boston’s Mission Hill School.  Here, in this spacious, light sanctuary for children, I watched two girls playing among the blocks: smooth, solid wood, out of which trucks and humans had been sculpted with delicate beauty.  “What do we do now?” said one child to the other.  “Let’s go, girls!” said her partner to the imaginary people.  “Have a nice ride,” they told their girls, placing the figures on the truck, and sending them on their journey.

McLaughlin, who helped found Mission Hill with Deborah Meier, now moonlights as an activist, heading up an organization called Defending the Early Years. They’ve been collecting stories from early childhood professionals across the nation that illuminate the negative impact of current policies on the quality of education for young children.

The latest is the lament of .   On the fifth day of kindergarten, her grandson “a little boy who can spend hours creating elaborate block and Lego structures, inventing scenarios for his cars and trucks,” whose “motor skills are ahead of many five-year-old boys,” and whose long attention span allows for some pretty sophisticated reading sessions, was, quite simply, a mess:

William locked himself in his room and refused to go to school.  I raced over to their house to help my daughter.  I was able to get into William’s room, but, by then, he was hiding under his bed and refused to come out.  I tried to talk him out, but he wouldn’t budge.  The school’s social worker arrived downstairs but my daughter wisely decided that she needed to keep “school” out of William’s safe home and the social worker departed.  It’s then that we decided that we needed to find a different school for William.  We knew that this was not going to work!

Apparently, the teacher had done an “informal” evaluation of William’s academic abilities, declaring them “low.”  The youngster had reported that he hated the table tasks, that “he couldn’t do them” and that they were “hard.” Bundy’s daughter consulted with other moms who had pulled their kids out of highly academic kindergarten.  She learned that those with resources sent their children to an extra year of preschool, and those who couldn’t afford the high price tag, sent them to two years of public kindergarten.

Here’s the end of the story:

We eventually found a nearby preschool program with a young 5s class, which would help William with transition and also had room for him.  Although that school is play-based and child-centered in their philosophy, it introduces some more academic tasks during the school year to prepare children for what’s ahead when they enter the public kindergarten.

I often say that schools in Winnetka and surrounding communities are like an “island” in a “sea” of over-tested, push-down academics and this story certainly illustrates that fact.  I wanted to tell this story as one more indication of what is happening in kindergartens throughout the country.  We must keep fighting and educating and working on making changes!  And I understand more than ever– now on a personal level– how vitally important this work is and how many hundreds of thousands of “Williams” there are who are impacted by what’s going on in our nation’s too academic kindergartens –and who may not have families able advocate for them.

Do you have a story to tell?  Add yours to the collection.