Last Friday, my husband and my two daughters stayed up well past their bedtimes because they were unable to leave the dance floor at our local elementary school's "International Night" event. The evening culminated with a dance party, and my older daughter (DD1) has been gushing all week about how she didn't want to leave because she was having so much fun dancing with her friends. While I, too, have fond memories of school and community dances from my childhood, it is a striking contrast to me that my daughter's school dance party included a Zumba lesson, a Salsa lesson, a traditional continental Indian dance performance, as well as the free form dancing to Top 40 Pop music which I remember fondly from my youth. The dance party was preceded by a communal, pot luck dinner which featured Ethiopian, Moroccan, Croatian, and El Salvadorian dishes. The evening celebrated the cultural pluralism of the school's population, and I marvel that my DD1's kindergarten experience has been, at least in part, an immersion into the world of diversity.
According to the district website school profile, at my daughter's elementary school 49% of students are black, 16.5% are white, and 26.0% are Hispanic. Some 33.5% are English Language Learners, and 60% of students quality for Free and Reduced Lunch. In my daughter's kindergarten class, none of her classmates are white, and more than half of her classmates entered school with limited oral English proficiency because English is not the primary language spoken at home. Many of her classmates who are English Language Learners are the offspring of parents who have recently immigrated (within the last five+ years) to the United States from an array of Central and South American, East, West and North African, Eastern European, and Middle Eastern countries. Because so many of her kindergarten peers are bilingual, my older daughter (DD1) has wondered aloud with me why she, too, is not fluent in another language beyond English, or why her parents don't speak another language with her and each other at home. My DD1 has queried me about if coming from a different country means that the food that the family eats at home is different than what we do, if the church they attend is different than ours, and if they celebrate the same or different holidays as our family does. She has also noticed and inquired about why with many of her classmates we can't schedule a playmate, why they don't belong to our community pool, or why her kindergarten friends can't be signed up to do some of the same after school enrichment or summer camp activities that she will.
My DD1's observations are poignant to me because when we became a part of the cooperative preschool community where my younger daughter is still enrolled, my husband and I congratulated ourselves on the fact that the families who made up the school were so diverse. In our older daughter's class, for example, close to one third of the children were bi-racial because their parents were a mix of two ethnicities, and several of her preschool peers had been adopted from China. In addition to her classmates whose skin color was brown like hers, many other parents at the school represented a blend of cultures and countries of origin, such as South American and American or European and American, or a blend of religion, such as Christian and Jewish. However, what we all shared in common at the preschool was the fact that almost all of us were older parents who had completed many years of higher education before settling down to start our families, and who had had transplanted to the area for work from across the country (and world). And because of the similarities in our soci0-economic situations, with the other children from the preschool my daughter and I came to expect that we would inhabit the world in strikingly similar ways, wherein we dropped in and out of each others' homes and fluidly exchanged tips for which extracurricular activities were favored, which summer camps were enticing, and which community pools had the best swim lesson and swim team programs.
In a 1998 Report published by the Center on Education Policy, it states that "public schools are one of the main institutions that create cohesion among diverse groups of Americans. . . schools are places where children learn social and citizenship skills that help them to live harmoniously and become contributing members of society. In a nation as complex and diverse as the United States, a critical part of becoming a good citizen is learning how to get along with others, especially those whose racial, ethnic, religious, or economic backgrounds are different than our own." Given the profile of the student body at my older daughter's elementary school, it would appear that she has a terrific opportunity to experience and embrace the diversity of the human spectrum, as it is represented in the array of cultures, languages, and religions of her classmates. And perhaps even more importantly, my daughter's foray into the public schools have provided her with a sometimes difficult, but perhaps vitally important opportunity, to engage with peers whose socio-economic circumstances are different from her own. I close this blog by asking my readers: How important is it to you that your children have the opportunity through their schooling to engage with peers whose circumstances are different than their own? And for those of you among my readers who are educators, I ask: What is the role of educators to foster children's capacity to forge connections with peers who are different from one another? And how should the school day and curriculum be structured to engender students' embrace of diversity?
Monday, May 28, 2012
Sunday, May 13, 2012
What is the Role of the PTA in Kindergarten?
According to the website of the National Parent Teachers Association, the PTA exists "to bring into closer relation the home and school, that parents and teachers may cooperate intelligently in the education of children and youth." Having selected a cooperative nursery school for our daughters' early childhood education, I imagined that it would be an easy transition from preschool to elementary school in terms of maintaining my involvement as a parent in the life of the school. At the beginning of my daughter's year in kindergarten, I wondered how our local elementary PTA would help foster a sense of partnership between school and home. I imagined that the PTA might welcome us as new parents, provide us with an overview of the ways in which we could jump in and get involved, and coordinate efforts to solicit parent volunteers in the classroom. Moreover, I hoped that the PTA would help promote a sense of connectedness and community among the new kindergarten families. Yet here it is the middle of May and I have yet to attend a PTA sponsored event this year, nor their monthly membership meeting. So I find myself wondering: How has my lack of participation in the PTA affected my sense of connection to my daughter's elementary school?
What I have learned through this kindergarten year is that two small commitments have contributed enormously to my sense of connection to my daughter's elementary school: 1) volunteering in my daughter's classroom several times a month; and 2) spending at least one afternoon at week on the playground with my daughter, her classmates, their siblings, and the other kindergarten parents. My intention for volunteering in my Darling Daughter 1 (DD1)'s classroom was to contribute to the students' learning in some small way; the reward I have reaped is coming to know my daughter's classmates individually and personally. My commitment to spending Friday afternoons on the playground of my DD1's elementary school evolved organically. When I discovered that several of the other kindergarten moms bring snacks and drinks to the playground on Fridays, I joined in the festivities. Through my participation in this Friday afternoon ritual, I have gotten to know a fleet of children from across the four kindergarten classes at the school as well as a small army of younger siblings who will be going through elementary school with my younger daughter, too. In addition, it is on the playground that I have become acquainted with half a dozen or more other kindergarten parents. Every Friday afternoon, we swap stories about our children, their relationships with their siblings, and their adjustment and growth in kindergarten.
My husband has taken a different tack with his involvement in our daughter's school. He has volunteered to serve as a chaperone on several kindergarten field trips. Additionally, he has jumped in and gotten involved in the PTA this year as a volunteer for the school's "International Week & International Night." He has spent many hours calling, e-mailing and faxing foreign embassies in the effort to entice members of the embassy staffs to visit our school and to describe what school is like for children who live in different countries. And he has spent at least half a dozen evenings meeting with a small cadre of parents to plan and coordinate the activities that comprise this annual tradition.
As I reflect on the level of my husband's and my involvement over this kindergarten year at school, what is most clear to me is that our mutual involvement has engendered a sense of connection to my DD1's elementary school and has seeded a fledgling sense of community. My focus has been exclusively on the field of kindergarten, even as I can also see how there are many ways to engage in service to the school at the classroom, grade, and school-wide levels. I have learned that the role of the PTA is to enrich the whole school community, through the annual Book Drive, the after school Enrichment activity offerings, and the International Week events, etc. I look forward to the years to come when I will be better able to contribute to these traditions, and come into community with a broader range of parents and families. In closing, I ask my readers: What forms of school involvement have contributed most to your sense of connection and community at your children's schools? And for those of you who are educators, I ask: what forms of involvement in the classroom and the school do you encourage?
What I have learned through this kindergarten year is that two small commitments have contributed enormously to my sense of connection to my daughter's elementary school: 1) volunteering in my daughter's classroom several times a month; and 2) spending at least one afternoon at week on the playground with my daughter, her classmates, their siblings, and the other kindergarten parents. My intention for volunteering in my Darling Daughter 1 (DD1)'s classroom was to contribute to the students' learning in some small way; the reward I have reaped is coming to know my daughter's classmates individually and personally. My commitment to spending Friday afternoons on the playground of my DD1's elementary school evolved organically. When I discovered that several of the other kindergarten moms bring snacks and drinks to the playground on Fridays, I joined in the festivities. Through my participation in this Friday afternoon ritual, I have gotten to know a fleet of children from across the four kindergarten classes at the school as well as a small army of younger siblings who will be going through elementary school with my younger daughter, too. In addition, it is on the playground that I have become acquainted with half a dozen or more other kindergarten parents. Every Friday afternoon, we swap stories about our children, their relationships with their siblings, and their adjustment and growth in kindergarten.
My husband has taken a different tack with his involvement in our daughter's school. He has volunteered to serve as a chaperone on several kindergarten field trips. Additionally, he has jumped in and gotten involved in the PTA this year as a volunteer for the school's "International Week & International Night." He has spent many hours calling, e-mailing and faxing foreign embassies in the effort to entice members of the embassy staffs to visit our school and to describe what school is like for children who live in different countries. And he has spent at least half a dozen evenings meeting with a small cadre of parents to plan and coordinate the activities that comprise this annual tradition.
As I reflect on the level of my husband's and my involvement over this kindergarten year at school, what is most clear to me is that our mutual involvement has engendered a sense of connection to my DD1's elementary school and has seeded a fledgling sense of community. My focus has been exclusively on the field of kindergarten, even as I can also see how there are many ways to engage in service to the school at the classroom, grade, and school-wide levels. I have learned that the role of the PTA is to enrich the whole school community, through the annual Book Drive, the after school Enrichment activity offerings, and the International Week events, etc. I look forward to the years to come when I will be better able to contribute to these traditions, and come into community with a broader range of parents and families. In closing, I ask my readers: What forms of school involvement have contributed most to your sense of connection and community at your children's schools? And for those of you who are educators, I ask: what forms of involvement in the classroom and the school do you encourage?
Thursday, May 3, 2012
The Countdown to Summer Begins
When I turned the kitchen calendar to the first day of May this week, my older daughter (DD1) asked if it was the last month of school yet? When I shook my head "no" in response, she asked me to help her construct a calendar on which she could mark off the remaining days of school. Together, we counted the number of weeks remaining in school, added together the number of total days remaining in school, and then decided upon how to best represent this roster of days in a format through which each day could be easily checked off. My DD1 organized her calendar into rows of ten squares, each big enough to fit an "x." And at the end of the rows of square boxes, she drew a smiling sun indicating the first official day of summer vacation.
As my DD1 was constructing her countdown calendar, I asked her what she thought she would miss most about kindergarten when summer vacation got underway. She replied, "my friends, and my teacher," and then she added, "and getting to learn lots of new stuff every day." Then she quickly continued that she was really looking forward to summer for many reasons including, going swimming at our local community pool, eating popsicles on our front stoop, running through the sprinklers with her sister, staying up late and sleeping in, staying in her pajamas until lunchtime, going on vacation on the West Coast to see her extended family and cousins, and attending camp at the zoo and our local nature preserve. I wondered as I listed to my DD1's enticing list, if her friends at school felt the same way she did about the lure of summer. I took the opportunity to ask her classmates over lunch what they liked best about school and about summer this week. Several of her peers chimed in that they loved to watch television and play video games when they were not at school, and a couple mentioned that they liked to play with their brothers and/or sisters. However, when I turned to my daughter's over zealous classmate and asked her whether she preferred school or summer vacation, she quietly replied, "I like school, Mrs. ___." Her poignant response jarred me out of my summer reverie and reminded me of how for some low-income children the summer months can be the longest months of the year.
In our family, summer is a welcome respite from the grind of the school year. Summer affords me and my daughters a chance to move through our days at a different pace without the pressures of being on a strict schedule wherein we have to keep things moving. Even though my husband and I must head off to work each weekday morning, in the summer months we can do so without the stress related to accomplishing getting our daughters dressed, combing their hair, brushing their teeth, mandating the intake of breakfast, packing school lunches, and remembering what is required for the day away from home. Instead, we get to luxuriate in the privilege of having a college student babysitter arrive at our house every morning to whom we hand off our daughters until the late afternoon when one or both of us returns home for the evening. And we get to look forward to hearing a full report over dinner from our girls about what their caregiver engaged them in that day, such as art and craft projects, trips to the library, local parks, and community pool, or bigger outings to the zoo or to the museums.
Decades of research on the summer learning gap or "slide" for low income children documents how much academic learning deteriorates over the summer due to the lack of publicly funded summer school for those children most in need of academic enrichment. The National Summer Learning Association reports that more than half of the achievement gap between low and middle income students "can be explained by unequal access to summer learning opportunities." According to their website, research suggests that while all students typically lose the equivalent of two months of mathematical knowledge and computational skill over the summer, low income students also lose several months of progress in reading, even as their middle income peers typically gain slightly in reading over the summer months.
Recently, despite the fact that the percentage of children who qualify for free and reduced lunch remaining the same, our local elementary school lost its classification as a Title I school. With this re-classification, the district sponsored and supported summer school is no longer available to the low income children at our daughter's school. As I was reading with my daughter and several of her classmates this week, I was impressed by how adeptly they have started to become readers in English, a language that for many of my daughter's peers differs from the language which is spoken at home. And I am now left wondering: How can the gaps in English fluency, foundations in literacy and numeracy, and overall enrichment learning experiences between low income and middle income students be closed through schooling when during the summer months these divides widen? If there is no learning intervention available to our highest needs students during the summer months, how is it possible to expect that they can re-engage in school learning as readily as their more economically privileged peers?
As my DD1 was constructing her countdown calendar, I asked her what she thought she would miss most about kindergarten when summer vacation got underway. She replied, "my friends, and my teacher," and then she added, "and getting to learn lots of new stuff every day." Then she quickly continued that she was really looking forward to summer for many reasons including, going swimming at our local community pool, eating popsicles on our front stoop, running through the sprinklers with her sister, staying up late and sleeping in, staying in her pajamas until lunchtime, going on vacation on the West Coast to see her extended family and cousins, and attending camp at the zoo and our local nature preserve. I wondered as I listed to my DD1's enticing list, if her friends at school felt the same way she did about the lure of summer. I took the opportunity to ask her classmates over lunch what they liked best about school and about summer this week. Several of her peers chimed in that they loved to watch television and play video games when they were not at school, and a couple mentioned that they liked to play with their brothers and/or sisters. However, when I turned to my daughter's over zealous classmate and asked her whether she preferred school or summer vacation, she quietly replied, "I like school, Mrs. ___." Her poignant response jarred me out of my summer reverie and reminded me of how for some low-income children the summer months can be the longest months of the year.
In our family, summer is a welcome respite from the grind of the school year. Summer affords me and my daughters a chance to move through our days at a different pace without the pressures of being on a strict schedule wherein we have to keep things moving. Even though my husband and I must head off to work each weekday morning, in the summer months we can do so without the stress related to accomplishing getting our daughters dressed, combing their hair, brushing their teeth, mandating the intake of breakfast, packing school lunches, and remembering what is required for the day away from home. Instead, we get to luxuriate in the privilege of having a college student babysitter arrive at our house every morning to whom we hand off our daughters until the late afternoon when one or both of us returns home for the evening. And we get to look forward to hearing a full report over dinner from our girls about what their caregiver engaged them in that day, such as art and craft projects, trips to the library, local parks, and community pool, or bigger outings to the zoo or to the museums.
Decades of research on the summer learning gap or "slide" for low income children documents how much academic learning deteriorates over the summer due to the lack of publicly funded summer school for those children most in need of academic enrichment. The National Summer Learning Association reports that more than half of the achievement gap between low and middle income students "can be explained by unequal access to summer learning opportunities." According to their website, research suggests that while all students typically lose the equivalent of two months of mathematical knowledge and computational skill over the summer, low income students also lose several months of progress in reading, even as their middle income peers typically gain slightly in reading over the summer months.
Recently, despite the fact that the percentage of children who qualify for free and reduced lunch remaining the same, our local elementary school lost its classification as a Title I school. With this re-classification, the district sponsored and supported summer school is no longer available to the low income children at our daughter's school. As I was reading with my daughter and several of her classmates this week, I was impressed by how adeptly they have started to become readers in English, a language that for many of my daughter's peers differs from the language which is spoken at home. And I am now left wondering: How can the gaps in English fluency, foundations in literacy and numeracy, and overall enrichment learning experiences between low income and middle income students be closed through schooling when during the summer months these divides widen? If there is no learning intervention available to our highest needs students during the summer months, how is it possible to expect that they can re-engage in school learning as readily as their more economically privileged peers?
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