What is Rigor in Kindergarten?

Maryland has joined the majority of states across the country in adopting the Common Core State Standards.  These standards will now guide the work of most public school educators in terms of establishing what students should know and be able to do from kindergarten to twelfth grades in English/Language Arts and Mathematics.  In the description of these standards on the Common Core website, it is indicated that these standards were adopted to ensure that students across the country had access to "rigorous content" as well as opportunities to develop "higher order thinking skills."  Similarly, in the "Guiding Tenants" of my daughter's school district Mission Statement, it is asserted that the county is committed to "the pursuit of excellence for all children," through which they will be pushed to learn and perform at "high levels."  And yet as I spend time in my older daughter's kindergarten classroom, I find myself wondering:  What is the place of rigor in kindergarten?

As a member of a university faculty, the question of rigor surfaces regularly.  During this past week, for example, I participated in a Webinar in which the presenters from University of Washington shared their emerging insights about what "ambitious pedagogy" looks like in their teacher education program.  Earlier this week in another setting, I contributed to a conversation with leaders from a nearby suburban/urban school district in which they revealed that one of the serious dilemmas they face is how to foster "high expectations" among all of their teachers for all of their students, particularly those students from poverty.  The goal among the educators with whom I interact appears to be crystal clear --  to provide students with consistent, high quality learning experiences.  Yet the question of what constitutes excellent, ambitious, high quality, or rigorous learning in the classroom day to day, lesson by lesson, remains much more murky for most of us as educators.

During my two hours in my older daughter's classroom this week, I listened to the teacher read aloud a story about Martin Luther King, Jr., which was followed up by a coloring and sequencing activity for the students.  The kindergarteners then spent an hour rotating through several of the classroom's literacy centers, which include two computer stations, a writing center, a listening center, a block area, a housekeeping area, a classroom library/reading corner, and a puzzle station.  As the children worked independently in their small groups in the various centers, my daughter's kindergarten teacher met with individual and clusters of students to diagnose their progress in reading.  The conversation among the kindergarteners during these rotations did not sound much different to me than the kind of peer to peer talk that is common at my younger daughter's preschool -- which is to say that the kindergarteners' conversation among themselves did not appear to be particularly academic or rigorous.  Neither did the snippets of dialogue that I overheard between the teacher the individual students with whom she was working sound like evidence of rigor in the kindergarten classroom either. Rather, it appeared that the focus of these exchanges was drilling for sight words and vocabulary extension.

As an educator, I welcomed the opportunity this week to consider anew the importance of rigor in our public school classrooms.   However, I wonder if I know enough about what rigor can look like or sound like in a kindergarten classroom?  In contrast as a parent, I wonder about whether or not rigor is even a developmentally appropriate goal for my kindergartener?  I was glad to see my Darling Daughter 1 (DD1) and her classmates engaging in free play for a part of their school day, and was cheered to hear them swapping imagined stories about their plastic elephants, lions, and zebras.  I was happy to hear my DD1 and her friends laughing in the classroom.  So how do I reconcile my ambitions as an educator and my experiences as a parent?  Should I be heartened that there is some room for fun in my older daughter's classroom, or should I be concerned that my daughter's kindergarten class is not rigorous enough?