Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:A question about fairness!
How is it fair for red shirted kids to be in a class with my late June birthday kid? Developmentally they are going to be ahead, do the teachers care or take this into consideration?? It doesn't seem fair. Some can be almost 9 months older.
You could naturally have kids who are 364 days apart. Redshirting adds a bit to this, but it’s usually not that far off — kids with Aug bdays holding off. Your kid will be fine.
The problem comes in when kids are 14-18 month difference and the teachers are not looking at what's developmentally appropriate for too old for the grade kids as well as younger for the grade kids. My kid is absolutely fine but we've had teachers with unrealistic expectations when comparing the students, some who were 12-18 months older.
+1, and this exacerbates an existing issue, which is that kindergarten curriculums are already increasingly not developmentally appropriate, with too many expectations for kids to sit quietly in chairs and work independently or focus on worksheets or instruction for long periods of time. This is not something that is reasonable to expect (or force on) the average 5 year old, but redshirting conceals how inappropriate these expectations are by putting a certain number of kids in the classroom who are a year older (actually 1st graders) and therefore do better with these parameters.
What we should be doing is shifting kindergarten expectations across the board to better meat 5/6 year old kids where they are at. Instead of leaving it to parents to hold their kids back in order on a case by case basis.
-1 of course K is developmentally appropriate. My child technically started at 4 and had no issue doing the work or sitting. Why? Because we, the preschools and others adequately prepared the child. Sounds like you didn't prepare your child well if they were struggling that much. If kids have developmental delays all the more reason to start them so they are with age appropriate peers with an age appropriate curriculum and IEP/SPED services that they parents most likely aren't doing privately.
What even are you talking about? No, asking children to sit quietly and do worksheets at 5 years old is not developmentally appropriate. It doesn't matter if the child CAN do this or not -- it's not good for them. Kindergarten used to be more play-based with more socialization, games, music and movement, and less direct academic instruction. But over the last 20 years, schools are increasingly shifting the 1st grade curriculum down to kindergarten, especially with regards to reading, due to parent pressure and uninformed media coverage about test scores (there is no evidence that teaching reading leads to higher ELA scores later, and in fact some indication that the opposite may be true).
No amount of preparation can magically make a 5 year old (or in your case, a 4 year old, poor kid) into a chid who should be sitting in a chair spending a significant part of his or her day learning math facts and sight words, but that's what kindergarten looks like in much of the country.
Which is one reason some parents redshirt, because it sucks. But instead of giving parents broad leeway to redshirt, we should return to the old kindergarten model, which used K as an opportunity to develop kids socio-emotional skills and prep them for the more intensive academic instruction they would begin in 1st.
What are you talking about? That's not how it's done in K and K is slow and dull for kids who have been prepared as they have to wait for the other kids to catch up. Kids should start reading in K, but for those of us who work with our kids, many are reading before K. It sounds like you didn't adequately prepare your kids and then are complaining they aren't prepared when that's 100% on you. Then you expect the rest of our kids to be dumbed down and sit through basic curriculum. This is where they should start tracking starting in K.
You are confusing metrics. You think what we don't like about K is that it is too *hard*. Nope. My kid started reading the summer between PK4 and K, and was among the most advanced readers in her K classroom, despite being among the youngest kids. Academically, my kid was more than prepared for K and there was nothing about the academics that were too advanced -- she finished the year well above grade level.
What sucked about K was: tons of time sitting and doing worksheets, getting in lines, moving to other classrooms for specials where the teaching was mediocre, too much screen time, insufficient recess, little to no time to do exploratory play and art or music, etc.
You think the issue is that we are upset our kids weren't prepared for the glorious academic challenges of K. No, my child was able to complete the phonics and math worksheets she was given daily in K quite easily. What she was not prepared for was how freaking BORING K would be, how little opportunities to move her body, get creative, develop social skills, etc. Because it is not possible for a 5 year old to be prepared for that stuff, because it is not developmental appropriate and no 5 year old benefits from a classroom environment like this.
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