My Day Was Great!

This week’s article summary is What Do I Expect from My Children's Elementary School. 

Although I first read this article last January, it is appropriate for the first days of a new school year because it reminds us of the importance of making the elementary school years engaging, interesting, and memorable for our students.

While the article’s author, a parent of an elementary student, does not speak for all parents, this article reminded me of a very important benefit of an elementary-only experience:  unlike Pre-8th or K-12 schools, we don’t get 'too much' pressure from middle and upper school teachers to increase the  content load at younger and younger ages.

Of course one of our goals is to prepare our students for the future—to develop their ‘academic and ‘character’ foundations, which will support their subsequent learning in middle and upper school and beyond.

Yet an equally important student outcome is continued 'engagement, interest, and excitement’ toward learning—which rarely results from more work sheets. (Check out the humorous article in the online satirical The Onion about elementary students taking a ‘gap year’ before middle school.)

While we prepare for the future, a gigantic advantage of being elementary-only is we simultaneously savor the special moment of childhood—like PreK students hunting throughout the school for the elusive Gingerbread Man!

The article below a great reminder of the qualities of a exceptional elementary school!

Thanks for a wonderful start to the school year and enjoy the weekend!

Joe

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When I put my children on the bus in the morning, the wish I call out to them after kissing their heads is, “Have a good day!” Pure and simple.

Now, I know that not every day can be a birthday party, and not all things in life should be made into a fun activity. My wish is simply that they enjoy their day at school.  It is my hope that even if there are moments of the day when things don’t go well, or times when they are frustrated, or they find something to be particularly challenging, the overall feeling when they return home is not negative.

I want them to have had enough positive experiences, enough moments of engagement, enough creativity and fun built into their day that “good” is the predominant mood descriptor.

That is not currently the case.

The children that I get off of the bus are exhausted. They are frustrated. They are overworked.

They are burned out. Their teachers are trying to inject as much fun into the day as possible, but are obligated to keep up with deadlines, adhere to the curriculum and meet the standards.

For my elementary-school-age children, I care more about whether or not they love going to school than I do about their academic progress. I am clever enough to know that if they are enjoying themselves at school, they will learn. Academics follow naturally if the proper environment for learning is there.

A good learning environment is one with positive energy. The teachers want to be there, and the children want to be there.

From an educator’s perspective, an environment that is engaging, hands-on, with opportunities for meaningful learning, practice, discussions and creativity, makes kids happy. When kids are happy, they learn more.

We can’t expect them to do work in the same way that an adult does work. We are not the same. They don’t have to pay a mortgage, and I get to stay up as late as I want to. One is not better or worse than the other; they are different.

Just because students may have to sit in an office for eight hours a day when they are adults, doesn’t mean that they should have to start practicing it now as children.

Why has elementary school become the time for instructional and assessment methods that are more appropriate for high school and college students? Why are we expecting them to be able to concentrate for hours at a time to take multiple-choice tests?  They aren’t ready, and they shouldn’t have to be ready.

There are gigantic gaps in elementary education when the emphasis on academics is pushed down to the lower grades. Young children need time to develop skills that are a crucial part of the foundation of a solid education, and that time has been taken away. Maybe the focus should be on teaching them how to learn instead of on what to learn.

It’s backwards logic that is being hailed as the solution to low test scores. Forcing more and more curricula on students at a younger age and a faster pace doesn’t make them better students. It doesn’t teach them skills. It gives them a shallow pool of non-relevant information that they may not remember past the test and don’t know how to apply in real life.

Elementary school should be about exploration and exposure to vast amounts of very well-written books. Writing should be an opportunity to capture observations and imagination in a tangible form. Elementary education should include learning about history through storytelling, art and music. It should be about dancing and singing and playing while developing social skills, communication skills and interpersonal awareness.

Elementary school science should be about questions and wonders, experiments and all things messy. Math should be taught as part of nature and daily life, and if it were introduced that way, children would not be afraid of it when the numbers show up. There should be no limit to the topics that can be explored in elementary school. It should be about how to become a learner … not about curriculum, and definitely not about testing.

I want a school where both of my children, two vastly different learners with different strengths, want to go to learn. I want a school where creativity is cherished, and there is ample time for thinking, connecting, discussing and enjoying what they’ve learned. I want a school where the question isn’t “What did you get on the test?” but “What did you do with what you learned?”

Above all, when I see their sweet little faces get off of the bus, and I ask them how their day was, I want to hear, “My day was great!”