The rhythm of my childhood was established by the
Western New York school calendar, with the first day of school falling on the
Wednesday after Labor Day. The same schedule was in effect in Philadelphia,
where my children began their elementary school career. Upon moving to Ohio, we
discovered that school typically began in the third week of August, quite the
disappointment for children who loved the freedom of the summer schedule, but a
welcome occurrence for parents who were tired of the classic words: “There’s
nothing to do,” that typically flow from the lips of children by the second
week of summer vacation. Even after almost twenty-five years in Ohio, that
early start date catches me unaware. It was ninety degrees this week. How can
it be time to go back to school?
A trip to one of the big box office supply stores was
an indicator that many parents weren’t fully prepared for that auspicious day. The
store’s shelves are generally the model of precision, but their disorder was
evidence that frantic parents had been rushing through its aisles, determined
that their child had every single item on the back-to-school list, including
the six boxes of Kleenex.
While stuffed backpacks and stylish ensembles are in
order for the first day of school, much more valuable to the long-term success
of our children is the physical, social and intellectual readiness of a child
for kindergarten.
Two incidents stick out from our family history.
When Drew entered first grade, the returning students reported to the auditorium,
but new students to Shawmont Elementary were to go directly to their classroom.
Drew and another boy were the only children in the room until the veterans were
dismissed with their teacher, and while I stayed with Drew until the teacher
arrived, the other little boy was abandoned to his new environment without the
comfort of a familiar face. Within five minutes, the new first-grader had his
shiny Thundercats lunchbox on his desk, and proceeded to eat his lunch – at 8
o’clock in the morning. His school preparation hadn’t included any instruction
about eating lunch in the cafeteria at noon.
In Dan’s first weeks of kindergarten, his teacher used
the letter of the week system. Week one, “A” came home traced in yarn, then “B’
in macaroni, and“C” in glitter for week three. At Dan’s first kindergarten
conference, I asked why she made such a concerted effort to reinforce the
letters of the alphabet. Like the lovely Madelyn Simone, our gifted
granddaughter, Dan had recognized all his letters by age four. Why was she
spending so much time on something children knew before they come to
kindergarten? I was taken aback by her response, for more than half the
children in her classroom could not identify more than five letters in the
alphabet when they entered kindergarten.
Twenty years later, too many children
in Ashland County were not doing much better. In a 2009 assessment of oral
language, rhyming, letter identification and alliteration, elements identified
as essential for reading through KRA-L testing, 46% of Ashland five-year-olds
were identified as needing targeted instruction, and 19% needed intensive
instruction to succeed in their first year of school. That percentage was not
acceptable to educators and community leaders, so the United Way of Ashland
County, the Family and Children First Council, and SPARC P-16 determined that
school readiness would be a community-wide initiative, aiming for increased
awareness, early identification of children at risk, and supports for family
involvement, and from what I’ve heard, this intentional, community-wide
intervention is making a difference for our kids.
Of course, letter recognition
isn’t the only indicator for school readiness. A year away from kindergarten, we
want our Madelyn to be prepared when she climbs aboard the big yellow bus next
August. As we practiced her name recently, she proceeded to tell me, “I don’t
want to make an ‘M.’ I want to make an ‘H.’” We may be able to put a check
beside “letter recognition,” but we may be in trouble on “follows directions.” Hopefully,
creativity and independence will be welcome in her classroom. If not, at least
we’ve got another year to get her ready.
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