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Splatypus’s comment about my last post got me thinking about the days when I taught kindergarten in one high-poverty school after another. Kindergarten can be high-stress for a teacher. And not just because her students are living in poverty and
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I’m reading The Canon, by Natalie Angier, for my book club, and it has got me thinking about the fact that I don’t do much science in my classroom. I don’t even have a science center, because I’ve never been able to figure out
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When I heard that Wonder Woman was moving on to a better school, I emailed the principal (let’s call him the Prince, shall we?) telling him my concerns and asking for some reassurance. That was a month ago, and no, of course he hasn’t responded.
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Does your child need to go to preschool before kindergarten? Does every child need to go? What do kids need to learn before kindergarten, anyway?
I think preschool is great, but it isn’t necessary for everyone. If you are raising your child at home,
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I am back from a long vacation, the first part of which was spent at the beach with my husband’s family, and the second part of which was in a big city with my sister and her family. I had the opportunity first to observe my sister-in-law talking
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This article in the San Jose Mercury News reports that only 15% of preschol-age children living in poverty are in high-quality programs. This is where I want to tear my hair out and rant that we should more like the French and the Italians, and have universal
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I mentioned M. once before — it was her birthday and I forgot to check the calendar, and missed it. And she is so non-verbal most of the time that she never mentioned it. M. is one of my special ed children, with developmental delays, speech difficulties,
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How’s this for a headline? “Teacher tries to help preschoolers stay alive.” I nearly spit out my coffee this morning when I saw that one.
Preschool teacher Marisol Sierra, who teaches in the Chicago neighborhood where schoolkids are
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Today we had a visitor. It’s a common occurrence in my classroom, only today, our visitor was four years old. We’ll call him Charley. Charley’s dad brought him to school so that I could watch him play in my room for an hour, and evaluate
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Some weeks ago, a person from the early childhood department was visiting my classroom, and she saw me doing story time using the repeated interactive read-aloud strategy, so we talked about how it works, and I offered to do a little workshop on it for
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There was an article today about what children read most often, listed by grade level. I was surprised by how prosaic the list was, and realized that these are the books that teachers (and children) are so familiar with, we hardly notice them.
Green Eggs
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