I found the entire article fascinating because so often I hear about how it is the families fault for not speaking English or not doing their part, but this article is examining other aspect of failure that we, as teachers, can change. It was also nice to see the article site examples of success within schools with high minority and low income populations, because the media is always focused on how bad some of these schools are doing and not on the schools in the same situation who are making the changes and succeeding in getting their kids to read, do math, and graduate.
The part of the article that I was most interested in though, was the part that talked about the decifict in pre-k that many children are a part of. Too many people do not realize how critical early childhood education is and that is evident in the fact that the people who teach this age get even less respect, less pay, and less acknowledgement then teachers do, and we all know teachers aren't highly respected either. I have seen and discussed this issue a lot while I took some early childhood ed. classes at Uconn and while I worked at a daycare in a preschool program this summer. The program I worked at had a secondary history teacher as the head teacher. This is ridiculous to me because secondary majors have no classes in child development and are trained in a much different age group. This is sadly a problem in many programs. People are hiring anyone with a degree to be a teacher to this young kids for the most crucial learning time in their lives and they sadly being given much less of an education than kids at preschools with more qualified teachers. I often wonder why Neag doesn't have early childhood ed. as part of its program considering how important those early years are to students development. In the article they talk about how this is one major difference that disadvantaged students are facing and there is not enough being done to compensate. While programs like Head Start are meant to help disadvantaged children, I have met numerous people who have worked in this program who can attest to the unqualified nature of the teachers who are supposed to be getting these kids ready for school.
Preschool is costly, but critical and I think that if we are to send all kids to school on an equal playing field regardless of class, race, or ethnicity than we need to have high quality preschools with highly qualified teachers that are available to all kids. Until that happens I think that the deficit entering kindergarten will continue to be large between low income and higher income families and it will continue to be hard to overcome.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
I was also interested in the pre-K test results and I would like to hear more about this Head Start program and why there are unqualified teachers being hired for these positions. What do you think we can do to get every kid into a good preschool program? I agree as a secondary major that we have no experience with early childhood development. I'm sure this secondary history teacher could tell you all about classroom management in a secondary setting but has no experience with early childhood ed.
For what it is worth I know that within the Family Studies program they have an excellent early education program (from what I remember it may be pretty highly ranked...correct me if am wrong). It is important for students to receive good preschool instruction, the basics learned go along way in helping students prepare for "big kid" school. It is also disheartening to learn that money is being taken away from the Head Start program, I believe that CT even reduced funding last year for some CT programs.
As for working in a preschool, I worked with two amazing teachers in my room, however others in the school were not that great; I wonder what their credentials consisted of.
I've seen the importance of preschool first hand in my internship. In my internship I am working with kindergartens that are targeted for an early numeracy program based on a standard assessment. As we were meeting with teachers to discuss testing scores of the lowest student’s, comments were made that these were the students who hadn't had a preschool experience. I think this shows the importance of preschool and early experience with math, letters, and socialization etc. at such an early age. I worked in a preschool classroom and its amazing what they know at such and early age. I too feel something needs to be done to help eliminate this discrepancy but I'm not sure how, especially with the lack of funding schools are experiencing. I worked in the child labs at Uconn where many of the young childhood majors gain field experience; they provide so many opportunities for the students to be exposed to educational concepts. I wish every child was able to have this experience. It just isn’t fair.
I have also witnessed the importance of early childhood education first hand. When I graduated from undergrad I managed to get a part time music teaching job in a public school, but to fill the time and money gap I worked in a Bright Horizons. Bright Horizons is an early childhood learning center that has kids from infants to Kindergarten. Students progress is closely monitored to help alert the parents to any possible developmental delays and/or difficulties.
What I have noticed the most is that students who have had this experience when they enter kindergarten are much faster to learn routines, have some readiness that helps them achieve, and mostly, they are ready socially. As a music teacher I see every child in the school building and it is very clear to me simply by behavior which children have had a sound preschool program and which kids have not.
Some people argue that having "learning" preschools is not appropriate for young children, but all of what I have seen indicates that all children should have at least a year part-time of some sort of structured preschool program.
I definitely agree with what you said about early childhood education. I even wrote about that in my paper this week. It is really scary for me as a secondary teacher (especially of science) that students already have an achievement gap by 3rd grade. How much can I, as a secondary teacher whose subject involves a great deal of reading to learn, change the gap if students are already coming to me at huge levels. I will, hopefully, have high expectations for all my students, but what if they are at different levels? I can not expect the same thing of someone reading on grade level and someone reading far below it. It would be cruel of me to do that and disheartening to my students.
Post a Comment