My son is a six year old Kindergartner. Yes, I have to admit that I did this on purpose, this red-shirting. I made sure that he would be six in Kindergarten solely so that he can be quarterback of the football team in high school. I've read the articles, see? If I red shirt him (excuse me, what moron invented this term? And why has the media propagated it like a new designer drug at a rave?), then he will be physically more developed than the other children, and this will translate into ... you guessed it - we're anticipating full athletic scholarships to Yale!
Gosh, it's a breeze, this parenting thing.
Oh, I'm sorry. This isn't the audition for the new "Best Liar" reality show? Darn. Let me check my paper again. Kind of hard to see the description - there seems to be a big drawing of Sonic the Hedgehog on it. Ah. You want truth? You want opinions from modern mothers on the educational system? Oh dear. Let me turn my happy music off.
Last year, in November, something happened at the park that I have never forgotten. I was with my preschooler, and began chatting with another mommy. Her son was in Kindergarten and it was month three. "How's it going?" I asked.
"Well, he's in the bottom third of his class in reading," the mom said, with a wistful glance at her son. "But we're working on it."
And deep inside of me, a little voice said "Over my dead body will my kid feel that he's in the bottom third after two months of Kindergarten."
We love reading and learning in our household. We have huge amounts of books in every room of the house -- including about ten bookcases holding double-stacked books out in the pool house. We feel strongly that learning is for life - not for increasing test scores the way that corporations increase profits - and the No Child Left Behind act makes Mommy wild-eyed. (read this!)
I chose to send my son to a private school. It's going very well, thank you. This private school is one of the few in the silicon valley where they do NOT teach reading in Kindergarten. Instead, they teach the IBO curriculum. My son just came out of a six-week art program where they studied the techniques of Monet, Van Gogh, Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, Picasso, an American quilter I don't know, and even my beloved Hundertwasser. Before that, he got to make early American houses with tongue depressors and glue sticks, followed by a "modern city" with plastics. There's a table in corner, with glue guns and the children create things every single day.
My son, and many other kids in his class, are working on social tools this year. Social tools help kids learn. They are working on listening to the teacher, on sitting quietly and participating, on helping the class brainstorm, and on collaborating. My son is working on keeping his temper when things are difficult, and on learning that he has to do what the teacher says - not just what he wants to do. Lots of stuff.
He is not reading yet. Few of the children are. Nobody expects them to. It's awesome.
There's one problem. This is a language immersion school, and my son came into it at the beginning of September as the only child who had never spoken the language. But this is the price I chose to pay to keep my child out of the now-federalized testing arms of the public schools. And I chose a difficult time with learning a language, as opposed to a difficult time with learning to read.
Am I crazy? Sure. We wander around town, gibbering in the foreign language and trying to learn it. We listen to the language tapes. We have a tutor and we're gradually getting better at it (Mommy is right there, learning it too.) Is it painful? Sure. I look at the other kids in language immersion and it seems as though it's hardest for the little boys. But life is painful. This is an awesome school - only 14 kids in his class - and it's the absolute best place for him in the silicon valley.
This is too bad. I researched hard, and looked at all of the private schools that I could find. Most of them made me itch, horribly. Many nanny-raised children, going nicely off to expensive private schools to be taught stuff that seemed amazingly unimaginative. We went to one private school in particular and as we walked around, my husband turned to me and said "Where are the mud huts?" He felt that the place oozed privilege so much that it needed a connection to the "other" side of the world. I felt that the place would turn out nasty little perfectly-groomed excluders, and we decided to look elsewhere.
Our private school is small and very non-glossy. It's amazingly inexpensive, given the prices in the valley, and it's something that my husband, raised by socialists in the Bronx, agonized over. It's also sad that we couldn't find something like this in our own language. But we've lodged our son here, and we've found the first warm, welcoming neighborhood since he's been born. It only took six years.
My son is six in Kindergarten. It was the right choice for him and I don't regret it for a minute. He's going to a pretty odd school choice, and I don't regret that, either. Both of those choices were made from the renowned "Mommy-gut," the place in a mommy that looks, clear-eyed at her child and the world, and knows what's right. My advice? Gather all of the information that you can, including going to school and watching how your child is in the classroom. Look at all of your choices, and let your gut tell you what to do.
As for now? We're happy. My son is not stressed and he's learning things every single day. He runs to get into his classroom every morning. In the afternoons, large groups of parents and children hang out for an hour or so while the kids play. Every person we've met in the school is low key, welcoming, and friendly. For now: this month, this particular developmental stage - things are good.
This first appeared on the Silicon Valley Mom's blog
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