In this short video, veteran kindergarten teacher Jim St. Clair explains why play-based learning is important for young children and illustrates with examples from exemplary practice.
The video was produced by DEY (Defending the Early Years), a consortium of early childhood education practitioners and academics.
The first thing I thought was, “Boy, this classroom sure has a lot of supplies.” Next, I thought, “What happens when there are 35 kids in the room?”
Good teaching takes money. Politicians don’t want to provide that.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
Good teaching does not necessarily lead to more data. That’s what our children are being forced to provide, data for the already wealthy profiteers. Good teaching in the early years is hands-on and interactive. It encourages curiosity and exploration. This is the nature of the young child. Early educators know this, but “reform” is trying to replace what children need with what corporations want.
all PAY FOR SUCCESS theory currently written into national ed. policy must be aggressively pushed back out: “success” in this scenario is narrowly defined by “test scores.”
Exactly, this is the kind of kindergarten and pre-kindergarten environment I was privileged to provide. Now the powers that be have four and five year olds sitting all day. In many classrooms the blocks, dramatic play and other fun centers have been removed. Children are expected to be reading at a certain level…a level that used to be expected of first graders. Most children are not ready for this especially in NYC where so many of our children are very young as our cutoff age is Dec. 31.
Parents who can afford a good day care, recognizing what is happening as we push first grade down into kindergarten, are holding their children out for a year. This has been going on for almost a decade here. There should be plenty of anecdotes around now for us to see that competition for grades between poor kids, whose parents could not afford an extra year of maturity, and wealthy kids in involved families is increasing the gap between rich and poor insofar as school success is concerned.
One of the things that pushed me out of substitute teaching in one district was seeing a kindergarten class doing a science lesson on tablets. Unfortunately this high performing district bought into the belief that technology was the wave of the future. Paired with the standards movement they were sucking all the joy our of learning.