Friends! This post has been tumbling around in my brain for quite some time. The title is "Two Words" for a reason. There are two words I never dreamed of hearing in the same conversation. Those words are "PreK" and "Rigor."
My "why," my core values and beliefs are that Preschool should be about exposure to new and different ideas. When I first started teaching preschool was about exposing children to social settings and helping them focus on a story, get along well with others, shapes, colors, and the alphabet. While this is still true about Preschool, some of that reasoning has changed. In my mindset, preschool is still about those things AND a lot more of the social and emotional learning. Some of our youngest students come to us from homes where the net family income is below the poverty line. Others come to us from households where they are a part of, or are witnesses to abuse, whether that be physical, sexual, or emotional.
In Education right now there is a phrase that is pretty popular. It is "Maslow before Bloom." Abraham Maslow studied human behavior and other psychologist after him put his works into a pyramid of social-emotional needs, beginning with the most basic needs of all humans. Those are physiological needs of every person. Are they safe? Are they hungry? Are they clean? Do they have shelter? Are they getting enough sleep? These are just a few of the basic human needs. These needs needs to be met for every one of our students before they will ever be able to learn.
Bloom's taxonomy, on the other hand, refers to educational objectives and the way we learn them. The six levels of objectives are: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation. So, basically, what "Maslow before Bloom" means is that a student's physiological needs need to be met before any learning can take place.
Another favorite phrase of mine that I've seen quite a bit on social media is "If a student can't learn, love them. Your love will teach them!" This is why I spend the first month or so of school building a classroom family, learning routines, and teaching expectations. One day, my principal covered my classroom. When I came back, she told me that my kids could have run that classroom by themselves. She said they knew exactly what they were supposed to do and when they were supposed to do it. That's high praise coming from an administrator!
Back to the two words. In my heart of hearts I believe that children need to have their basic needs met before any learning can take place. Did my kids learn last year? Absolutely!! Eighty percent of my class scored eighty percent, or better, on the end of the year assessments. Our assessments were based on the Kansas Early Learning Standards, put together by shareholders across our state. Our progress reports were developed right off of the state standards.
Three years ago I was honored to be invited to a conference. One of the sessions of that conference was a Q & A with our State Commissioner of Education. The conversation got around to full-day PreK. At my table, I was grumbling. You see, I was part of kindergarten moving from a half-day program to a full-day one. What became of this was that kindergarten teachers were being asked to cram developmentally inappropriate lessons down their students' throats. The kids weren't getting it. Why? Because their little brains were not developed enough to understand the content. There were high numbers of referrals for interventions. I couldn't do it. I had to get out. So, I moved to PreK. My tablemates at the conference asked me to ask our commissioner about his vision for full-day PreK, so I did. Here's what the commissioner said, "I believe that every child under the age of eight should have a play-based education. He received a standing ovation! So, when I hear someone say to me that there needs to be more rigor in PreK, I get angry, frustrated, sad, and confused. I wonder if that play-based message is being delivered to building and district administration.
In my classroom, our students learned so much through play. During centers, my rock-star classroom aides and I would teach children in all aspects of their education. The students thought they were playing, but in truth, they were learning. Some of them received remediation, some of them enrichment. This was based off the individual needs of each child in the classroom. We had a plan of what each student needed and we worked with them to achieve what they needed to learn. Did the kids know what we were doing? Nope. They just thought we were playing with them. Also, to the naked eye coming into my classroom, it looked like we were playing. However, we weren't. We were teaching. If you come to my classroom and don't see rigor, that doesn't mean it's not there. The data speaks for itself.
