Soap Box
I feel like I really need to get some thoughts out in the open. As most everyone that I know knows, I teach preschool in Des Moines. My classroom is funded through a few different sources: the Harkin Grant, Empowerment, Prairie Meadows, and most recently and also for the final year, Early Reading First Grant. There are two sides to being so well-funded. On one hand you have plenty of resources ($$$) to funnel toward materials, field experiences, and GREAT professional development. On the other hand you have A LOT of accountability. This has never been more true for Early Childhood than right now in the state of Iowa. The upcoming election has many preschool teachers and administrators nervous about the future of our state funded preschool programs. This has led to efforts by my administrators to stream line the preschools in the Des Moines area. This has included everyone using the same literacy curriculum, the same play-based learning called Mature Play, the same assessments/screenings, and setting all preschools on a schedule as to how many weeks must be spent on each theme learned in the classroom.
The literacy curriculum that we use has pre-set themes which they provide books for. The literature is amazing, the theme layout and activities included leave much to be desired by a teacher. You don't have to be a teacher to know that children learn through their senses. You also do not need to be a teacher to know that learning about seasons in the middle of January in Iowa doesn't make much sense. The argument for the theme layout is that the publishing company set objectives for students to learn through each theme and that some teachers in the district were frustrated when other teachers weren't able to collaborate on planning because they weren't on the same themes. Theoretically, if you skipped around the themes the students would be missing skills. However, we don't use the activities included in the curriculum, so why would it matter what order the themes are learned in? Besides that, we don't teach to objectives, we teach children. Elementary, middle, and high school teachers are not required to stay on a subject for a certain amount of time, they stay on a subject until their students understand it. Why is it any different for preschool?
Preschool is a time of discovery, and preschool teachers should be teaching about things that students can hear, see, touch, taste, and smell. It has nothing to do with a curriculum and everything to do with making children aware of the world around them. By doing so, they begin to pick up on the skills they need to be successful learners. We read books to teach them about listening, concepts of print, and life situations. We play to teach them social skills, how to imagine, and behave in different types of roles. We teach them how to be flexible in their thinking by creating their own toys and props. We invite them to preschool to get a jump start on their education and to become committed lifelong learners. What happens when we take spontaneity and child interest out of the preschool classroom, in the name of bulleted objectives in a curriculum and teacher planning?
