‘This really isn’t kindergarten anymore’

'This really isn't kindergarten anymore'
Washington Post May 4th, 2015
By Valerie Strauss

Link Here

Key points: Valerie Strauss provides insight to today's kindergarten classrooms with a blog post from Angela Hanscom. The point of the article is to show the transformation of kindergarten classrooms from 30 years ago to today. Kindergarten used to be a place for young students to engage in storytelling, imagination, play, creativity, and sensory/fine motor skills but today's classroom has neglected most of these to rush students along with reading/writing/math. The push to get students ready has come at the cost of making school anything but interesting, engaging, and overall fun. Parents are expected to teach all of the other things that aren't being taught anymore and students are expected to come to Kindergarten with these skills already prepared.



Audience: teachers, educators, parents, school boards

Relevance: I found this article to be relevant to a few things discussed. The first is that when you ring out the interesting parts of education, it becomes less meaningful and there's no enticement for the student to engage with the material. School simply becomes a disliked experience that kids must do rather than want to do like the little girl in the article said, "I hate school. I hate reading." The second is the rush to get students exposed at an early age to matters that use to be taught later. The teacher in the article expressed that she would be teaching kindergarten that year as though it were a first grade class. It seems that students are becoming exposed to these lessons earlier and earlier whether or not the student is ready for it.