One of the things I do during the school year is volunteer as a reading tutor through the OASIS program. I work with two students for one hour each in a local elementary school. Usually the students are first graders but this year I’ve been assigned two second graders. Without a doubt, all the students I’ve worked with — this is my eighth year serving as a tutor — have been cute kids. But they all come with problems. Not all problems are reading problems.
This year one of the students is a 7-year-old boy. He told me “I’m from New York.” That’s very important to him. He has two brothers in New York and one in Florida. When I asked how he ended up out here in Missouri, he said, “It’s a long story and I don’t want to talk about it.”
My other student this year is a 7-year-old girl. There was a note on the background information I was given that she has had three eye surgeries. I immediately wondered if that had something to do with her reading problems although she doesn’t wear glasses. This week she mentioned all the schools she has attended in her, to me, short life. It’s no wonder she has reading problems since it didn’t sound like she ever completed a semester in a school. She went on to tell me that Friday would be her last day in this school. Then she changed her mind and said Friday next week would be her last day. When I asked the teacher about it, she said that was what she had heard but the school was working to pin down the exact date of transfer. She assured me they would assign another student to me in place of this little girl.
Family problems are not unusual. In fact, it’s rare that I have a student who lives with mom and dad. It might be with mom and the current boyfriend or mom by herself. One year I had a student who was very upset about the split up of his parents. Every week he told me how his mom and dad didn’t live together any more. After about a month, I tried to talk to his teacher about it. She fluffed me off and discounted my theory that his upset was contributing to his school problems. So I headed off to the library and found a book titled “My Mother’s House, My Father’s House.” In it, the main character was a little girl about his age who also split time between two houses. When we finished reading the book, I said, “It sounds like this little girl does the same thing you do.” Learning that he wasn’t the only child in that situation helped enormously and I didn’t hear any more about how his mom and dad didn’t live together. Knowing he wasn’t “different” and that other kids lived like that too made all the difference to that student.
The first year I tutored, I started in the middle of the school year, fresh from my tutor training. The little girl I worked with that year was in her third school — that school year! No wonder she had problems learning. Every time she started a new school, the class she joined would be at a different place in their classwork than the class she left. She did end up repeating first grade and, as far as I know, went on to do well once she got a coherent schedule of first grade work. But working with that little girl underscored, for me, the importance of keeping a child in the same class/school for the entire school year.
First grade is a lot different than what I remember from when I attended it — back in the dark ages. The students seem to have to learn a lot more and tackle subjects that I know we didn’t study until maybe third grade. Even kindergartners have a more expanded curriculum than we did. I think that may be because so many students now attend preschool, in part because their parents are working. It doesn’t seem to matter whether it’s a single parent or a couple, the little ones go off to school at about age 3. When I was that age, I was playing with my toys, just being a child. A neighbor babysat me while my mother worked. But today the neighbor is out working too so it’s off to preschool with the little ones. It would be great if all children were ready to learn academic material at that age but some of them are not. It’s true that children are like sponges and soak up things. But some times those things have to include how to play together. For a 3-year-old those social skills are, to my mind, more important than academics. Unfortunately, if a child hasn’t been to preschool, he/she is at a disadvantage when it’s time to go kindergarten. Not only will the social skills be lower, the academic foundation which was started in preschool will be missing.
October 10, 2008 at 5:27 pm |
This post touches many chords in me. I went to 9 schools before graduating high school. I started nursery school at 3. My parents are, however, still married and loving each other after 56 years.
Nursery school was wonderful for me. There was only 1 other child my age in the neighborhood so now I had playmates. I learned to read, and thought first grade was a waste of my time!
My Dad was in the oil business, which transferred people just like the military. I attended 2 years of nursery school in 1 town, kindergarten and first grade in another, 2nd through the first couple of months of 5th in another, the rest of fifth in yet another town, most of 6th at a different school in the same town (boundary changes), the last 6 weeks of 6th in a small city.
We stayed in that city for almost 6 years, but due to boundary changes I attended 2 junior high schools and 1 high school. In October of my senior year we moved again and I graduated from both the high schools I attended.
After a few moves, as a family we decided it was easier to move during the school year. We had at least a chance to make friends and get involved in some activities so the summer wasn’t so lonely and boring. The only move I ever resented was the one my senior year.
I did miss some things in school: long division, most notably. It took years for me to finally realize I didn’t know how to divide and to ask my Dad to teach me. Reading was a problem for me only because I read above my grade level and got tired of proving it at each school.
There were some good effects of moving too. I learned to be adaptable, to make friends easily and to be happy doing things alone. I have friends all over the US, because their parents also moved lots. In fact, I now live 1500 miles from “home” but have regained contact with 2 of my best friends from high school who live within 45 minutes of me. I’ve never been afraid to move to a new place, and did so with gusto after graduating college.
My parents were always involved in our education. Mother made lots of trips to the library every summer, we did our homework under the watchful eye of one or both parents every night, they met with our teachers regularly. Mother didn’t work until my youngest brother was in school, and she ended her work day when his school day ended. We were lucky to have parents who cared about us and our education, and who loved each other enough to work out any problems they had.
In high school I spent a couple of summers working with kids in Head Start. I was stunned at the things they didn’t know: colors, letters, numbers, where they lived, telephone numbers. Because we moved so much, the first thing we learned at each new home was the address and telephone number.
I’m not an educator or a parent, and I feel like an old fuddy-duddy when I say this: Parents need to pay attention to their children. If you have kids, they come first in your life. It doesn’t matter if you ever have another date, or find a new husband while your kids are home – there’s time to do that after you’ve raised your kids.
(Sorry for the length of this, apparently this hit a “hot button” I didn’t know I had!)