School's Out for Summer

Summer vacation is becoming less and less a time to hang out by the pool and run around outside unstructured-ly and more and more a time to sign up for various week-long camps: gymnastics camp, soccer camp, nature camp, ballet camp...I saw a flyer for handwriting boot camp just today. I mean, if everyone's just going to be in camps working on their handwriting and pirouettes all summer, then that's not much of a vacation. It sort of makes you wonder why we don't just go to school all year long, doesn't it? That would certainly benefit the multitudes of people who not only enjoy jai alai camp, but require it as a form of childcare when school's not in session.

Here's an article proposing that we have school year-round...I don't know about you, but I'm kind of thinking that more school doesn't necessarily equal smarter kids. Maybe it's just me. I think something's broken with our education system, but it's not necessarily summer vacation that needs fixing. What do you think?

Redshirting: good for your little boy, but bad for America?

I should be napping (Emma keeps waking us up before 6 a.m.)...but instead I'm researching kindergarten "redshirting." We already decided to hold Emma back a year because her birthday is one day before the Sep. 30th cutoff. If only we hadn't decided to be induced lo those five and a half years ago, it probably would not have even been a decision at all.

Right now I'm researching redshirting for Charlie. Word around the sandbox is that people are redshirting June birthdays now, especially boys. Charlie's birthday is June 8th. In Virginia, where we live, school doesn't end until well into June. That means if we redshirted him, he would be turning seven at the end of kindergarten. He might as well be growing a mustache and wearing deodorant...seven just sounds kind of weirdly old to be in kindergarten doesn't it?

So, at first I was all, no way are we redshirting Charlie. And then now all the chatter about redshirting has got me to thinking....so of course I fired up the internet to see what it has to say about it. The answer is lots, and like most internet searches, it has left me feeling even more confused than before I started. Confused, but full of good quotes and statistics! Like, here's a good one:

Fred Morrison, a developmental psychologist at the University of Michigan who has studied the impact of falling on one side or the other of the birthday cutoff, sees the endless ''graying of kindergarten,'' as it's sometimes called, as coming from a parental obsession not with their children's academic accomplishment but with their social maturity. ''You couldn't find a kid who skips a grade these days,'' Morrison told me. ''We used to revere individual accomplishment. Now we revere self-esteem, and the reverence has snowballed in unconscious ways -- into parents always wanting their children to feel good, wanting everything to be pleasant.''

Hmmm...yep. That pretty much sums me up. And what's so bad about wanting everything to be pleasant all the time? (said the girl who likes to have her marshmallow and eat it too.) Here's the article where that little nugget came from.

And, eeek! Take a look at this passage from the same article:

Robert Fulghum listed life lessons in his 1986 best seller ''All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.'' Among them were:

Clean up your own mess.

Don't take things that aren't yours.

Wash your hands before you eat.

Take a nap every afternoon.

Flush.

Were he to update the book to reflect the experience of today's children, he'd need to call it ''All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Preschool,'' as kindergarten has changed. The half day devoted to fair play and nice manners officially began its demise in 1983, when the National Commission on Excellence in Education published ''A Nation at Risk,'' warning that the country faced a ''rising tide of mediocrity'' unless we increased school achievement and expectations. No Child Left Behind, in 2002, exacerbated the trend, pushing phonics and pattern-recognition worksheets even further down the learning chain. As a result, many parents, legislatures and teachers find the current curriculum too challenging for many older 4- and young 5-year-olds, which makes sense, because it's largely the same curriculum taught to first graders less than a generation ago. Andersen's kindergartners are supposed to be able to not just read but also write two sentences by the time they graduate from her classroom. It's no wonder that nationwide, teachers now report that 48 percent of incoming kindergartners have difficulty handling the demands of school....

Furthermore, as Elizabeth Graue, a former kindergarten teacher who now studies school-readiness and redshirting at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, points out, ''Readiness is a relative issue.'' Studies of early-childhood teachers show they always complain about the youngest students, no matter their absolute age. 'In Illinois it will be the March-April-May kids; in California, it will be October-November-December,'' Graue says. ''It's really natural as a teacher to gravitate toward the kids who are easy to teach, especially when there's academic pressure and the younger kids are rolling around the floor and sticking pencils in their ears.''

Ugh...I have already changed my mind like three times since starting this post...and now I have to go pick up Charlie from preschool. Right now I'm just thankful he has at least another year of playdough and blocks.

What does everyone think about this redshirting thing? Anyone want to chime in?

Same as it ever was

"And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself-well...how did I get here?"

This song was running through my head yesterday as I sat in the Lake Anne Elementary school cafeteria listening to Emma's future principal talk about the class of 2022. (!) The school reminded me so much of my old elementary school--maybe it was just that they were both built in the 60's? Maybe all elementary schools just have that ineffable elementary school aura about them? I don't know...I'm new to this whole parent of a school-age child thing. I told Brandon that I had never felt like such a grown-up before in my entire life, never mind that I was drinking grape juice and eating animal crackers as I said this. Not even when they handed Emma to me wrapped up like a burrito in the delivery room, did I feel this much like a "parent." Maybe it's because I remember my own parents so well when they were at this stage of things? Is our minivan their station wagon with the wood paneling? Same as it ever was...

I think Emma is going to *LOVE* kindergarten. That is an understatement...I think she's going to luff it, lerve it. The school has an emphasis on learning through art, so every hallway, every surface of the school basically is covered with awesome kid art. I think I would rather see a bunch of kid art sometimes than go to a museum (that is a horrible sentence, sorry). I love seeing the worldview of kids through art. You can tell that this school encourages the really creative kind of art making and not the everyone-make-the-same-apple-tree kind of art making. I love that. I told Brandon that the halls of the school reminded me of our house. That's sort of what you want out of an elementary school isn't it? And a house, for that matter.

As we got in our large automobile to head home in the rain, I felt like my heart was as big as our backseat. I am so excited for what the future holds. How did we go from burrito-wrapped Emma to kindergarten Emma so quickly? If you stop too long to think about how sad it is that those years are gone, you'll miss everything. So, I'm consciously choosing excitement over sadness, anticipation over regret.

The other day we were walking to the Y and we saw a beautiful ____ tree in bloom (I don't really know my trees). I said to the kids, "look at that beautiful tree." Emma said, "That's the kind of flowers I want to have for my wedding." I laughed and said, "Your wedding! We're already talking about that!" And she said, "Yes, when I grow up, I'm going to get a husband and get married." And then Charlie said matter-of-factly, "And then you'll die." I nearly died laughing. I think this is how I imagined my life when I was little too. I pretty much thought: I'll grow up, get a husband, get married, have babies and then I'll die. I never really envisioned my baby's first day of kindergarten or watching my kids play soccer (another first that happened this week). I have to say, I'm pleasantly surprised. I'm not sure how I got here, but I'm glad I'm here.