By Calvin Trampleasure, 2023
- Chapter 1: New Ways and Big Days
- Chapter 2: RUSD Becomes WCCUSD
- Chapter 3: 4 Cs Adventure in Physical Education
- Chapter 4: The 4 Cs and 101 Ways to Praise
- Chapter 5: Washington Elementary, Richmond
- Chapter 6: Kindergarten Fire and Love
- Chapter 7: Kindergarten Years, Extended Day K
- Afterword: Something Unpredictable
Kindergarten Years, Extended Day K, 2017-2022
Voice and Choice and Play-Based
“It’s something unpredictable, but in the end it’s right, I hope you had the time of your life,” are Green Day lyrics. Billy Joe Armstrong did attend RUSD for part of his schooling. Who ever thought a kid from Rodeo and Pinole would grow to be a huge star in the punk music world, with truly relevant things to say.
I never, ever expected to be a kindergarten teacher. Somehow, Ms. Holland at Madera believed in me and hired me. About my seventh year teaching kindergarten, Ms. Holland’s granddaughter was in my class, so Ms. Holland would drop by.
“This place is like Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood,” she declared one day.
In 2017, Kindergarten went to “extended day” times in WCCUSD. Instead of going home at 11:45 for a half-day K day, kindergartner dismissal would be at 1:38. So, I gave up my afternoon physical education teaching for upper grade students and became a full-time kindergarten teacher. I did not miss the upper graders, after a few decades with that age group, it was time to learn a few new tricks to be a solid kindergarten teacher.
I hoped for a mix of Jack LaLanne/Mr. Rogers/Jean Piaget in my room. Jack LaLanne was a Berkeley High School grad like myself and famous fitness guru in the 1950s-1980s. Jean Piaget knew how play and “pre-operational” experiences were essential for development of 5-6 year olds, and play-based learning is essential. Mr. Rogers walked the walk of sincerity and kindness, and is well renowned.
After spending the 2020-21 school year teaching remotely, with Zoom classes and nearly 10,000 student Seesaw posts from my 22 students, the need for primary experience and hands-on learning became more apparent than ever. But even those first kindergarten years, I knew play should be the heart of experience.
“Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else,” Judy Garland said.
While always being inspired by others and guided by the adopted curriculum du jour, my teaching days were shaped by being a first-rate version of myself. The Madera Kindergarten team was so supportive in getting me through the required assessments, creating learning stations and general moral support! I never could have moved through the years without Marlyce, Barbara, Mary and Stephanie to work with and learn from.
“It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities,” J.K. Rowling once wrote. At Madera I had space to make my own choices, and that has been a key to longevity in teaching, both in kindergarten and throughout all my 35 years.
From reading Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins in my 20s to hearing Neo at the end of The Matrix movie, “Where we go from here is a choice I leave up to you!” freedom to be yourself has been the wind in my sails. The Shawshank Redemption theme of not being an “institutional man” has anchored me to a personal truth. “Get busy living or get busy dying…that’s damn right.”
In WCCUSD that freedom and choice to find things that work best for students, and bring students joy, was my lucky path. It has kept me afloat and moving—and created an enduring satisfaction.
Many teachers swear they will never teach kindergarten. “Any grade but K,” and “I don’t know how you do it,” or “it’s like herding cats,” teachers frequently say. But kindergarten is about learning how 5-6 year-olds think, honoring that, and basing curriculum around it.
Students want choice too and their “grade level voice” understood. In the teacher world of “accelerating achievement” that voice and those choices can get drowned out.
Voices arise, and socialization and language skills blossom, when a kindergarten class is full of learning stations that are play-based. It is a beautiful sight to see. Playing with wooden train sets, building with wooden blocks or Flexiblocks, creating things with playdough, magnetic shapes, or geometric shapes on peg boards are developmentally appropriate. You don’t need to be Jean Piaget and believe in the “preoperational stage”, just watch the engagement and delight in kindergartners learning this way. Piaget thought that children 3-7 years-old developed intelligence through the use of symbolic language, fantasy play and natural intuition.
The role of the teacher is to ask questions. Students talk about what is created in hands-on activity in amazing ways. Increasingly detailed talk shows growth in language skills. As groups of 4-5 students build things and converse, social skills develop. The teacher facilitates and guides, asking questions and making suggestions.
As Chip Candy once said, “Just because you (the teacher) don’t hear it, doesn’t mean it (learning) isn’t happening.” Assessments can be overdone and overvalued.
One curriculum du jour is Columbia Teacher College Reading and Writing workshops. Madera uses this curriculum across the grade levels. Back in the late 1980s, Donald Graves worked with Lucy Calkins and others to create meaningful student-centered curriculum. I used it with Bayview 5th and 6th grade classes in 1990-92. Back then, the TC curriculum book was the thin and sleek Writing Between the Lines. It gave teachers a real chance to have “agency,” or really create meaningful and student-centered language arts experience. Now, the TC curriculum comes in many boxes with curriculum books by the score!
Donald Graves thought kindergarten should be play-based, and that the workshop formats for reading and writing should start in 1st grade. However, by 2014, when Madera adopted the ramped-up Teacher College program, kindergarten teachers were supposed to tell 5-year-olds, “When you’re done you’ve just begun,” and more writing needed to be added. The “accelerating achievement” machine is rolling right over what is developmentally appropriate.
While some students were writing full sentences by the end of kindergarten, many were not. My take on writing workshops was more like, “When you are done, it is time for fun.”
Natalie Cox, who just moved from 6th grade at Madera to middle school, wrote her first story at the end of her kindergarten year, The Wild Crats and Summer Camp. By 6th grade she won the Jack London writing contest for an amazing story called Flowers. When Natalie was in my kindergarten class, the soft and easy workshop approach seemed just right for her blossoming talents.
Other kindergartners are not near that ability and will have learned letter sounds and a few “high frequency words” by the end of kindergarten.
I am sure E.B. White, the great writer, had an old-style play-based kindergarten. I wonder if he knew his letter sounds in kindergarten.
One of my favorite writers, Tom Robbins, was walking around the back yard beating a stick on the ground as he made up his first stories at the kindergarten-3rd grade age. Occasionally, Tom would tell his mom a story and she would write it down. I bet he learned just one letter a week at school in kindergarten.
Mrs. Light, my kindergarten teacher at Jefferson School in Berkeley in 1963, lived up to her name according to my mom. We took naps and learned to write a letter a week, and, just like many schools in the era, there was lots of block playing time. I bet John Steinbeck and Maya Angelou attended such a kindergarten.
Why the “accelerating achievement” movement has become the norm these days is something we should all reflect on in our own ways, and certainly not take it as gospel.
“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy,” Rumi said so long ago. Seems like great guiding gospel words to me.
The Fogerty brothers of Creedence Clearwater Revival, who attended Mira Vista Elementary and El Cerrito High School in the 1960s, sang, “And I never lost a minute of sleepin’, worrin’ bout the way things might have been.”
This memoir, writing of my experiences in RUSD/WCCUSD, has made one thing clear. While I have lost minutes of sleepin’, it wasn’t due to wishing things had been some other way. There were many trying experiences with parents, principals, administrators and the “system” but I’ve got lots of blessings to count from my 35 years of teaching. Most of those positive things came from following what inspired me and getting the freedom to be me and discover what things worked best.
“Education is not the filling of a vessel, but the lighting of a flame.”
