Kindergarten is a big deal for little kids. It remains the de facto entry into formal schooling, even as pre-K becomes more accessible in pockets of the nation. And many signs suggest that this first year of school looks a lot different from what it once did.
Kindergartners once spent only a half day in school, and classrooms emphasized play-based learning, with time devoted to exploring in 鈥渃enters鈥� that featured blocks, dress-ups, and paint. Today, the spotlight on kindergarten鈥攁s well as its expectations鈥攈as grown brighter and, some might argue, harsher.
Districts now emphasize kindergarten readiness. As such, many districts publicize a laundry list of skills鈥攕uch as early literacy, numeracy, self-control, and independence鈥攖hat they expect incoming kindergartners to possess to some degree. The day is longer, too. Most kindergartners today attend school for a full day. And the focus of most kindergarten classes has shifted from play and exploration to reading readiness.
These changes beg the question: What鈥檚 it like inside a kindergarten classroom today?
Susan Engel sought to answer that and related questions, including: What can or should we expect during this first year of school? How are children learning in their kindergarten classrooms? Engel, a developmental psychologist who directs the teaching program at and has written several books about children and education, traveled for two years to 29 kindergarten classrooms across 14 states seeking answers to these questions. She turned her observations into the book American Kindergarten: Dispatches from the First Year of School.
Engel recently spoke to EdWeek about her findings. She shared features common to all kindergarten classrooms and unveiled some stark distinctions and surprises. Her observations lend eye-opening insights into how kindergarten shapes the educational trajectory of today鈥檚 K-12 students.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Why did you embark on this project?
I had begun to think to myself: All my life, I鈥檝e been studying this stuff. Maybe I don鈥檛 really know what [public K-12] schools are like. If you look at popular media, you would think that schools everywhere are a total disaster. And then there was Waiting for Superman [a documentary critical of the U.S. public education system]. I did not like that everybody all over the country was watching that movie and thinking: Oh, it鈥檚 horrible. Teachers are horrible. Kids are languishing in the rubber room.
Schools have their problems. But if you鈥檝e had kids in schools, you know that some of them are really nice, some are great. And even if they鈥檙e not great, they鈥檙e good. And actually, the data show that most parents are pretty happy with their kids鈥� schools. And I really wanted to see for myself.
Did you have a particular audience in mind for the book?
I wanted the book to be for a general audience. I always want to reach not just parents of kindergartners but policymakers and people who pay taxes and have opinions. I think most people in this country have opinions about education without really knowing what鈥檚 happening in their local school.
How did you approach the project?
I tried very hard to keep an open mind. I used that, rather than a checklist of behaviors to check off. I went to the schools and I just sat there and wrote down every single thing I saw. I went to all kinds of schools: urban, rural, poor, rich, homogeneous, heterogeneous. I really got to see a lot of schools and talk to a lot of teachers and principals.
Did you go into this project with a preconceived set of notions or hypotheses?
I didn鈥檛 go in with any hypotheses. I did go in with preconceived notions because I鈥檓 66 and I鈥檝e spent 46 years or more years in schools; I taught in a high school and in college. I鈥檝e spent so long working in schools and thinking about developmental psychology that I have my ideas. But I tried really hard to push those aside.
What about your observations of kindergarten classrooms caught you off guard?
A couple of things. For one thing, the polarized view of kindergarten classrooms as either friendly, lively chaos or strict, repressive order鈥攖hat is not true. Every teacher wants order. Every teacher I saw thinks that part of kindergarten is helping kids learn routines and learn to wait their turn. That is everywhere.
What did you notice about how teachers attempted to instill order?
What differs from one classroom to the next is whether students are learning order or are developing a sense of internal self-control. In classrooms that are overly restrictive, the students are just obeying, and they鈥檙e getting conditioned to do that.
What we know about child development is that it鈥檚 not a quick jump from the wild solipsism of infancy to wanting to be part of a group, and to be thoughtful, and to wait our turn. That鈥檚 a painful struggle we all go through. So classrooms that made more room for that slow crawl [toward learning internal self-control] looked different than the classrooms where order was an absolute requirement at every minute. But it鈥檚 not as if some classrooms didn鈥檛 care about order. Everywhere I went, they cared about it.
What else was a priority in the kindergarten classes you observed?
Every teacher cared about reading. There鈥檚 no question it鈥檚 a top priority.
What did that look like? What were the expectations around reading?
I think the expectation that has shifted again in the last few years is between mastering certain specific [literacy] skills versus becoming more of a reader. There are classrooms now where there鈥檚 just this determination that the students are going to get good at certain measurable skills. And in those classrooms, teachers are not looking to see if those kids like reading any better. They鈥檙e looking to see if students did OK at the skills they taught them.
You observed that, in some classrooms, the literacy curriculum focused as much on meaning as it did on the mechanics of letter-sound connections. Could you elaborate on that?
Yes. One teacher I observed was the master of doing both. She taught the students phonics, but she was so intent on also getting them to want to know things, to think about books, and to sort of relish words. Words and what they mean seemed to matter to this teacher, and she wanted them to matter to the kids. She played like 10 games throughout the day, where they talked about things. She would ask her students things like: What do you do when you鈥檙e afraid? How can you tell if this is a puddle or an ocean? It was all about making the world of things and the meaning of things interesting and sticky to the kids, so that there was a connection between understanding the world, which kids are very motivated to do, and understanding that words and sentences give them access to that world.
You wrote that 4 of the 29 schools you visited put the promise of thinking 鈥榝ront and center.鈥� Did this seem like the individual teacher鈥檚 choice or something promoted by the schools where they taught?
In some schools, this philosophy seemed more widespread. For example, in a school in Baltimore, it was very clearly a point of view shared throughout the school that thinking is important and that the students in the school were entitled to be thought of and treated as thinkers. Whereas in some of the other schools, it was less pervasive throughout. But teachers have ideas about what should go on in the classroom, and they have ideas about children, and the ideas they have are really powerful at determining what they do. And when teachers have an idea that goes against the system, their idea wins out.
The teachers who have the idea that kids can be thinkers and should be thinkers make sure there鈥檚 time in the day to bring that out of the kids: to ask them questions, to take them seriously, to invite their opinions or their plan for their play, to ask them what they鈥檙e doing. And that doesn鈥檛 take much curricular material, but it鈥檚 so powerful. For the teachers who don鈥檛 have that idea, that鈥檚 easy to see, too.
Do you think that students鈥� ideas about what school and their place in it are formed by the end of kindergarten?
I think kids leave kindergarten not only with an idea and an expectation of school, but an expectation of themselves in school, like: I鈥檓 gonna like this. I鈥檓 gonna be good at this. Or not. Certainly, intellectually or in terms of yourself as a learner, your idea about school is kind of set by the end of kindergarten. It鈥檚 the rare child who can break out of that idea later on.
Certainly, intellectually or in terms of yourself as a learner, your idea about school is kind of set by the end of kindergarten. It's the rare child who can break out of that idea later on.
What stood out to you in the classrooms that impressed you?
In the four really strong classrooms I saw, those teachers were confident in their ideas about children and what should happen in the classroom. The other teachers, either by virtue of their personality or by the support and training they received, did not have that same sense of agency as teachers, and they did not have a well-articulated idea about what kindergarten is for.
What most surprised you in your observations?
I was worried going into this project that I would find the same old thing I had thought and heard forever, which is that poor, minority communities have bad schools and that well-off, privileged-race communities have good schools. And I didn鈥檛 see that.
Did your observations reinforce any prior beliefs you had about kindergartners?
One vivid thought that I came away with is that you just cannot ask 5-year-olds to sit still. Kids need to move around. In one school that was quite restrictive, when the students got out onto the playground, they were just wild with all this pent-up energy. And it鈥檚 not just physical energy, it鈥檚 mental energy鈥攏eeding to be in charge of your own movements and your own thoughts and your own games and your own ideas.
What was missing from classrooms?
Male teachers and Black and brown teachers. I saw one male teacher. I saw very few Black and brown teachers, and yet I saw many classrooms with many Black or brown children in them.
Based on your observations, what worries you about schools today?
In every school I visited, I asked teachers: What do you hope will happen by the end of kindergarten? And teachers were so surprised by that question. They said that nobody had ever asked them that, or they said, 鈥榃ell, let me think about that.鈥� It鈥檚 not that they didn鈥檛 like the question. They just hadn鈥檛 been invited very often to think of that and then use that as a guide in their classroom. So I guess that鈥檚 what worries me most: that we don鈥檛 think of teaching as a profession where it鈥檚 our collective responsibility to help new teachers develop a strong idea and then, of course, make it work with the system. Another worry that goes along with this: the sort of regimentation of school, treating school like a factory. It鈥檚 just dreadful.
What about today鈥檚 kindergarten classrooms gives you hope?
Five-year-olds are just so fantastic. They鈥檙e so eager. I know there are kids with problems, and some of them have intractable problems; I saw at least one kid like that in every classroom. So don鈥檛 get me wrong, it鈥檚 a hard task to be the teacher of these groups of kids. But in every classroom, the vast majority of kids are eager, curious, and friendly. They鈥檙e just kind of great.
And the second thing that gives me hope is that most [of the] teachers I met were really nice and well-intentioned. I saw a few that probably shouldn鈥檛 be teachers, or were ready to retire, but plenty that were good. Some teachers laughed with their students. They cracked up, and sometimes, they laughed about them, because kids are funny, right? If you don鈥檛 get how funny kids are, you probably shouldn鈥檛 be teaching kindergarten. And then I saw plenty of other teachers who sort of wanted to giggle because they, too, really like kids and are really sort of fascinated by them. I saw those teachers kind of stifle a giggle. That tells me that those teachers are not having enough of a chance to have fun doing what they鈥檙e doing. And it鈥檚 really hard to be a good teacher, especially if you鈥檙e not at least enjoying it.
