It's All Developmental

I've just realized that I'm getting old. Big news, eh? Well, as a teacher with a birthday in June - I get this double whammy every year. Now it's worse - Our local paper always prints the pictures of all the local high schools' graduates and I've realized that I've suddenly started to recognize the faces. The very first grade 3 class I’ve taught here is graduating high school. They are now entering the workforce, studying to become whatever – they might be the face behind the counter when I apply for another loan! That just blows my mind. When they sign their names, I’m the one who first showed them how to sign their names!

The upside of all this is that I have a bit more of insight into the process of education. And I can say, after all these years: It doesn’t work.

It comes down to one thing - young children cannot learn what they are not developmentally ready to learn. Children are not at the same developmental level at the same age. Dividing young children into groups by age is the same as dividing them by height. It makes no difference! In one grade 2 class, I have students who would be challenged in a grade 1 class and students who could run circles around most grade 4's.

This all developed from a workshop I prepared a few years back that involved teaching spelling. The long and the short of it is that as I watched grade 2 students struggle with spelling the word 'because' I saw that even if the word was on the wall for them to copy they still got it wrong. Now an intensely famous spelling guru,Rebecca Sitton , would say that it is because I'm 'not holding them accountable' - but I'm in their face (relax - in a gentle, primary teacherish kind of way) about it. They still miss a letter or two. Why? I'm convinced that it has to do with how developmental spelling ability is. In the book,Words Their Way , we find that all children will develop in spelling ability in the same progression. If you try to teach the long 'e' rule before they have mastered short vowels, they will not learn the silent 'e' 'rule' in any permanent way.

This leads to grade 1 teachers (big Canadian thing, btw: you say 'grade 1' not 'first grade'. Another thing: Canadian kids are younger than US kids in each grade. Canadian 4 year olds may enter Kindergarten with a December 31 birthday. That's the cut-off when most states have a cut-off in September) saying: "I taught the silent 'e' rule last year! What do you mean that she doesn't understand it???"

After wrestling with spelling, I began to see this pattern in other areas and they I realized: "It's all developmental." Then I realized the way we do education is not developmental. It only works for the kids whose development happens to match the curriculum. Most teachers don't bother with knowing the developmental level of all the kids because it's usually physically impossible to keep track of each child's ability in each level. Another problem: based on research largely done on US high school students - the educational culture believes that retaining young children even at a Kindergarten, grade 1 or 2 level is always wrong. This is a flat out myth.

If you want to eliminate failing schools: Start extending the time some kids spend in Kindergarten and/or grade 1.

If you truly want'no child left behind' then start from scratch and reinvent how education works. Question everything and be ready for the New Enlightment!