Thoughts About Kindergarten Graduation, following reading another author's post & the comments that followed

Here's the piece to which I am responding:

 https://americanenglishdoctor.com/cap-and-gown-graduation-for-kindergarten-is-absurd/

As a kindergarten teacher who feels ambivalent about kindergarten graduation , I am surprised to feel myself saddened by this article and the comments following it.  I had looked up this article hoping to hear a strong argument for why kindergarten graduation could cause harm in order to have a more informed viewpoint as I consider myself ready to be swayed by either side of the argument.  However, I found no truly robust evidence here of why k graduation is problematic. How can someone's very vague approximation of a formalized graduation cheapen the graduation ceremonies of those who graduate from high school, college, or with advanced degrees?  Does a child playing dress up as a doctor, teacher or police officer cheapen the work of those of us who hold those positions and passed the tests required to do so?  (Well, if kindergarten graduation literally cheapened college and graduate school, I'd be all about that!  But that's another topic, right?!)  💸

I hope that kinder/preschool graduations, when they happen, are aspirational, teaching little people that they too can reach for the stars--and one day graduate from high school, college, or beyond, if that is what I decide is their path.  Could k graduation truly help these little ones believe they belong in such a space, however?  I don't know.  As folks pointed out there are no readily available studies of the long-term benefits of graduation ceremonies for ks.  But an quick and dirty) Google search didn't yield any studies about the long-term importance of graduation ceremonies for HS or college degrees either.  

Do people who don't attend graduation ceremonies do better or worse in life?  The ceremony seems to mean so much less than the degree.  And k graduation is definitely not celebrating a degree!  It is an arbitrary celebration, much like a birthday.

Do people who celebrate birthdays do better or worse in life?  There is not a ridiculously high bar for these celebrations, just as there is not a high bar for kindergartners to participate in a graduation ceremony.  To get a birthday, you just need to have lived your life and been lucky enough to keep breathing past a particular date.  And there are "big birthdays" (quinceaneras, sweet sixteens, 18, 21, 30, 40, etc) and little ones--kind of like there are years of school that are considered bigger rites of passage than others--and these vary regionally and culturally, which makes sense because they are probably largely arbitrary.  

In some people's hearts, K is a big transition year--from being a baby to being a big kid.  Why did kindergarten get picked rather than 1st grade or a particular year of pre-school?  Why is your 18th birthday a big deal and not-so-much 19?  30 and not 31?  No doubt there was some cultural reason once upon a time, but now it's primarily just a matter of tradition.  

The main work of kindergarten, if you agree that it is a pivotal year, I would say, is to really get some practice "learning how to learn" (ie how to be curious and find out more about something, how to get along with peers, how to negotiate the requirements placed on us by those in power--just keeping it real, here!-- and how to get as big of a jump start on academic subjects as possible, especially those, like reading, that will make future learning easier).  Will kids who don't get very far on this path or don't attend much school be excluded from kindergarten graduation? Nope, they won't be excluded in most cases.  

And does this tarnish graduation for the students who by luck or by hard work were able to excel beyond some of their peers?  Well, you know, I think that really depends on what these 5 and 6 year olds decide is important.  And for that they look to us.  

So maybe we want to teach them to compare themselves with others and to allow others to diminish them or make them feel higher and mightier?  Or maybe we want to teach them to compare themselves with who they were previously so they can focus on their own progress towards their goals?  Or maybe (again being real here) it's a bit of both?  I've been around the block enough by now to realize there are no easy answers to questions like these, even if, as a dreamer and great love of humanity I lean a certain way personally.

If kindergarten graduation annoys you because it's expensive, preparation for it takes too much time away from academics, or access to it is not equitable for all families of kindergartners due to transportation, timing, or other similar factors, then you know, I feel you.  Those kinds of issues burn me up.  But if there isn't much harm being done (and I have lived long enough to know, alas, that pretty much everything causes harm some way, somehow) and it's just a matter of putting up with annoying folks trying to create some joy for no good reason, I think I might just be able to turn a blind eye.  

And maybe lets look for some low-harm ways to have some joy of our own?

With a needless amount of joy,

Edie

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Ten Minute Tech Talks - Keeping Teachers Up-To-Date with Tiny Tech Tidbits

Maybe one of these days I'll write a post about all the things that I love--because it's quite a list.  But, today I feel compelled to come out and tell you about just one of the things that really, really lights me up inside is 🎇💻 technology. 💻🎇

Nope, don't worry, I don't like turning my tiny people into zombies 🤤 by having them zone out on a device.  No, indeedy--not this Edie.  Having students get sucked into a screen drives me up the wall!  I avoid it at all costs.

Instead of poking technology down my students' throats, I prefer using technology to get my own st*ff together so I can do a better job of teaching efficiently while I'm face to face with my genius students.  That means I try to find the best ways of managing my correspondence, my calendar, my files and all the rest of my teacher junk, so I have bandwidth left to really be present with them and enjoy every moment of their blooming brilliance.

For me, technology is all about efficiency.  And, as I teach my kindergarten and first grade students, efficient is the fancy word for being clever and lazy at the same time.  Teaching takes up a whole lot of energy, just like learning does, and I teach them that they will want to save their energy for when they need it!

I also like to joke, mainly with adults, that my name--Edie--starts with E because E is for "Efficiency."  Of course, then I also need to explain that my name also ends with E because that's my "Redundance-E."  Ya know, because maybe you don't want to be so efficient that you miss out on something important.  So keep a little extra--even if that means you aren't actually completely efficient.

Efficient Technology Tips for Teachers

Some time ago, my district began rolling out 1:1 technology for our rather large urban school system.  Well, my lucky school drew the shortest straw, so we were slated to get our 1:1 technology last of all--arriving in fall of 2020--a mere 6 years after the first roll out.  In fact, we are group 6 to get this tech, labeled G6, for short.  (And yes, we have made free to groove to really inappropriate lyrics about the party-lifestyle that most teachers don't subscribe to, courtesy of Far East Movement.)

At my school, a couple of tech-lovers like me didn't adore the idea of being Luddites until the technology lightning bolt was visited upon us in year 6.  So we formed a tech team--and that is where I met my fabulous upper-grades colleague Heather.  Since admin wasn't sold on spending a lot of time on technology professional development, Heather came up with the idea of 10 Minute Tech Talks.  The idea with 10m Tech was to give staff a toe dip into some of the most essential or most useful tech tools for teachers so they wouldn't be terribly behind all the tech trends by the time we got 1:1 tech in G6.  Together, Heather and I presented a bunch of 10m talks to staff to teach them some fun and interesting things that we hoped they could use right away.

Like all things, some of these tech tips took and some fell a little flat.  Initially we just presented the tech tips for 10 minutes...and, after a little while, I started making slide decks that include all of the info we were teaching so they could be archived for reuse.  Occasionally I co-created these slide decks and ALWAYS I got feedback from some genius colleagues to make them better.  I want to make sure to give credit to all of them, rather thank pretend that I came up with this all on my own!  So thank you to Heather Drenk, Andrea Nelson, Monica Drinkwine, Dana Prager, Sharon Jimenez, Dixie Lane, Kristi Betzwieser, Shari Nelson, Peg Keeler, and Mary Seidl for all your input, inspiration, and feedback.

Well, here is the archive!  I threw it all in an Awesome Table--and that Awesome Table is still alive.  I keep adding to it as our Tech Team keeps presenting 10m Tech Talks!

(Because Blogger only lets me embed a haphazard version of the table, click here to get the full version)

More Tech

It's not to say that I NEVER use tech with my littles, but I use it as a tool to do something I would already be doing--only better. 

So, like many of us technophile teachers,...

•  Instead of pasting my walls with a billion anchor charts--I post electronic ones that are appropriate to what we are learning just at that moment on my Interactive Whiteboard (IWB)
• Rather than always singing (yeah, I still do a fair amount of singing!), I occasionally ask my smart speakers to play music all over the whole room to set the mood or help us transition
• Instead of making students wait to access text they can't yet read independently, my tiny geniuses can each pick a book they want to read and scan the QR code on it to access audiobook for the text they selected.
• In place of all cramming around a single student to try to see a brilliant move they made as an author, I mirror their writing up to the big screen while the author points to their favorite spot in the text and reads it aloud to their peers.

Turn your "Rainbow Table" into a real 🌈RAINBOW TABLE🌈

We teachers call them many things: our teacher tables, kidney tables, horseshoe tables, activity tables. So many confusing names! My favorite name for the classic arc-shaped table is, of course, the "Rainbow Table," since I happen to be rainbow-addicted, but you have to have a pretty amazing imagination to see a rainbow on one of those boring c-shaped tables under most circumstances.

Well, thankfully, if you are in possession of one of these tables, you are almost undoubtedly a 🌈teacher🌈of some type--and you don't last long in that role without a pretty stellar ✨imagination✨.

So, in about 2014, I pulled out my spectrum of colorful masking tapes and stuck some segments of tape together in each color to make myself a rainbow on the surface of my teaching table ✂️.  I was pretty pleased with the results, but almost immediately my little people were picking at it--so I had to go over the top with clear packing tape.  And even then I had to make rules for my table that included "hands at the edge or in your lap." 🚫 (Quite honestly, HATEOIYL is still a pretty great rule as it encourages much better posture in my little kindernauts.  Plus, what an outrageously awkward acronym!  Bonus!)

Version 1.0 - colored masking tape and clear packing tape
NOT RECOMMENDED!

I only have one picture of this taped up rainbow table which was taken by a parent volunteer...on a day when the whole community were dressed up as 🌌 extraterrestrials 👽.  But the good news is, the photo was taken while I was actually teaching (well, assessing!)--so it must not have been too much of a distraction that I was dressed as a Vulcan.  No doubt none of my students even knew the first thing about Star Trek 🖖.  They probably thought I was just an elf with some perpetually grumpy eyebrows.

Well, after about 5 years of limping my taped up table along, I finally decided I needed something more permanent and less pickable 😔.  Cleaning my table off with all the gummy tape residue was NO JOKE.  I strongly caution anyone from getting themselves in that mess!  With much effort (shudder!), I finally cleaned off my rainbow table and, over summer break, I decided to bring my dream of a painted rainbow table to fruition. 🍎🍊🍍🍐🔵🍇

😩 Anyway, blah blah blah. 💤 People always blab on far too much about the back-story instead of sharing what people really want to know--and clearly I am no different.

And now: How to Actually Turn Your Teaching Table into a 🌈Rainbow🌈

First, like all good teachers, I did my research.  To my shock, I couldn't find anyone else who had undertaken a project quite like this. 

I did find out about needing to clean and sand plastic laminate tables like mine before painting.  I also found out that, as far as cheap spray paint was concerned, Rust-Oleum was the highest ranked.  I was able to get red through blue on the spectrum, but alas, for purple I ended up having to buy another brand (who shall remain nameless) in order to get a gloss finish for all of the paints.  They were sold out of purple, alas. And quite honestly, the purple was more challenging to work with as a result.  So go with a good brand, if you can!

Taping it up:

Then I got out my blue tape and taped up my table in the pattern that I wanted:

A birds eye view. Chicken legs. Lolz.

Taped and ready!

Painting it on:

Primed!

 After I primed over the spaces for all the color lines using Rust-Oleum's primer, I used cardboard (held in my hand) and butcher paper taped to the table to mask the areas where I didn't want to have paint.  Even though it wasn't a super windy day, the wind did splatter the paint around a fair amount, so I was glad I had taken some precautions.

Because of how the greenspace works outside of my school, I unfortunately had to do much of my work somewhat near to some very tall trees.  And those trees did take opportunity to drop some little bits and pieces on me while I worked--which was at times pretty frustrating--even though I know the trees didn't do it out of malice.  Well, much malice. (Resting "on their laurels" because they make most of our O2, the greenery's manners can be a bit lax at times, if you ask me.)  And, since we are complaining about nature, some over-curious bugs did lose their lives by landing in my paint as well.  Bah.

Did I take any safety precautions, you wonder? Yes, yes.  I did wear a fabulous face mask to keep fumes to a minimum--even though it did give me a very Darth Vader-like voice when parents and former students wandered by the school to chat.  (But you already know I like sci-fi, so...maybe that wasn't all bad.)

I painted each color line by line.

And used cardboard to keep the paint where I wanted it.

There was a fair amount of waiting for the paint to dry between each color ⏱️, so I could add a second coat but eventually it was done. (Two coats was definitely important, but maybe I could have skipped some of the dry time!  Yikes!)  Then, after letting the table have several hours to dry outdoors, I swaddled it in towels (not pictured) so I wouldn't scratch it and took it indoors to dry for 48 hours before I could topcoat it. The table had to go on its side to get through the door and it's not light, so dinging the paint was a legitimate concern.  Luckily my partner and I managed to maneuver it without incident! 💋

Blue tape with white primer looks like a beautiful blue sky, no? 

Waiting it out:

Yay-yay!  After 48 hours I took the blue tape off and although it wasn't perfect, it was certainly better than my previous masking tape job!  I did clean it up a little with my putty knife--scratching off some stray bits of paint before I readied it for the next step by re-sanding the areas where there wasn't any paint and using super cleaner to give it one last wash-off 🚿.

 

Topping it off:

Then I did my research about top coats for oil-based paint--since spray paint is oil paint and you don't want to mix acrylic and oil, I guess?  Thank goodness I have the internet to steer me right 💓. (Heh, heh.  How often do you get to say that?)  

So, over the course of a weekend, I added two coats of General Finishes High Performance Topcoat, applied with a sponge applicator.  Although the application with the sponge was easy, it was probably also a bit wasteful of the product as a bunch of it squirted all over the floor.  (Yes, I had put down more butcher paper to protect the floor!)  I was sad I didn't have enough topcoat for a third coat, but oh well!

And then I was nervous as it evidently takes days and days for the water-based top coat to really cure, but so far so good.  This year I am teaching my favorite grade of all: kindergarten--so the table has definitely been anointed with dry erase marker, juice, boogers, and many other exciting substances 🤢☠️ and has stood the test boldly.  (It is now January--so it lasted to the new year!  Happy 2020!) 

Though I still maintain my HATEOIYL protocol (see above!), I don't really have to worry at little picking fingers will mess up my table.  Thank you topcoat!  Supposedly, I will even be able to use nail polish remover 💅 to get sharpie off of it without the topcoat being ruined.  (Of course I don't plan to overdo the acetone, should it become necessary!) 

Conclusions

This was an expensive project, both in terms of time 🕕 and money 💰 spent on materials, so brace yourself if you really want to commit to a project of this scope.  Truth be told, my gorgeous table does have lots of little imperfections that would drive many of my perfection-oriented colleagues mad 😵.  I refuse to show you any of them, however, because I am too vain 🦋.

Luckily (for many), I am not perfection-oriented and, sitting at my rainbow table every day does 💖fill my heart with pure joy💖.  Okay, most of that joy truly comes from teaching 😜 little geniuses 😁 at it, but it sure doesn't hurt that it is also shimmeringly beautiful on the days I have to sit there and mark assessments with no 👧 whip-smart 5 and 6 year old pixies 👦 nearby.  

You are probably wondering, because you are probably a rule follower, whether I asked anyone's permission before embarking on this project.  Well, nope, I didn't.  I thought about it 🤔.  And I worried about it 😟.  And then I decided that I would just be heartily sorry 😢 if anyone got upset with me about it rather than heartily sorry that I never lived out my dream 🤗.  

I also strongly suspect that if I ever move to a new school or take a different position that some of my colleagues would be pretty delighted to take it off my hands.  Heh heh.  I know I would be angling for it!  Who doesn't love rainbows?