Yes, More Dinosaur Units

 

The title of this post comes from the phrase "no more dinosaur units" which is something of a catchphrase in these days of "standards-based" education. The phrase refers to the fact that, in the past, kindergarten teachers have almost always taught intricate units about dinosaurs, even though there are no dinosaurs in the kindergarten TEKS (for you yankees, "TEKS" refer to the "Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills" which is what the standards in Texas are called).  

But here's the thing:  kindergarteners love dinosaurs.  There is some major psychic bond across eons of time and evolution that has hard-wired humans so that sometime between the ages of four and six, each human child must experience a period of dinosaur-fever.  It's like one of those sensitive periods that Maria Montessori wrote about or something.  At around age one, they start to walk and talk.  At somewhere between 4-6, they develop a passion for prehistoric lizards.  No one knows why - it just is.

What good kindergarten teachers have always known is that kids learn the important skills that they must learn best when immersed in a subject that excites them.  Our current system of  standards-based education leaves little time for this sort of unit-based learning.  Today's "units" fly by too quickly for kids to truly immerse themselves in anything.  Although the experts and administrators say that they want kids to learn higher order thinking and for things to be taught at the conceptual level, the curriculum leaves no time for much of anything except shoving knowledge-level (the lowest level of thinking) facts into their heads as quickly as possible.  This can work in math and reading which are so skills-based, and a little bit in writing if you have only one goal (that TAKS essay) in mind, but it is really super bad for learning science and social studies and for creating life-long learners. And allowing teachers to take the time to immerse their students in a subject of interest can easily incorporate all the math, reading and writing skills that they need to practice just as well as today's drill-drill-drill methods.

Lone Star Pa and I don't have the financial means to keep our kids in private schools forever and we value the experience of our children having membership in a diverse community too much to do that even if we could afford it.  Even so, and even being public school teachers, there is a lot about subjecting our kids to this drilling-the-standards-into-them form of public education to which I object.

We paid the big bucks to have our kids be in the very, very best daycare/preschools/private kindergartens we could find, both times around.  We were extremely lucky to be able to do it at all, I know, but it has not been easy.  It has pretty much meant choosing financial ruin for a long, long time but I think it has been worth it - those early years are the most important ones.  They got dinosaur units.  They got to experience learning with passion and excitement - that total immersion experience.  That is what I want for them educationally.  I firmly believe that if you have that, the rest follows almost automatically.   And that if you don't have that, the rest is never enough.  

The Lone Star Girl lucked out by getting into a wonderful, well-rounded elementary school where the standards emphasis was at least partially mediated by the fact that she attended school with kids who were all so bright that the school had no stress about test scores and felt little need to drill.  Likewise middle school.  Now we are looking at high schools for her and first grades for the Lone Star Baby, and we will try to make good choices for them if we get any choices (tests, lotteries, interviews) . Still, in my heart, I know it will be the preschool/kindergarten experiences that carry them through it all.

The Lone Star Baby has recently hit her dinosaur stage.  She is all about dinosaur bedtime stories and crafts (that increase her fine motor skills and stimulate creativity).  She is talking about the cretaceous period and the triassic period and the jurassic period.  She is studying rocks and bones.  She is reading and measuring.  She is comparing and contrasting and expanding her vocabulary.

I find that I am all for the dinosaur units myself.