Last Wednesday was an important day. It was the first day of Kindergarten for a sweet little girl with wavy brown hair and big brown eyes. She has a loving, sunny disposition and is quick to offer hugs. She has a big vocabulary for her age, adores her older sister, and can’t get enough of Minions (those little yellow characters from the Despicable Me movies).
She struggles, though. Her attention span is short. She has never established a trusting relationship with an adult. She lacks the ability to empathize with others while displaying overly-affectionate physical attention to strangers. Until recently, she had no exposure to school-related content (including storybook reading), and her physical skills are more like that of a toddler. Any experienced early childhood educator who spends more than a few minutes with her can immediately recognize that she needs more.
She has lived her whole life in circumstances many of us cannot imagine. Born into a home of drug addiction and poverty, she has moved from place to place, experienced homelessness, and relied heavily on her older sister as the most reliable parental figure in her life. She has been hurt physically and emotionally by the grownups who are supposed to care for her. She has seen, heard, and endured things no child should ever know. She and her sister are known by the well intentioned, local child protective services folks who are called upon to navigate family drama or respond to instances of abuse and neglect.
And she is my niece.
My nieces have been in and out of my life as the very challenging legal system, state laws, and my brother have allowed. A crisis last year thankfully removed them from their unsafe home environment, giving my father and his wife temporary custody while we continue to work legal channels, trying for a more permanent solution.
Sadly, while my niece is special to me, her story is not a unique one. Millions of children in poverty will face challenges just like hers when they enter our public school systems for the first time this fall. At least one in seven children experienced abuse or neglect over the last year. According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, the number of poor children in the U.S. grew by 18% from 2008 to 2014—with 47% of children five years or younger now living in low-income families. One in 30 children in the U.S. is homeless.
In my line of work, I hear a lot from administrators and policymakers that they need the answer to the question: Are children ready for Kindergarten? But when I think about my niece, my first question is: Is the school ready for her? And as a former Kindergarten teacher, I know how important it is to be ready, to have a school system that is prepared and helps teachers to be able to care for and teach our most vulnerable learners.
When schools are ready for kindergarten, they provide teachers with ongoing support for their important work and opportunities to strengthen their practice. They provide access to tools that are valid and reliable and emphasize the importance of strengthening teacher-child relationships. They use resources that cultivate whole child development and learning (and aren’t myopically focused on literacy and math). They offer implementation support and professional development to help teachers to be successful.
If my niece’s school is ready, then over the next several weeks, her teacher will get to know her by observing her development and learning with purpose. Her teacher will determine my niece’s strengths and clearly see what makes her remarkable. Her teacher will recognize areas of development where my niece can benefit from support and coaching, like joining a group of children at play. And her teacher will identify some developmental red flags that will trigger the need for further screening.
And if my niece’s school is ready, then by Labor Day, my niece will have the beginnings of a warm, trusting relationship with her new teacher. By Halloween, she will be a contributing member of a classroom community. And by Thanksgiving, she will be receiving the early intervention services she needs to thrive.
Schools that are ready for children like my niece create truly life changing opportunities.