Kindergarten: The Adventure Begins

It is the first day of school, and teacher JoAnn Galileo is shepherding 18 kinetic kindergartners to the rug in Room 2 at Third Street Elementary in Los Angeles’ Hancock Park neighborhood.

As parents observe the action through blind-shaded windows from a small outdoor playground, Galileo tells the pupils to sit “on your bottoms” and proceeds to explain “some of the jobs we’re going to do every single day.”

Some children look wary, some wiggle, some wander. But eventually each gets down to the business of being a kindergartner.

It is a role that has grown much tougher as the Golden State embraces a raft of rigorous academic standards, starting even, yes, in kindergarten.

As has been true for generations, the early days of kindergarten are a mingling of wide-eyed 4-year-olds with nearly 6-year-olds. Most know how to spell and print their names. A few can read a bit. One or two can’t yet hold a pencil or crayon properly or cut well with scissors.

Until recently, such inabilities would have raised no cautionary flags. But these days, kindergarten is no longer a time for mere play and socializing.

California for the first time has statewide content standards, and kindergarten merits nine pages in language arts and mathematics alone. They encompass such areas as word analysis and fluency, reading comprehension, writing strategies, number sense, statistics--even algebra and functions. Homework is becoming commonplace for many of the state’s 464,000 kindergartners.

“These are not the kindergartens you remember, with [just] sorting, colors, shapes,” said Phyllis Klein, director of Circle of Children, a Santa Monica preschool. Lessons in these first weeks of school are still fairly basic, but “they also push for kids to read by December,” Klein said. “The demands have become so great.”

Moreover, the end of the practice of promoting children to the next grade regardless of academic readiness puts more pressure on children. Problems of emotional or physical immaturity that a few years ago would have created frustrations in first grade now are surfacing as struggles in kindergarten.

The trend toward more academic content concerns many education watchers, who say that drilling in phonics and numbers can inhibit children’s learning of social rules--how to cooperate, how to respect authority and how to listen to other children’s points of view.

“I worry that this academic injection will narrow how we think about the development of young kids,” said Bruce Fuller, a policy analyst at UC Berkeley. “If you don’t have the behavioral skills in place, just attending to the academics isn’t going to work.”

To assess the changes, The Times plans to follow a kindergarten class for the year. These are the early days--by turns frustrating, amusing and enlightening.

The unevenness of Galileo’s class seems daunting, but with three decades of experience, she exudes enough confidence and authority to put the most anxious parent at ease and the most recalcitrant student on notice.

Day 1--Thursday

At 7:10 a.m., Stephanie Cho, 5, and her brother Andrew are sleepily downing a breakfast of waffles, Korean melon and chicken and rice soup at the white dining room table in their two-bedroom apartment, chosen for its proximity to Third Street Elementary.

At a brief school orientation the day before, second-grader Andy and kindergartner Stephanie picked up their first homework packets. Their mother, Susan Cho, a piano teacher, says Stephanie’s homework seems more challenging than Andy’s was two years ago in Galileo’s class.

By 7:43, they are in the car, negotiating the short but trafficky route to school. Once there, Stephanie and her classmates greet one another shyly in the small outdoor play area. Remarkably, there are no tears as parents bid farewell. Those will come later.

By Los Angeles public school standards, the students are an unusual mix. Ten of the 18 are Asian American, two African American, six white. In most other urban Los Angeles schools, Latinos constitute the vast majority. There are 10 boys and eight girls.

In other ways, however, the school more closely resembles the average California campus. Many students speak a language other than English at home. And the school is overcrowded--built for 400 students, it now houses 870 in kindergarten through fifth grade.

As in most schools in California urban areas, there is considerable turnover. Within a few days, two new students have joined the class and one has left.

Not all the students are ready.

“Teacher, will you tie my shoe?” asks one child.

“No, that’s something you need to learn to do,” Galileo answers.

She begins the morning ritual.

“What day is it?” she asks. “Summer,” one student chirps.

As one pupil, Timothy, taps the pointer at numbers taped high on the wall, the class counts in unison--more or less: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Now backward, Mrs. G says, adding a “blastoff” after they get to zero.

By year’s end, the children will be expected to count and manipulate numbers from 1 to 30--well beyond the expectation of years past that 10 was enough for kindergarten.

Next come the days of the week, as the students struggle with the concepts of “Yesterday was . . .” “Today is . . . “ and “Tomorrow will be . . . .”

Repetition is a favorite technique for Mrs. G, who views it as a way for children to learn “phonemic awareness,” or an understanding of letter sounds--a key skill that must be in place before pupils can fully grasp phonics. The children will recite the alphabet daily as a student points to letters and pictures: A, a, a, a, apple. B, buh, buh, buh, butterfly. C, cuh, cuh, cuh, candle.

After one more exercise--counting the number of days they have been in school (one)--Mrs. G says: “We’re going to stop working on this because otherwise it gets booooring.”

She then divides the students into Perky Penguins, Super Spiders and Terrific Tigers. One group will finish and color a half-drawn butterfly; one group will begin a journal; and one group will practice cutting, gluing and coloring.

It is 9 a.m., an hour after the opening bell. A girl named Kelly gets teary and is comforted by Hetty Lee, who teaches afternoon kindergarten and assists Galileo.

About 25 minutes later, Mrs. G rings a bell to signal that it’s time to change tasks. Many students immediately put their hands on their heads, as instructed. But the transition between tables does not go smoothly. Some pupils lose track of their group.

Over the morning, a good 30 to 45 minutes is devoted to reminding children how to behave.

“It was like a normal beginning day,” says Mrs. G. “By the end, they were very restless. There’s a lot of personality in this group!”

Day 2--Friday

By 8:05, most children are on the rug.

“What month are we in right now?” Galileo asks. “Saturday,” a child replies.

After the rundown of numbers, letters and days, Galileo begins teaching a song about colors, pointing out the words one by one where they are printed on a giant sheet of lined paper on an easel.

Later, as the children tear around the yard on tricycles, Galileo reflects on how the first year of school has changed.

“Kindergarten used to be 2 1/2 hours--blocks, painting, snack, rest, goodbye, go home,” she recalls. “There was no paper and pencil. Now it’s three hours, 20 minutes and more academic.”

Now that so many children have had pre-kindergarten or Head Start, she says, they are ready for more interesting tasks.

Her weekly homework packet goes home on Mondays and is due Fridays. It includes a dozen or more assignments: phonics, colors, shapes, patterns, handwriting, poem memorization and reading. A weekly log includes spaces for three brief book reports--and a parent’s signature.

California’s decision to reduce class sizes, she says, has made a “phenomenal” difference. Last year was her first with just 20 students, down from 30 to 32. “It added 10 years to my teaching life.”

Back inside, Mrs. G again splits up the class. One child, Fumbah, seems lost and begins to cry. He does better once Lee devotes attention to him, but he lags the others in maturity and keeps to himself. Galileo recalls that his older brother had trouble early on in kindergarten and improved as the year went by.

“They were very antsy today,” she says. “The second day of school is like that many times. On Monday I may have criers.”

Day 3--Monday

As predicted, the tears--of frustration, anger and homesickness--flow after the weekend break.

As two mom-volunteers assemble homework, Galileo spends nearly an hour describing five centers where the children will work solo, in pairs or in small groups.

At the science center, children will mix dyes as demonstrated by Mrs. G--blue and yellow for green, red and blue for purple. Only a handful of kids grasp the concept. One boy colors his work sheet to say: Red + red = red. Asked what red and blue make and given the hint that it starts with a P, another boy says “Pink.”

“Are you thinking about your job?” Mrs. G asks him.

After school, Galileo chats with Bintu Tulay, Fumbah’s concerned mother. Tulay can’t understand why Fumbah won’t participate. He talks a lot at home, she says. It is too soon, Galileo agrees, for any drastic action.

“He’s just immature, that’s the problem,” says Tulay. “Every child is different,” she adds with a sigh.

A few days later, the Tulays, immigrants from Liberia, will decide to hire a tutor to help Fumbah after school while they work. At Galileo’s suggestion, they also schedule an assessment of Fumbah’s language and speech skills.

“It’s pretty much a typical Monday,” says Mrs. G. “I could see more today what they need, lots of small-motor activities.”

Day 4--Tuesday

Today is Fumbah’s 5th birthday. The class sings “Happy Birthday” as he stands proudly next to Mrs. G.

The morning’s first exercise involves cutting out shapes and pasting them on white paper. Despite Mrs. G’s exhortation to use their own imaginations, many children copy her. Others show great creativity. Blond-haired Abry shows herself jumping on a trampoline.

The transitions continue to be a challenge. Several fail to listen to directions. Galileo gives stern rebukes and orders three pupils to take a timeout. It will be January before everyone adapts to the rhythm of the class, she predicts.

Some groups and pairs function well together, engaging in cooperative play and learning. But others behave like rowdy rascals. Stephanie, usually a model student, giggles whenever she’s with Pearl.

Mrs. G’s assessment, offered with a hearty laugh: “I have to change some children around because they interact too well.”

Day 5--Wednesday

Pearl, who has emerged as a class scamp with strong leadership tendencies, beams as Galileo compliments her quick answer to the question: “How many days have we been in school?”

Mrs. G pours dozens of plastic cubes onto the rug and asks the children to pick two colors to make patterns 10 cubes long.

Before long, Pearl is gleefully brandishing a sword made of cubes, as long as she is tall.

After snack and recess, things deteriorate. Having misbehaved on the way back indoors, the entire group is told to go back outside and queue up again. Two boys are in tears; one snaps a pencil in two at the writing center.

Realizing that things will look much better in a couple of weeks, Galileo acts unperturbed.

In an aside to fellow teacher Lee, though, she asks: “Don’t you feel we’ve been in school a month already?”