Seizing the Opportunity of the K-2 Years

I call her Snodgrass, because it’s one of the silly things I do that gets her attention and makes her laugh. She has a more conventional name, of course, but for data privacy reasons we will call her Marcia in this article.

Marcia will be going into Grade 2 for the 2011-2012 academic year. She began studying with me as director and teacher of the New Salem Educational Initiative when she was in Grade K, continuing for a second year as a Grade 1 student during 2010-2011. Thus, this will be her third academic year of enrollment in the New Salem Educational Initiative. The New Salem Educational Initiative offers Marcia (and its 104 other students) the opportunity to attend weekly two-hour sessions of intense instruction in math, reading, and a broad course of study in the liberal arts. Students all come from impoverished homes and in school have fallen well below grade level. By the end of their first year of attendance, they have usually achieved grade level performance and by the end of their second year they are generally ready to proceed to an advanced track of college preparatory study.

Moving students from backgrounds of impoverishment and familial dysfunction to grade level performance and above takes a great deal of highly focused attention on the part of the student, and a great deal of adroit effort on the part of the teacher. The goal is attainable for all students. The task becomes much easier when we can get a student into the program at the young age at which Marcia entered. At this stage, students are wide open in their receptivity to information of all sorts, and they crave adult approval. In Marcia’s case, she had observed three other family members go off each week in transport to the New Salem Educational Initiative. She was primed and ready to have the rewarding experience that all of these students had enjoyed. Every Saturday morning she piled into my car (transportation is provided for all students) with a big smile, asking, “Hey, Gary, what are we going to learn today?”

In response, I would tell her, “Oh, we’re going to read a poem about ‘swinging up in the air so blue,’ then we’re going to read about Tigger coming to a forest for breakfast, then I’d like you to read about how Native Americans crossed a land bridge thousands of years ago. How does that sound to you?”

“Great!” she would say.

“And then we’re going to review carrying and borrowing--- you, know, regrouping--- in addition and subtraction. Okay?”

“Ooo, yea, that’s fun!” would be Marcia’s reply.

Midway through her Grade 1 year, Marcia had read an array of classical children’s literature, and she had fully mastered all math skills appropriate to her grade level. Then she had moved on in both reading and math material to tasks typical of the Grade 2 student. This summer I have continued to work with her, moving forward with instruction in multiplication. As she enters Grade 2, Marcia has fully mastered her multiplication tables for the factors 0 through 9, well ahead of the pace that holds this as a goal for Grade 3 students. Overhearing her older relatives working on advanced college preparatory items, she has even startled us all by picking up the proper definitions of words such as “jocular,” “quintessential,” and “malapropism.”

Herein we see the opportunity for teachers of students at the K-2 level. Students are eager for substantive education. They want to please adults, and they respond readily to a personality that conveys a love of children and willingness to be silly and funny while offering solid subject area material in natural science, history, literature, the fine arts, and math. These are years in which teachers should rush in and be sure and provide this education before devoting too much time to classroom parties, “free time,” DVDs, unfocused field trips, and school assemblies. Whatever value these latter sorts of activities may have, they should be far back in the list of priorities, relegated to unnecessary options paling in significance to the responsibility of offering a solid academic course of instruction to children when they are most receptive to information coming from adults.

If students come out of Grade 2 in full control of grade level skills in math and reading, with the latter put to service in an array of subject area material in natural science, history, and literature, they are on course for success. They yearn for the knowledge, and they deserve the success. Teachers of K-2 students should therefore be especially mindful of the responsibility that they bear. There is every reason to anticipate future academic and therefore life success for the students whom they properly prepare, even as there is the distinct possibility for disaster in the futures of students for whom a magnificent opportunity is squandered.