What do you do with a five-year-old sobbing mess? I can distinctly remember dropping my daughter, Sara, off for her first day of kindergarten several years ago. Up until then, Sara was what my wife and I called a “preschool journeyman” who attended at least three different preschools between the ages of three and five. However, these were all half-day programs, and this was our first foray into a full-day program.
As a former kindergarten teacher, I was well aware of the ongoing debate between proponents of full-day kindergarten and those who opposed it. I thought I knew my position on the topic. Boy, was I mistaken.
While teaching kindergarten early in my career, I had experienced firsthand the difficulty of covering a comprehensive, integrated, standards-driven curriculum in a program that ran from 9:05 am to 12:15 pm and included a snack and recess time. Needless to say, it was exhausting. Interestingly, after observing how mentally and physically drained my little ones were by 12:15 — I became a strong believer in the “less is more” philosophy.
I advocated for a program that allowed children to go home for lunch. I was also convinced that a longer day would provide no more time for teachers to cover the important foundational academic skills, but rather would be used for additional “child-care” activities such as snack times, “down times,” and play times, all things that could be accomplished at home. Additionally, I feared that moving to a full-day program would embolden policy makers to further increase the academic demands of kindergarten children and force me to teach skills my students were not developmentally ready to learn. Lastly, I also knew that there was very little research at the time to support a full-day model. So, taking a position at Rocky Hill School (Rhode Island) and enrolling my daughter in a full-day kindergarten program was disconcerting for me both as an educator and a father.
It was difficult in the beginning. Teaching in the same school where your kindergarten daughter is enrolled is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, I was extremely fortunate to get to witness her first “real” school experience in real time. On the other, I also watched as she would slowly fade into an exhausted puddle by 12:30. It only reaffirmed my stance on full-day kindergarten. However, both Sara and I persevered, and by December, I was gradually becoming a convert. My daughter’s stamina increased dramatically and I discovered that the kindergarten curriculum did not cover any more material in a full day.
In the full-day program, my daughter had the gift of time to explore letters and numbers, to play with them, manipulate them. She viewed herself proudly as a writer and a reader long before she could actually read or write. She was an artist, a gymnast, a scientist, a musician. Given the benefit of a full day, my daughter was blossoming, not withering from exhaustion as I had originally feared. Furthermore, given the additional time, teachers had more opportunities to observe and work with Sara. They were able to identify potential “learning issues” early and develop intervention strategies that helped her overcome these obstacles to her continued learning.
Most important, Sara was happy and confident. She was developing a love for learning and growing into a capable young student. As the year came to a close and I watched her make the move to first grade, I had become completely convinced that, if done correctly, the benefits of a full-day kindergarten dramatically outweighed the few negative aspects such a program, if done incorrectly, posed for children. Again, I went back to the research to see if my new opinion of a full-day model was supported. In a 2010 report by Early Learning RI, I learned the following:
• According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 68 percent of full-day kindergarten classes spend more than one hour per day on reading instruction compared to 37 percent of half-day classes.
• Full-day kindergarten classes are more likely to spend time every day on math, social studies, and science.
• Nationally, children in full-day kindergarten classes make greater academic gains in both reading and mathematics compared to those in half-day classes.
Obviously, as the head of the lower school at Rocky Hill and the father of Sara, I have my biases. However, it was not until I watched her blossom into a confident student with all of the foundational skills necessary for a life of learning that I became convinced that appropriately designed and taught full-day kindergarten programs are extremely beneficial to all students.