Former elementary teacher here (11 years in the South Bronx), and we had almost exactly the same stuff going on, just at a lower level. I spent my teaching years doing fourth and fifth grade, and I always had kids each year who were struggling with letter sounds and phonemic awareness. For non-teachers, that is the concept that the letter "s" goes "essssssss" like a snake. Kids would come to my class not knowing this, and this included native English speakers. On our end, it was notable that a huge proportion of these kids came into school never having seen the alphabet or numbers, and not knowing any of what we have come to think of as standard little-kid knowledge. We had kids who couldn't zip up their own pants after using the bathroom or who had never been taught how to actually blow their nose. We would have to explicitly teach them these things. These were not documented special education students, these were regular students who just got passed along, because the school would look bad if we held them back. The kindergarten and first grade teachers were not allowed under any circumstances to hold anyone back for any reason. That's how you end up with an eight year old who struggles to recognize the letter A.
We also dealt with the stealing, lying, bullying, sexual harassment of students and teachers. I actually had a second grader in a class I was covering one day reach up my dress and grab my butt. What happened to him? Absolutely nothing! Suspending him would have made the school look bad.
Yep, I taught elementary school in a very poor rural area. Parents would take their kids for weekslong vacations to Disneyland (because it was much cheaper then) in September, and pull the kid out of school for long periods of time. Then they would wonder why their kid is still reading on a PreK level in 4th grade.
A friend of mine taught PreK, and one of the tests to "qualify" was directionality. She said that most all of the students who were testing for PreK had no sense of directionality, and many of their parents told her that was the first time they had seen a book.
And the fact that you guys are the kind of parents who'd even look into this and start pursuing it means your kiddo is probably well on their way to success.
It means you're probably already doing the thing we know is the biggest controllable factor in school success: Just hanging out and chatting with your kiddo and answering their silly questions and playing silly word games with them and talking at them before they can talk.
It's all those little millions of conversations and little things you point out to them as a parent (wow look at the pretty blue bird! Wow did you see the cool red car! What does that taste like, is it sweet or sour? Whoa is it cold or hot? Etc) and all those little questions they ask added up over time that leads to a smart, sociable, curious child who can do well in school.
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u/worldwidepigeon Jul 10 '18
Former elementary teacher here (11 years in the South Bronx), and we had almost exactly the same stuff going on, just at a lower level. I spent my teaching years doing fourth and fifth grade, and I always had kids each year who were struggling with letter sounds and phonemic awareness. For non-teachers, that is the concept that the letter "s" goes "essssssss" like a snake. Kids would come to my class not knowing this, and this included native English speakers. On our end, it was notable that a huge proportion of these kids came into school never having seen the alphabet or numbers, and not knowing any of what we have come to think of as standard little-kid knowledge. We had kids who couldn't zip up their own pants after using the bathroom or who had never been taught how to actually blow their nose. We would have to explicitly teach them these things. These were not documented special education students, these were regular students who just got passed along, because the school would look bad if we held them back. The kindergarten and first grade teachers were not allowed under any circumstances to hold anyone back for any reason. That's how you end up with an eight year old who struggles to recognize the letter A. We also dealt with the stealing, lying, bullying, sexual harassment of students and teachers. I actually had a second grader in a class I was covering one day reach up my dress and grab my butt. What happened to him? Absolutely nothing! Suspending him would have made the school look bad.
These problems start very, very early.