Group items tagged

Full-day kindergarten may be having a negative effect on the learning and personal development of some children, according to new research.Early results from a pilot study focusing on two classrooms in southwestern Ontario revealed that teachers in a regular school setting were often caught in the tension that exists between meeting curriculum expectations and teaching to student interests.

"There is an emphasis on standardization like never before . . . that is being pushed down on young children," said lead researcher Rachel Heydon. "This is something that is being created that doesn't exist elsewhere."Heydon said the findings can't be generalized to every full-day kindergarten classroom, but the results do raise questions about whether the practice will help children in the long-term.She said that standardized tests in Grade 3 created a "washback effect" that pushed aside student interests and development in favour of academic goals.

The Ontario government believes that the program has merit, saying in a release this week that students who have early success in schools are "more likely to go on to post-secondary education and training and gain the skills they need to succeed in the global economy."

As the tsunami hit her school in Sendai, kindergarten teacher Junko Kamada stood in the window of a second story hall to block the children from seeing the destruction caused by the 1.5-meter wave. Amid dirt-caked chairs, soiled books and damaged equipment, Kamada, 60, is preparing to bring the students back to the school, about a mile inland from the coast. The children will also need counseling to deal with the trauma they have experienced, psychologists say.

Schools resumed two days ago in northeastern Japan, the epicenter of the March 11 magnitude-9 earthquake. Classes --some held in homes and makeshift spaces -- are providing a safe place for children to reunite with friends and a semblance of familiarity amid the nation’s worst disaster since World War II.

While adolescents attuned to the reality of death may act out their trauma, younger ones find it harder to articulate their distress, she said. People who suffer psychological ailments such as depression in childhood are 10 to 20 times more likely than others to experience those problems in adulthood, according to a 2010 study in the journal Social Science & Medicine. Affected individuals tend to leave school earlier and earn about 20 percent less over their lifetime, the authors found.

a panel of educators convened by the nation’s governors and state school superintendents released a set of proposed common academic standards on Wednesday. The standards, posted on the panel’s web site, lay out the panel’s vision of what American public school students should learn in math and English, year by year, from kindergarten to high school graduation.

If a majority of states were to adopt them over the next few months, which experts said was a growing possibility, the new standards would replace the nation’s motley current checkerboard of locally written standards, which vary greatly in content and sophistication. And adoption of the new standards would set off a vast new effort to rewrite textbooks and standardized tests.

The Obama Administration quickly endorsed the effort. Under the Department of Education’s Race to the Top initiative, in which states are competing for a share of $4 billion in school improvement money, states can earn 40 points of the possible 500 for participating in the common effort and adopting the new standards.

What makes Asa Berg such an effective third-grade teacher is that he is not quite 11 months old. It's an ideal age for the subject he's been teaching for more than half his life. The course is called Roots of Empathy. Asa is teaching the students about emotions, and his are right on the surface, easy to observe. In 47 classrooms around Puget Sound, in seven public-school districts and seven private schools, babies are part of the learning experience. The idea, which began in Canada and is spreading in the United States, is that children need to learn more than letters and numbers, they need emotional and social literacy in order to learn well now, and to grow into good parents and constructive citizens.

"I was a kindergarten teacher and I realized early on, as in the first week, that there was a great injustice, that some children came to school so ready to learn and a lot came with a lot of problems that prevented them from taking advantage of what schools had to offer," she said.

The program finds mothers or fathers from the neighborhood around each school. They don't look for super parents, just caring ones who are doing a good job with their own children. The students learn to read other people's emotions by watching the baby and parent interact, and they learn to think about the underlying causes of various behaviors.

Tokyo (CNN) -- Students in many districts across Japan brushed off their uniforms and shouldered their bookbags for the first day of the new school year on Wednesday. But while most were worried about meeting their new teachers or what their class schedules might be, some were facing the threat of nuclear contamination or the loss of former classmates.

"I just got a letter from my mom," he said. "It says that she is hurting because we're separated. But she says don't worry, we will go home together after the nuclear power plant settles down."

"I haven't got used to the life yet, because I have to live separately from my mom," he said walking into the Minamisuna Primary School. "I miss her."