Teaching Kindergarten - What Not to Do

My girlfriend is a substitute teacher and before that she was a college student in childhood education. She has spent a lot of time in a wide variety of Kindergarten classrooms: rural, urban, and suburban; primarily affluent and primarily impoverished; well equipped schools and financially struggling schools; multi-grade and single grade; inclusive and typical. She has witnessed many Kindergarten teachers using many different methods for everything from teaching reading to socialization skills to classroom management. Everyday she comes home and debriefs to me. Through careful listening, I feel like I have experienced the best and worst that Kindergarten has to offer.

What have I learned? I have primarily learned what not to do as a Kindergarten teacher. I hope future and current Kindergarten teachers can benefit from this advice.

1. Don't treat your students like robots or pets. Remember they are people, just like adults only smaller with less wisdom and experience! Treat them like people. If you find yourself treating your students worse than you would treat your friends, you are doing something wrong.

2. Don't refer to your students as each other's friends. Just because they are in the same Kindergarten class together, does not mean that they are friends! Especially, don't refer to them as each other's friends while comparing them or trying to get them to tattle on each other. (See below.)

3. Don't compare your students to each other. At the age of five boys are typically a full year below girls in all areas of development. In a typical Kindergarten class, there is a full year in the span of ages present. An extra year of development and life experience makes a lot of difference at five years old. Perhaps most importantly, we are all individuals. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. Some people's strengths look better than others in a school environment. Embrace your students' uniqueness and resist the temptation to compare.

4. Don't encourage tattling. Obviously if a student is at risk of hurting himself or others, or of destroying property, it is important that you know. In my experience, this is not the kind of tattling that goes on in Kindergarten classrooms. I have heard of Kindergarten teachers saying things like, "If you see one of your friends playing with their shoe laces, make sure you tell me." I certainly would hope that one of my friends wouldn't tell my teacher that I was playing with my shoe laces when I wasn't suppose to! (That is a stupid rule anyways. See below.) Let your students be responsible for themselves.

If someone tattles about a petty squabble, encourage them to work it out themselves. Observe the situation to make sure that everyone is respectful, and nothing gets out of hand, but don't reward the tattler by interfering. Tattling becomes an increasingly disruptive classroom behavior throughout the years. Rewarding tattlers by following through on their every request, keeps your students from learning what behavior truly warrants telling the teacher, and from learning how to get along with others by using words to understand each other and work out problems on their own.

5. Don't make a big deal of the small things. When you make your classroom rules, keep them simple and to the minimum. No one is perfect, and students are more likely to thrive in an environment that they think they can succeed in. If there is a rule against everything, why bother trying at all. You are sure to do something wrong. Decide what things really matter: not hurting others, picking up after yourself, not disturbing the rest of the class during lessons, and leave it at that. You might not like everything your students do. They might have habits that annoy you. That doesn't mean that they are doing anything wrong. They are people and should not be required to conform to your vision of ideal Kindergarten students. Let go of that ideal along with the small things, and you'll all get along much better.

6. Don't let discipline escalate out of control. Obviously clear rules and consistency are important in classroom management. If you have let go of the small things, you will be well on your way to keeping your class on track. Some Kindergarten students will have trouble even with the few simple rules you really do need to enforce. When someone breaks a rule, don't let your discipline escalate out of control.

For example, Timmy is noisy during story time (disturbing class), so you tell him he needs to sit away from the group so that the other students can hear. When he goes to sit in the designated area, he is fidgety and crying. You stop the story and tell him that if he doesn't stop now he won't have play time. He doesn't stop so you tell him he isn't going to have playtime, and if he doesn't stop now, you will talk to his parents. The situation has escalated out of control.

Students are people, and as much as you might want to be able to absolutely control them, you won't always be able to do it. When a rule has been broken, give a consequence and leave it at that. If the discipline escalates, the student will rapidly feel powerless, and feeling powerless will just lead to more misbehavior.

7. Don't stifle their joy! This is the most important "don't" in this list. If you take nothing else away from this article, it should be that your primary responsibility as a Kindergarten teacher is to make sure that your students are happy in school and don't lose their natural curiosity and love for learning. Let them share their passions and joy. Help them find answers to their questions. Don't be afraid to stray from your prepared lesson plans when things seem to be heading in a different direction. Let you students show you where they want to go. If your students hate school, you are doing something wrong. This is Kindergarten! Most of your students will be in some sort of school environment for the next twelve years. If they are already dreading each day, they are in for a long, hard journey. Teach them that school is a wonderful, fun place to be, and you will have done your job as a Kindergarten teacher well.