day care and Word People
Mar. 16th, 2007 01:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fleaIn Casper's new class at school, the teachers send home a daily summary of the class activities, a weekly lesson plan, and a weekly note specifically about Casper, all by email. I like this method a lot, and I always try to make a point to talk to Casper about a specific book I know they read that morning.
Today I got an email from a woman who was a teacher in Casper's old class, and has just moved to her new class. She commented on the fact that this new class has brought out a lot of new things in Casper - a greater degree of independence, more willingness to talk to the other students. We were just talking about this at home, how Casper seems more mature now and also how happy she is to be in this class. Part of it is her favorite friends, the twins, are in it, but I think it's mostly that the vibe is where she's ready to be - she was ready to move up from the younger class some time before there was an opening.
One thing about this day care that makes me astonished is the poor level of literacy of the vast majority of the teachers she (and Dillo) have had. All of them are high school graduates, and many of them have Associate's degrees (generally 2 year degrees in childhood development from a community college.) I am so used to communicating on the internet (at work, and in my social life) with highly literate, highly verbal people. We even tend to use grammar and punctuation, and many of us spellcheck obsessively!
I don't think it's bad for the kids that their providers are not Word People, but it does make it hard to feel like I'm clearly communicating with them. This, more than anything to do with race (most of them are not white) or class (most of them are not paid much less than me, although I am much better educated, so it depends how you define class) makes me feel different from them.
Today I got an email from a woman who was a teacher in Casper's old class, and has just moved to her new class. She commented on the fact that this new class has brought out a lot of new things in Casper - a greater degree of independence, more willingness to talk to the other students. We were just talking about this at home, how Casper seems more mature now and also how happy she is to be in this class. Part of it is her favorite friends, the twins, are in it, but I think it's mostly that the vibe is where she's ready to be - she was ready to move up from the younger class some time before there was an opening.
One thing about this day care that makes me astonished is the poor level of literacy of the vast majority of the teachers she (and Dillo) have had. All of them are high school graduates, and many of them have Associate's degrees (generally 2 year degrees in childhood development from a community college.) I am so used to communicating on the internet (at work, and in my social life) with highly literate, highly verbal people. We even tend to use grammar and punctuation, and many of us spellcheck obsessively!
I don't think it's bad for the kids that their providers are not Word People, but it does make it hard to feel like I'm clearly communicating with them. This, more than anything to do with race (most of them are not white) or class (most of them are not paid much less than me, although I am much better educated, so it depends how you define class) makes me feel different from them.