The First Day of School:
Aligning the Early Years of Learning with the Early Years of Schooling
Dr. Rebecca Shore
I’ll never forget August 27, 2000. It was the day my daughter, Leigh, marched off to kindergarten to take advantage of her free and appropriate public education. As it turned out, the only “appropriate” education we found for her was not “free” but it has certainly been worth every cent and more! When the big day arrived, never had I appreciated the power of the phrase “in loco parentis” so strongly nor realized the magnitude of the struggle our forefathers faced with the implementation of nationwide compulsory education. My husband and I helped Leigh locate her tiny desk, took a picture, feigned a smile, and departed – both of us reduced to tears before making it from the kindergarten door to the lower school parking lot. Fortunately, we knew she was in the best of hands and our sobs subsided by noon.
My reaction surprised me. I was an older mom with a twenty-year career in education and three university degrees in the field. Leigh had experienced several years in preschool programs prior to kindergarten and we didn’t take first-day photos at those. I knew full well that the first years of formal schooling were not the first years of learning for her, even though most of her earliest educators were actually called “caregivers” instead of teachers. Upon later reflection, I realized that the parental trauma brought on by that first day of kindergarten was actually an indication of the depth of the embedded nature of a longtime tradition in this country; the notion that the earliest years of what is considered formal schooling typically begins with kindergarten.
The Real Learning Gap
Within our nation’s school system, sometime between kindergarten and secondary education, a wide variation appears between the achievement levels of different children in schools. The learning gap between high achieving high schoolers and dropouts is certainly no secret to educators. Huge sums of federal and foundation funds have been injected into the system in an attempt to bridge the learning gap. From the Annenberg millions to the Title One billions, from whole school restructuring efforts to reducing class sizes, from two decades of Effective Schools research to the Blue Ribbon Schools Conditions for Effective Schools and Goals 2000, no simple solution for fixing this gap has surfaced.
How can so much hard work, so much money, and the best of intentions fail to produce some kind of “best practices” that work for educating all of our children? Why have we been unable to bridge the learning gap? Perhaps the paradigm of when the early years of schooling begins has blinded school reformers. Research has shown that if children are experiencing failure in their schoolwork by the end of the third grade, they rarely catch up with their more successful peers. (Meyers & Flowers, 2003) In fact, we see tremendous gaps between high-achieving kindergarteners and many other kindergarteners that struggle to identify colors and shapes. This kindergarten gap grows with each child at each grade level, becoming the Learning Gap. Perhaps the answer to bridging the learning gap lies not in asking the question “How do children learn?” but reframing it as “When do children learn?”
Neurology for Non-neurologists
Technological advancements and the relatively new field of cognitive neuroscience are helping to shine a bright light on the problem of school reform – the learning problem. Positron emission tomography (PET) scans and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) are helping us to answer this more critical and promising question of when children learn and the implications are startling. The earliest years of life, before a free and appropriate education is available, appear to hold the key to learning.
Nurturing Neural Networks
Neurologists claim that we never have more brain cells than when we are newborn. Brain cells are estimated in excess of 100 billion creating over 1,000 trillion synaptic contact points – a number greater than all of the stars and planets in all of the galaxies. (Diamond, 1999; Healy, 1994) One important type of brain cell is the neuron. The primary role of neurons is to take in data from the outside world, make sense of it, and adapt the organism to it. It is the brain that determines if you are hot or cold, happy or sad. How does it do this?
Upon receiving information from the outside environment, neurons are stimulated to communicate with other neurons. Each neuron has many tentacles called dendrites protruding from it. Each neuron also has an axon. When one neuron talks to another, information travels down the axon and connects with a neighboring neuron’s dendrite. The moment when the information transfers from one neuron to another neuron is called a synapse. This is the magical moment of truth on a cellular level for educators. When neurons are repeatedly stimulated to communicate, neural networks are formed in the brain. Our primary goal in education is to help increase the number of synapses in the brains of our students to form complex neural networks, creating a broad base of neural circuitry upon which high-level thinking will later be built. (Shore, 2002; Ramey & Ramey, 1999)
Some neurons are already networked at birth. We do not have to teach a baby to breath or cry and we do not have to teach their hearts to beat. Most functions associated with survival are already hardwired at birth. These critical networks are housed in the lower brain just at the top of the spine. (Diamond, 1999; Ramey & Ramey, 1999)
However, the majority of the neural networking that will take place in a child’s brain will happen as a result of the stimulation or deprivation it receives from the environment in which the child spends their first few years of life. In fact, between the moment of conception and that first day of kindergarten, the brain develops at a pace that exceeds any other in a person’s life. (Shore, 1997; Jensen, 1998; Greenfield, 2000)
Making Jell-O out of Custard
Researchers tell us that the texture of the less networked baby’s brain resembles custard while an older child’s is more the consistency of Jell-O. As a baby experiences all of the wonders of life outside the womb, its neurons communicate and neural networks form and expand. It is the networking of neurons that helps to change the brain’s consistency from custard to Jell-O. If we shake Jell-O, it wiggles and jiggles but retains its form. Shaken custard, on the other hand, can break up, never to regain its original shape. Consider the Shaken Baby Syndrome. It can be fatal to shake a very young child or cause severe, irreparable brain damage.
This consistency matter has implications for new learning as well. Neurons are ready and waiting to connect and the young brain can rise to what would seem to be extraordinarily high expectations, given an enriched environment. For example, if a baby is born into a home that is bi-lingual or even tri-lingual, neurons will naturally communicate and produce a multilingual toddler. Later after the brain’s foundational networking is laid, it becomes more difficult to learn new things. (Try teaching two new languages to a sixteen year old.) Likewise, if a child is born into an environment in which complex sentence structure is the norm and this is the language level used for communicating with the child, that child will typically develop a much more advanced vocabulary and language skills than a child raised in a less enriched language environment. (Hart & Risely, 1995) Important implications for our education system result as a consequence of this research; that is, these more advanced language skills usually last a lifetime.
Windows of Opportunity
Around the age of ten, or the onset of puberty, the brain “cleans house” so to speak. It begins to prune itself of unneeded neurons. (Diamond, 1999; Sousa, 2001) Once children approach adolescence, the body begins preparing itself for reproduction and hormones race throughout the system. The brain is still flexible and capable of new learning, but adult learning does not compare in speed to the formation of the fertile mind of a young child. (Diamond, 1999) So why is the brain of an adult bigger and heavier than that of a baby when a baby has more neurons? It is a consequence of the neural networking.
FMRI, PET scans, and other improved and advanced technology have provided a clearer window for researchers looking into the live brain, revealing critical windows of opportunity for “teaching” young children. The earliest years of learning not only matter, they appear to matter the most! In fact, many neurologists estimate that the brain is anywhere from 80 – 95% set up by the time a child arrives at the kindergarten door. (Perry, 2002; Ramey & Ramey, 1999) And some of this early wiring can have a lifetime of influence on a child’s future learning potential.
Neuroscience has shown us that two critical areas where assessment and intervention should arrive long before a child arrives at school are hearing and sight. For example, if a child is born with cataracts and the cataracts are not removed before the age of two, it is unlikely that the child will ever develop normal sight. (Diamond, 1999) If, however, the cataracts are removed before the age of six months, it may be possible to completely restore normal vision. Unfortunately, even when perfectly normal vision is deprived of visual stimulation in infancy, the ocular columns in the visual cortex do not wire up properly. This can have a lifetime of learning implications for the child.
Another window of opportunity arises with respect to hearing. A child whose hearing deficiency is not detected until the age of four or five will probably suffer a lifetime of speech and language difficulties. (Healy, 1994) The technology to assess hearing at birth does exist and the 1999 Newborn and Infant Hearing Screening and Intervention Act was intended to facilitate testing. However, it only suggests that the test be offered to parents in some states and may require a fee to be administered. A few states now mandate free hearing tests for infants before they leave the hospital at birth. Fortunately for us, North Carolina is one of these! However, most states have deemed this policy to be too expensive due to false positives. Children with hearing impairments at birth who do not receive early intervention, typically require special educational programs throughout their school years. Consider the costs saved in special education services if all states required this hearing screening at birth.
M.I.T. linguist, Steve Pinker states that a child who does not hear proper grammar regularly in their environment between the ages of two and four, can diagram sentences every day of their K – 12 school lives, and it is still highly unlikely that they will ever develop proper grammatical habits of their own. (Shore, 2002; Pinker, 1987) Again, the costs saved by earlier “language arts” instruction so to speak, could significantly reduce problems associated with language skills later on, decreasing a lifetime of humiliation and discrimination for one with less sophisticated language skills throughout school and adulthood.
Clearly a long-range solution to school reform and the learning problem must begin years earlier than kindergarten and probably with conception. Our present system resembles building a skyscraper and after completion, trying to move all the restrooms from one side of the building to the other. How much easier, more practical and cost effective to design the plumbing system for several possibilities in the blueprint stage? Perhaps the gap that needs bridging is actually the one between conception and the kindergarten door. In the short term, we have doctors such as Mel Levine offering wonderful interventions and accommodations for teachers to provide all children with material via the Schools Attuned program. And fortunately for us at FCDS, we have phenomenally visionary leadership equipped with remarkable "make-it-happen" tenacity to bring this training to our entire staff! But what about the national system and the future for our children's children?
Timing Is Everything
Put on your most preposterous imaginative thinking cap and consider this analogy: Imagine a country just getting started that is under-populated. The leaders of this country realize the critical importance of propagating the citizenry and the species, and decide to take action. They set up free reproduction schools for women designed specifically to reach the goal of increasing the population of the country as fast as possible. Their mission? Educate to procreate! However, since the work of the young women is critical to their growing economy and young women are far more productive in the workforce than elderly women, they decide to wait until the women are older to enroll them in the reproduction school. Education becomes compulsory for women at the age of fifty; at that time they are all sent to reproduction school for twelve years. When they graduate at the age of sixty-two, their exit examination is to bear a child. This school system, the nation’s leaders believe, will ensure a quick increase in population.
Sure, there is a child or two born to the women in the schools, but overall, the schools fail in their purpose. Reform after reform comes and goes in an effort to fix these reproduction schools. The curriculum is revised, class sizes are reduced, and requirements for teachers are increased. Still very few of the sixty-two year-olds are able to bear children when they graduate. Policymakers are baffled. They blame the teachers. Teachers work harder and harder, and more and more money and resources are injected into the system, but there is no noticeable improvement. Teachers blame the students. Students blame their parents. Everyone works harder and harder but no significant increases in childbearing are seen.
Had the country considered making its schools for fifteen-year-olds instead of fifty-year-olds, no doubt it would have enjoyed considerably more success. Like a gold prospector who digs and digs in search of the mother lode: if he is but a foot away from the vein, it doesn’t matter how deep he digs. It doesn’t matter how technologically advanced his equipment becomes or how much capital he spends on new and improved diggers. He won’t find gold unless he considers changing his boundaries.
Education
So what is a K-12 educator or parent to do with this information? First, educate yourself about how the brain learns. There are several publications in print now that make this learning simple to understand and practical for educators and parents to use. A deeper understanding of the inner workings of the brain and the dramatic implications for how and when we educate our children will only help us in our present roles.
After we have educated ourselves, then we must teach children all about their own brains and how they learn best. Adding a little brain science to the curriculum will give children the tools they truly need to become “life-long” learners. Teaching them habits of mind that facilitate learning is as important as teaching them social studies and math. Healthy brains maintain healthy bodies and brain care is a critical piece of all other curricula. Many of our teachers at FCDS have already figured this out and Dr. Levine's "The Mind That's Mine" and other "How the Brain Learns" materials are on order and already in use!
Communication
The study of the brain and how learning occurs will likely lead us passed the playgrounds of our schools and into the infant/toddler rooms of our community daycare programs. Become familiar with organizations such as the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and with the issues facing this important group of educators. Share information with colleagues and especially the parents of children in your schools and neighborhoods with younger siblings. Imbue in them the importance of reading to their children daily, speaking directly to them using complex sentence structure, and enriching their earliest childhood environments in a variety of ways.
Some school districts are experimenting with ways to reach parents of their younger “future” students. In District B of the Los Angeles Unified School District, a sub district of 80 schools in the San Fernando Valley has grown to over 80,000 children. Most of these children are Spanish speaking and many are not yet old enough to attend kindergarten, but they and their parents are in “school.” It is a 1.8 million dollar effort devoted to parent education of their students including their future students. (Education Week, Oct. 2, 2002) The program has been recognized by the National Network of Partnership Schools and serves as a model for other K-12 systems hoping to reach students before they actually arrive at their kindergarten doors.
Advocacy
Find out what your state is doing (or not doing) on behalf of the youngest students in your learning community. Research what you can do to facilitate efforts that aim to improve the quality and availability of the important early childcare settings. The North Carolina Smart Start initiative is one nationally recognized partnership for children that brings together a multitude of services for young children within a local, county structure. Assessments of this effort show that that Smart Start participants have higher school-readiness scores than any other group. Child-care professionals are now significantly better educated, more experienced, and better paid than when the program began. There is also evidence of less early childhood teacher turnover and parents from the parent-support group are much better informed. (www.SmartStart-NC.org) The Forsyth Early Childhood Partnership (FECP) in our community is a model for the state as well as the nation. Find out what you can do to help this organization and its cause.
Baby Teachers
When do children become students? The answer is before they are born. Dr. Bonita Bloodworth, principal of Hurley Elementary School in Salisbury, North Carolina told me, “After reading the brain research on early learning, we realized that if we really wanted to help our families prepare their children for kindergarten, we had to go to the maternity wards. We formed a group of parent volunteers and took ‘school bags’ to every new mom leaving the local hospital. The bags included lots of information for them and board books to read to their babies. This is a way we help enrich our learning community and foster kindergarten readiness.”
A century ago, a high school education was not considered part of a free and appropriate public education; it was for the college bound elite. The sons of doctors, lawyers, and the clergy were generally the only students fortunate enough to get special training beyond the eighth grade and it was usually because their parents could afford it. The same rigorous battle that made compulsory education a reality in the first place, was fought again to provide a free high school education for the daughters of machinists and farmers, plumbers and painters. Today, new knowledge is confronting us once again with a similar paradigm problem. A truly seamless free and appropriate education for all children should begin where learning is perhaps the most important of all, on the maternity ward. It will only be through redefining our educational boundaries once again that we will move further toward liberty and justice for all.
Rebecca Shore is the author of Baby Teacher: Nurturing Neural Networks From Birth to Age Five. Dr. Shore teaches educational leadership courses at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and Wake Forest University. She also teaches English at FCDS and is Executive Director of the Schools Attuned Regional Training Site at FCDS. She can be reached at www.nurseryminds.com
Diamond, M. & J. Hopson (1999). Magic Trees of the Mind. New York, NY: Plume..
Greenfield, S. (2000). Brain Story. London: BBC Worldwide Limited.
Hart, B. & T. Risley (1995). Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes.
Healy, J (1994). Your Child’s Growing Mind. New York, NY: Doubleday.
Jensen, E. (1998). Teaching With the Brain in Mind. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Meyers, M. & L. Flowers (August 2003). Best Health Lecture Series: Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center Series.
Perry, B. (September 2002). Keynote address to HAAEYC annual convention.
Pinker, S., D.S. Lebeaux, & L.A. Frost (1987). Productivity and constraints in the acquisition of the passive. Cognition 26: 195-267.
Ramey, C. & S. Ramey (1999). Right From Birth: Building Your Child’s Foundation For Life. New York, NY: Goddard Press.
Shore, R. (1997). Rethinking the Brain. New York, NY: Families and Work Institute.
Shore, R. (2002). Baby Teacher: Nurturing Neural Networks From Birth to Age Five. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.
Sousa, D. (2001) How the Brain Learns. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.