Ms Ziemann’s Kindergarten

[Paul Fairchild]

Ms Ziemann’s kindergarten class reminds me so much of my own kindergarten classroom. Situated in its own wing of the school, neighbored by two other kindergartens, Ms Ziemann has clearly gone to great lengths to make her classroom one in which students can feel comfortable in. The walls are filled with brightly colored posters and signs, each student’s locker is decorated with their name, and the “student of the week” has their name and photo proudly displayed on the large whiteboard. The class is about an even split of boys and girls. The time I’m there, 2pm-3pm, the kids essentially have free time to do as they please. You may even say that they come across some wonderful ideas 🙂 From what I see, the girls tend to play with the other girls, and the boys stick together. They have the option to color pictures, play with legos, play-dough, dolls, a miniature kitchen, and a handful of other options.

As kindergarteners, I don’t think there’s any symptom of pandemic hangover. I would assume that this fall is their first time in a school setting surrounded by other kids. Initially, I was really surprised how well they wore their masks and how sparsely they have to be asked to put them back on, pull them above their noses, etc; but I realized that these children don’t know anything but pandemic school. I would wager they don’t have much of a grasp on the implications of the virus, or know why they’re doing anything that they’re doing as a preventative measures, but they seem to  understand that something out of their control is happening, and that masks are just a byproduct of that. I asked one child if they liked wearing their mask, and she enthusiastically responded with a yes. When I asked why, she told me it was because she gets to have a “Frozen” character on her face It’s her favorite movie. If only everyone was so enthusiastic about masking.

These children seem to be somewhere in the preoperational stage according to Piaget, with some on the fringe of becoming concrete operational. For a day, Ms Ziemann asked me to do a math assessment with the children individually. It was very simple: I put seven plastic cubes on the table in front of them and asked me how many cubes there were. Every child was able to count the cubes and tell me the correct answer. But when asking them “How many cubes did you just count?” only half the class was able to give me a response without physically recounting the cubes. In my estimations, being able to immediately answer my second question without hesitation or recounting indicates the child being closer to the concrete operational stage, because it exhibits rudimentary ability to identify reversibility.

 

[Arlo Hettle]

Your post made me reflect on the way Piaget’s stages would affect response to the pandemic. It’s super interesting how children who can’t comprehend the scale or impact of the virus would be the most willing to cooperate on measures like mask-wearing because they aren’t yet coming to their own conclusions. If there is a trusted adult authority figure in their teacher encouraging them to properly wear a mask, they will do it. As children get older, they might experience dissonance if their parents and teachers are giving them conflicting messages around mask-wearing, but as Kindergartners, they do not even fully understand why they are wearing them, let alone whether they should be.

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