Kindergarten Stress Revisited

Just a quick update to my previous post about our kindergartner’s classroom stress. As expected, he made it through his first day with the new schoolwork and hand-raising rules without any problems, and he already seems to be forgetting about his worries. Also, after talking to him a bit more, it seems that I need to clarify a few details.

While I had the schoolwork thing pretty much right — if you don’t get your work done, you don’t get recess — the hand-raising rule is a bit different than we originally thought. First of all, this rule wasn’t arbitrarily introduced. Rather, they’ve been having problems with the kids talking out of turn, so they decided that it was time to do something to rein them in. Hence, the kids now get three bands on their left wrist.

If they talk out of turn, they have to move one to their right wrist. And if they move all of them, they get in trouble. However, the punishment for this one isn’t missing recess as we originally thought. Rather, they still get to go out with the class to recess, but they have to “walk the blacktop.” Basically, this means they have to work round and round the playground instead of playing. This seems reasonable since the kids are given three chances (per day) and they’re still getting their exercise.

I’m still not crazy about the idea of taking recess (and the attendant exercise) away from kids for not finishing their work. Id’ much rather see them lose library time, or something along those lines. Nonetheless, I do understand the need to motivate the kids to stay on task, and this should certainly have that effect.