Category Archives: academics

I Think I’m In Love With Wendy Kopp

July 13, 2009academics, hard work, lifeKirsetin

The first time I heard her name, she was almost a peer. Just a smidge ahead of me in school (except I wasn’t at Princeton), I knew her name because she’d put her thesis to the test. She theorized about sending new graduates who excel at academics–not necessarily education majors–into the toughest areas of our country, the areas where no one wants to start their teaching career. And then she did it.

She put her idea into practice and my roommate applied to be one of the first teachers selected for Teach for America.

My roommate grew up sheltered and, dare I say, privileged, in a beautiful town outside of Minneapolis. We attended a similarly sheltered private school on the east coast. Our friends were accepting jobs with Morgan Stanley and Anderson Consulting. She accepted the role with Teach for America and started teaching in Compton, CA, near Los Angeles. She taught at an elementary school that was padlocked shut at 4:00 each afternoon for safety reasons; better get out of there and safely home before then. She has a lifetime of stories from those two years of teaching.

And Wendy Kopp’s story goes on. TFA’s been around for almost 20 years now. It’s grown and expanded and become the center of many discussions about reforming education in our country. And Ms. Kopp’s grown with it.

But for all of the things I admire about Wendy Kopp, I think what I most admire is this: She didn’t file her thesis in a drawer. She didn’t have this great idea, write about it, develop it, and then turn it into cocktail party fodder, bantering back and forth with cute men in khakis and loafers, about how she had some really great ideas about reforming education. Instead, she raised capital and she put herself out there. She tried it. And she made it work.

I love her for that.

I love that she took her Ivy League education and did something powerful and meaningful with it. I love that she had an idea about how to change the world and she didn’t listen to the naysayers that said it could never happen. What a wonderful message for our kids: Work hard. Think about others. Develop your idea. Pursue it. Stick with it. Figure out how to do it better.

Thanks, Wendy.

Homework in Kindergarten?

June 22, 2009academics, NY TimesKirsetin

In her recent New York Times article, Kindergarten Cram, Peggy Orenstein says this:

“Jean Piaget famously referred to “the American question,” which arose when he lectured in this country: how, his audiences wanted to know, could a child’s development be sped up? The better question may be: Why are we so hellbent on doing so?”

I second the question.

Ms. Orenstein described searching for the right kindergarten for her daughter, and being disappointed that the vast majority of them assigned nightly homework to 5- and 6-year olds. Eventually found the right fit; she chose a school that doesn’t assign homework until the 4^th grade. Still early, she feels, but it’s better than kindergarten.

I have to agree. As a parent, I am a strong believer in a solid education. Our kids should understand our country’s history and it’s place in world history. They should have a solid grasp of mathematical concepts and know the difference between a noun and a verb. If they can also learn not to turn nouns INTO verbs, I’d love it, but that might be asking a bit much these days, when words like ‘journaling’ are acceptable parts of the vernacular. So, noun vs. verb, I’ll take it.

But I’m also a strong believer in letting kids be kids. I’m a proponent of downtime and family time and not keeping up with Joneses, who are probably up to their eyeballs in debt anyway. There’s an upside, I think, to kids being bored and unscheduled some of the time. Give creativity a chance—kids come up with all sorts of interesting things to do when “there’s nothing to do.”

It also seems to me that this desire to get ahead, to teach our 4-year olds to read and multiply, is directly related to another article I read in the in the NY Times. Two years ago, in For Girls, It’s Be Yourself, and Be Perfect, Too, Sara Rimer discussed the excruciatingly high expectations girls face today. It pained me to read it. If you haven’t read it already, you should. All parents should, because although this article specifically focuses on the pressures for girls, many of them apply to boys as well.

In myriad ways, we are pushing our kids to learn more, be more, do more sooner. Faster. Better.

And why?

It’s a complicated question with complicated answers. We’re all driven by different experiences and desires that influence our parenting. I think it’s a question we should stop to ask ourselves. And then we should be brave enough to let our kids be kids even when their peers are light years ahead, in more ways than one.

And I’m hanging onto the hope that when they’re older, much older, they’ll thank us.

What do you think?

The Middle School Challenge: Honors Classes?

April 23, 2009academics, Midwest Parents, Parenting, sportsKirsetin

It’s finally spring and this year, for us, that means lacrosse, soccer, soccer, and yes, one more time, soccer. I realize that I have only 3 children, and that 4 sports means I am going against a long-held personal belief that children should play one sport per season. But that conversation is long and convoluted and we can discuss it another time.

In addition to the sports frenzy, this is also the time of year when kids heading to middle school take tests for next year’s “challenge” classes, our district’s designation for honors classes during the middle school years. Conveniently, this testing coincides with the time of year when the sun hangs low in the sky well beyond bedtime, tricking children into believing that the school year is already over.

Last spring, SusieJ wrote a convincing post about not taking honors classes. Her son, as I recall, was nominated for honors math but took a look at the additional homework requirements and thought the better of it. And what are my thoughts on the whole thing? Head on over to Midwest Parents, to check out my post–and my thoughts–there.