Teaching Kindergarten - What Not to Do

My girlfriend is a substitute teacher and before that she was a college student in childhood education. She has spent a lot of time in a wide variety of Kindergarten classrooms: rural, urban, and suburban; primarily affluent and primarily impoverished; well equipped schools and financially struggling schools; multi-grade and single grade; inclusive and typical. She has witnessed many Kindergarten teachers using many different methods for everything from teaching reading to socialization skills to classroom management. Everyday she comes home and debriefs to me. Through careful listening, I feel like I have experienced the best and worst that Kindergarten has to offer.

What have I learned? I have primarily learned what not to do as a Kindergarten teacher. I hope future and current Kindergarten teachers can benefit from this advice.

1. Don't treat your students like robots or pets. Remember they are people, just like adults only smaller with less wisdom and experience! Treat them like people. If you find yourself treating your students worse than you would treat your friends, you are doing something wrong.

2. Don't refer to your students as each other's friends. Just because they are in the same Kindergarten class together, does not mean that they are friends! Especially, don't refer to them as each other's friends while comparing them or trying to get them to tattle on each other. (See below.)

3. Don't compare your students to each other. At the age of five boys are typically a full year below girls in all areas of development. In a typical Kindergarten class, there is a full year in the span of ages present. An extra year of development and life experience makes a lot of difference at five years old. Perhaps most importantly, we are all individuals. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. Some people's strengths look better than others in a school environment. Embrace your students' uniqueness and resist the temptation to compare.