From the Chair: Life Lessons and Kindergarten

My youngest heads off to kindergarten this year and I am reminded of Robert Fulghum’s book “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.”  In his book, he lists out the quintessential life skills that can be learned in kindergarten:

1. Share everything.
2. Play fair.
3. Don’t hit people.
4. Put things back where you found them.
5. Clean up your own mess.
6. Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
7. Say you are sorry when you hurt somebody.
8. Wash your hands before you eat.
9. Flush.
10. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
11. Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
12. Take a nap every afternoon.
13. When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
14. Be aware of wonder.  Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup:  The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that. 
15. Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup –they all die. So do we. 
16. And then remember the Dick and Jane books and the first word you learned – the biggest word of all – LOOK.

In reading this, I am struck by how much things have changed.  As a former Kindergarten/first grade teacher, the focus was on building social/emotional skills such as taking turns, paying attention, managing emotions, making friends, working cooperatively, organizing, planning and completing tasks – exactly the skills mentioned in Fulghum’s book.  However, since No Child Left Behind, the focus is on test scores and getting kids to read, write, and understand arithmetic at an earlier age.  As a school counselor educator and a parent, I have noticed an increase in anxiety and emotional dysregulation in our youth.  What have our kids lost out on in our Race to the Top?

As we return to school, 18 months into a pandemic, there is a national and state spotlight on social/emotional learning (SEL).  Research from CASEL has shown that incorporating social/emotional learning in the classroom can lead to improvement in students’ social/emotional skills, attitudes, relationships, academic performance and perceptions of classroom and school climate, while also leading to declines in students’ anxiety, behavior problems and substance use.  As school counselors, we may be leading the charge at our school in SEL.  I encourage you to reflect on your quintessential learning from kindergarten to help you in this task.  I hope you are off to a great school year!    

Here are several SEL resources:

• Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL)
• Social Emotional Learning Alliance for Massachusetts (SEL4MA)

Free or Low-Cost Curriculums:

• Choose Love
• Harmony SEL
• Overcoming Obstacles
• SELENA Curriculum  

Other Curriculums

• Character Strong
• Classroom Champions
• Leader in Me
• Mind Trek
• Second Step
• Social Success in Schools
• Why Try?

 Contact April Megginson, MASCA president, at amegginson@bridgew.edu.