Our philosophy
As education reform has increasingly emphasized high-stakes testing and learning standards in recent years, preschool and kindergarten curricula have adopted somewhat rigorous academic goals at the expense of crucial non-academic cognitive skills. The trend towards early implementation academic standards suggests that childhoods are being shortened; children are spending less and less time curiously exploring the world, expressing themselves creatively, and developing the ability to regulate their own cognitive and behavioral abilities.
We believe that an overly academic emphasis actually prevents children from fully developing those capacities—curiosity, creativity, and self-regulation—which provide the true foundations of later academic success. We strive to create a nurturing, engaging, and stimulating classroom environment governed by compassion, intuitive expectations and logical consequences. Our classroom culture is democratic, collaborative, and participatory, and we as teachers strive to act as guides rather than authoritative supervisors. At Kindergarten Kickstart, we foster children’s abilities to explore new terrain, ask questions, plan actions, recall events, track cause and effect, solve problems, process emotions, regulate behavior, interact socially, and participate in a culture of kindness and empathy.
Kindergarten Kickstart holds a philosophy of joyful, play-based, experiential learning and nurturing, collaborative teaching. Each cohort of Kickstart teachers creates their own curriculum based on our central principles and current developmental research, as well former teachers’ feedback, the needs of the current students, and teachers’ own backgrounds and talents. The program is constantly evolving to flexibly meet the needs of students, parents, schools and teachers alike.
These are the fundamental principles of Kindergarten Kickstart:
1) Self-regulation: Self-regulation is the ability to think about one's own thinking and adapt behavior to changing situational demands. This set of metacognitive skills includes organizing and planning actions, initiating and completing tasks, expressing and coping with emotions, recalling and synthesizing information, and attending to small details. Teachers can help children develop self-regulation skills by modeling behavior and scaffolding instruction based on a child's specific needs. We believe that an exceptional early childhood education program should create a safe, structured, and stimulating classroom environment in which students can practice self-regulation by learning actively and independently. If children begin kindergarten with robust self-regulation skills, they are better equipped to become engaged learners within the demands of a traditional classroom. In this way, self-regulation lays crucial groundwork for future academic learning.
2) A child-centered, active-learner approach: We design our classroom to allow for experiential learning. Young children learn best by doing, so we create opportunities for experimentation and exploration. Teachers follow the student's lead and strive to take a participatory role in the tasks and activities that children engage in. Within basic parameters, children are permitted to freely pursue their own "teachable moments." If inquiries and lessons are initiated by students, then children become personally invested in their learning; child-centered active learning is "sticky." Teachers are by no means absent from the learning process, but they abstain from directing learning and instead encourage curiosity and exploration. Teachers help students to feel empowered to answer their own questions, think critically and solve their own problems.
3) Play-based learning: An approach to early childhood education, which promotes "uniquely preschool" activities to prepare children for later academic learning, fosters self-regulation and other skills through play. During mature make-believe play, children create imaginary situations, develop and abide by predetermined rules, and adopt specific character roles. Internalizing roles and acting consistently within the agreed-upon terms of dramatic play helps children to develop self-regulation skills and strengthen the ability to engage in intentional and voluntary behaviors. In the preschool classroom, play also works as a prerequisite to literacy learning by improving oral language skills and metalinguistic awareness.
4) Logical expectations and consistent routine: We believe that it is crucial to establish a consistent daily routine and a set of clear, simple, fundamental expectations that are easy for children to understand and remember. Though each segment of our day offers an array of options for participation, we do follow an established schedule every day. We avoid interruption or inconsistency, which might make children powerless and unable to plan for their days. We also strive for consistency in expectations. Abstract or complicated rules are not meaningful to children, and create a classroom culture in which children must surrender their agency and defer to the authority of a teacher. The Kickstart staff works together to establish and transmit the basic classroom expectations, which are built upon kindness, collaboration, and safety, at the beginning of every session.
5) Open, inclusive classroom community: Research shows that home environments and parenting are even more predictive of later student achievement than measures of school readiness. In addition to the learning that happens in the classroom, Kickstart prioritizes a partnership between families and school. Our open classroom policy allows parents and other family members to visit at their convenience, which facilitates close and collaborative relationships with teachers and continuity between classroom and home practices. We also partner with the in-school Family Resource Centers to provide special programming for parents and family members.
