McKenna Elementary school counselor recommends YCS look at curriculum for young students

During a Yelm Community Schools (YCS) Board of Directors meeting on Thursday, Nov. 20, Myrna Porter, McKenna Elementary School counselor, spoke during a public comment portion of the meeting to ask school board directors to take a close look at curriculum offered for young students within the district.

Specifically, Porter, who stated that she’s had “a lot of education in early childhood development,” believes children in kindergarten should not be sitting around in class filling out worksheets. Rather, Porter believes young students should be following a play-based curriculum in order to develop skills to be a successful student as they grow older.

“I’ve been in the district for a while now. Prior to being the school counselor, I was a fourth grade teacher. I was a fourth grade teacher back when we were adopting new curriculum,” Porter said. “There’s been a lot of conversation lately in the meetings about attendance and engagement. We know there’s a direct correlation between those things, and academic achievement and behavior. While I am not a fan of the curriculum we adopted in the past, I taught it. It’s very challenging.”

As a fourth grade teacher, Porter said she felt like she had to do “a song and dance daily” to keep her students engaged. Porter also believes, due to YCS’s financial restraints with four consecutive levy failures, that YCS is stuck with its current curriculum.

“We have no money. We can’t look at curriculum adoption,” Porter said. “You do need to look at some ways that we can improve attendance and engagement, and make school more enticing for our students. Today, I’m specifically going to address early childhood education.”
Porter noted that she began her career in 1998 by teaching preschool. Eventually, she taught a year of kindergarten, and noted that a current kindergartener’s day is loaded with worksheets.

“Our kindergarteners are sitting and listening for a good portion of the day, and then they’re asked to do worksheets,” Porter said. “I’m looking at a lot of people over there who probably weren’t doing worksheets in kindergarten. I’ve had a lot of education in early childhood development. This is not developmentally appropriate for our students. They should not be sitting and doing worksheets. All of the psychologists we look to for child development recommend play-based and social learning until age seven, at minimum.”

According to Porter, neighboring school districts are also beginning to “catch on” to using play-based curriculum in the early stages of education. She said Olympia School District does a lot of play-based learning in kindergarten and first grade, while Tumwater School District also adopted that style of learning “but not as much as Olympia.” She also claims that North Thurston School District has also “figured it out.”

“Our kids need to be playing in school. We have five and six year olds that hate school, and I know because I talk to them,” Porter said. “I talk to first, second, third, fourth and fifth graders. Those are the years where we are building the foundations and helping them develop relationships and learn how to be students. They need to be working on those skills so that when they go to first, second, third, fourth, fifth grade and then on to Yelm Middle School, they have what they need to be able to be successful and maintain their emotions and regulate their behavior.”

Porter said that something needs to be done, and reiterated that she’s not asking the district to write a new curriculum because there’s a lot of ways to do it.

“Let’s quit killing the joy in our kids and squashing their souls, and give them something to come to school and enjoy doing,” Porter said.