Kindergarten Dilemmas

Kindergarten has become a hot-button topic in our house, at least for Archer and me.  We talk about kindergarten a lot.  We constantly ask ourselves:

• Is Wild Man performing well in kindergarten?
• Are we doing enough to help him learn all he needs to learn?
• Is he learning enough? 
• And most importantly, where will he go for senior kindergarten?

Right now Wild Man is in junior kindergarten, which is the American equivalent of pre-K.  Ok, so that isn't exactly right.  JK is, for all intents and purposes, kindergarten.  Wild Man is in a mixed JK and SK class, which means that about half of his classmates are in senior kindergarten.  This means that they all learn the same things, but the SK students do activities that build on the skills they learned in JK.  So while Wild Man is practicing writing the number from 1 to 10 his SK peers are learning how to do basic addition and subtraction.  The theory is that the SK students help teach the JK students and, thus, benefit from teaching their peers while the JK students benefit from modeling their behavior after their more experienced classmates.  I think this system has benefited Wild Man very well, and I'm really happy with our decision to send him to JK, which is optional in our province.  Now we have to decide where to send him for SK.

You see, Wild Man's school is out of our area.  It is affiliated with his daycare, so he goes to daycare in the morning and JK in the afternoon.  In fact, he and about 10 other children walk over to the elementary school, escorted by several of the daycare staff members.  We chose this option knowing that he couldn't stay in this school, but we chose it for a few reasons.  First, I'll be 100% honest--it is convenient for us.  If we had elected to enroll him in JK in our home school (which is walking distance from our house), our day would be crazy.  For example, C would have to drop Wild Man off at JK, then drop Bear daycare,  and drop me off at CU.  Then C would have to drive back across town to pick up Wild Man and take him to daycare for the rest of the day.  This didn't make a lot of sense for us, although we seriously considered it.  Second, this elementary school is one of the top 5 elementary schools in our province.  It is an excellent school.  It is also incredibly diverse, both economically and ethnically.  In fact, the school has diversity assemblies every month in which the kids learn about one of their classmate's home cultures (the school is so diverse in large part because it draws heavily on the international graduate student population at CU).  Wild Man knows about Ramadan and Chinese New Year, about saris and hijabs, and about all sorts of things he wouldn't have learned about elsewhere.  He now says things like, "Daddy, that wasn't a very accepting thing to do."  In short, he has learned a lot about the world due to his experiences at this school.  We've thought a lot about keeping him here for SK.  In fact, we've talked a lot about selling our house and moving into this school district so he can continue to go to this school through all the elementary grades. 

But we are also considering sending him to French Immersion school.  Essentially, in a FI school, Wild Man would be immersed in the language.  70% of instruction is in French, while 30% is in English.  Most students are fully bilingual by grade 4, and if we stay in Canada, given the nature of the Canadian job market* and government, I feel that it is really important that both boys be fluent in French.  We don't, however, like the neighborhood that our FI school is in.  The school itself seems to be quite good. In fact, Archer and I attended an open house there a few weeks ago and loved the kindergarten teacher.  But again, the neighborhood is not so great. 

So we're trying to decide what to do. If we want him to go into FI school, he has to start by grade 1, which gives us another year to make a decision.  But then he'll be in a room with students who have already attended SK at an FI school, so he'll be behind the curve a bit.  I don't know if this matters at that age, but I think it might.  I know he'll be discouraged with FI curriculum anyway.  The kindergarten teacher we met with told us to expect that.  She said even kids who love school will come home at some point in the school year upset and frustrated because it is different, because they will struggle with the language at first.  I'm concerned that frustration may cause him to feel discouraged about school, especially if we wait until grade 1 to start a FI program.   But part of me thinks, he is happy where he is.  We really like this school, so why not keep him there for another year? 

I'm really not sure what to do, and we have to make a decision in the next few weeks.

*Based on the news articles I've read and numerous conversations I've had with my own students, individuals who are fluent in French often have a much easier time getting jobs in our province.  For example, people who are fluent in French and who are applying for teaching positions are about twice as likely to get hired as those who don't speak French.  I am concerned that we may be putting the boys at a disadvantage if they don't speak French and we stay in CU Land.