Transitional kindergarten for all 4-year-olds must include enough bodies, potties and play, panel says

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Transitional kindergarten for all 4-year-olds must include enough bodies, potties and play, panel says

Last year, San Diego parent Mayra Alvarez enrolled her 4-year-old daughter in transitional kindergarten, or TK, so she could attend the public school in their neighborhood alongside children of all backgrounds in lieu of private preschool.

“What worked incredibly is the community: We were able to walk to school,” Alvarez said. “My daughter made wonderful friends. Having the school be part of our daily life is such a big deal for not only my little girl but for us, too.”

But toileting was a different story.

“The environment wasn’t exactly set up the way I would have wanted her to have to be able to learn,” she said. “I just didn’t expect it to go the way it did. My little girl was 4 years old … and just wasn’t as fully potty-trained as some of the other kids. The classroom wasn’t built for that reality.”

A year after California expanded transitional kindergarten to all 4-year-olds, an EdSource roundtable featuring Alvarez, educators and early childhood experts found that the new grade is still working through addressing the developmental needs and behaviors of 4-year-olds, incorporating play into learning and preparing them for kindergarten.

“One of the difficult parts with rolling out TK has been the lack of planning that, I think, a lot of districts did,” said Elyse Doerflinger, a TK teacher in the Central Valley. “Some districts really understood that this was a financial investment from the state, and they brought in experts or internally used their experts to plan it out really well as far as facilities and toileting policies and staffing and training.

“Some districts did not necessarily do that, and all of those things are very much tied together.”

Planning for the expansion of TK has been underway since 2021, when the state Legislature first set aside $1.2 billion. Last year, TK spending reached about $3 billion in ongoing funds.

But some districts were unable to provide TK classrooms with connected bathrooms.

For Doerflinger, that means her classroom aide must take students to the bathroom several times throughout the day — restrooms that were not built for 4-year-olds. Each trip takes the aide out of the room, where students may be spread across the room, engaged in play-based learning — another key part of TK that is often misunderstood.

Back in the TK classroom, which must now be staffed by one adult for every 10 children, students might match toys to letters during circle time or build Play-Doh figures.

Play is how young children learn, said panelist Jorge Ramirez, a professor of early childhood education at Pacific Oaks College with 25 years of experience working in preschool settings.

“It’s allowing children those exploratory opportunities to learn on their own,” Ramirez said. “That’s how they build relationships with others. That’s how they’re able to pretty much express themselves. When it’s play for them, they have this excitement and genuine interest in wanting to be curious.”

Ramirez remembers a parent who became frustrated when students in his classroom seemed to be constantly “playing” with Nascars, not realizing they were learning colors, numbers and shapes.

“It wasn’t a conventional way, but there was a lot of learning going on,” Ramirez said. “The challenge of implementing this is the pressure that we get from society — from parents, from districts, curriculum and mandates — of it has to look a certain way. If we give them that space, that opportunity to be able to play and then integrate the learning, you will see they’re still able to achieve those necessary skills.”

In addition to learning academics and becoming familiar with letters, sounds and numbers, TK students develop social, emotional and intellectual skills through play and exploration. By sharing toys with their peers in a structured environment, for example, they learn to communicate with each other and handle conflict.

But TK teachers, including Doerflinger, are also seeing more frequent aggressive behavior, which can lead to educator exhaustion and risk student safety. More support staff are often needed, whether as an extra set of hands or for mental health services.

“They’re still 4-year-olds,” Ramirez said. “They have different developmental needs.”

Those challenges can be exacerbated in classrooms that include students with disabilities, which is something the state wants, said Hanna Melnick, a senior policy adviser and director of early learning policy at the Learning Policy Institute.

Moving forward, the panelists suggested several ways for school districts to strengthen TK, including:

Training educators in early childhood development (educators and early childhood experts are hopeful that California’s preschool-through-third-grade credential, approved in 2024, will address the shortage of teachers with specialized early childhood training.)
Providing more support staff and mental health services.
Developing a toileting plan with policies and procedures that are communicated to families.
Encouraging collaboration among preschool educators, TK teachers and administrators to learn from each other.
Building strong partnerships with families.

“Create that environment so that we can be a team,” Alvarez, the parent, said. “No child should ever be made to feel ashamed over something that’s completely normal, and no family should. And I think that’s what we want our school environments to provide our kids at every stage of their development.”

This story was originally published by EdSource.

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