The Other Side of the Achievement Gap

Today at work I got to visit a really fancy and really excellent private pre-K to 12 school in an affluent suburb of Philly. Since I don't directly support teachers of any specific grade level or subject area, I opted to visit the early childhood classrooms because I thought they would be cutest - and oh holy cow was I right. That place was absolutely magical, it was like every perfect school from a movie and your imagination rolled into one - Ms. Honey's classroom from Matilda combined with that sweet classroom from Kindergarten Cop combined with rainbows and glitter and pure unadulterated happiness. There were only 12 kids in each class (with 2 teachers), the building was exquisite, the walls were covered floor to ceiling with beautiful student work, the kids were ridiculously ahead of grade level (the pre-kindergartners I saw were reading better than the first graders I worked with at my old school), and they were able to have luxuries unheard of in test-centric public schools like unstructured play time, art and music every day, and more than 15 minutes of recess. The kindergartners have an incentive system where every time they do something good they get a penny in their class "kindness jar," and when there's enough pennies they get to buy books and toys to send to their sister school in Uganda. They got so excited anytime they earned a penny, and it wasn't even a reward directly for them! It was absolutely unreal. I would seriously go back into the classroom for 12 years there, since that's the only way I could afford to enroll my own kids. The only negative I could see was that they aren't allowed to have sweets, only healthy snacks. Lame.

Also, today at Rite Aid somebody stole my gloves. Well, technically I left them on the counter when I paid, but I almost immediately realized my mistake and went back, and they were already gone. I am very depressed.