Achtung Baby

by Sara Zaske

  So all summer long, Sophia and Ozzie played in our big backyard, which was a novelty after apartment life in Germany. They built huts using the empty moving boxes and played on a makeshift zip line and swing Zac set up for them. We held “morning circle” like they’d done at their schools in Germany. They voluntarily chose projects to do (Sophia picked hummingbirds; Ozzie rattlesnakes). We went to the library and took breaks at the pool. I got up before they were awake to interview people on the phone for articles. Occasionally, I broke down and turned on a movie or handed out tablets so that I could make a deadline. It was less than ideal, but we made it work. It would be easier, and harder, once school began.

  Starting American School

  Even though we had left Germany, we gave Ozzie an einschulung. He’d been taught to look forward to the start-of-school party ever since he could remember, so we promised to hold him one in the United States. While Ozzie didn’t have the big celebration at his school, he did have something that Sophia had missed—a party with his extended family. His older cousins even put on a show for him, just as the kids had done for first graders in Germany.

  Ozzie was eager to start school. He already knew how to read. Like Sophia before him, we’d taught him early, but we had another problem. Ozzie was only five. In Germany, that wouldn’t have mattered because all the kids born in a particular calendar year started school at the same time. In California, first graders were expected to be six by the time school started, and Ozzie’s birthday was in the fall. Anticipating some trouble, I came armed with a letter from Ozzie’s kita teachers saying he was ready, but no one questioned his registration—well, no one official. The other parents did.

  We walked to school that first day. A few other parents and kids were walking and biking as well, but as we approached the school it was clear by the car-lined streets that most parents drove their kids to a nearby street, parked, and got out to walk their children onto the school grounds. The California school was almost the structural opposite of Sophia’s urban four-story stone building in Berlin, with an open, outside layout comprised of portable buildings loosely arranged around a central office and gym that doubled as a cafeteria. The school also had a large grassy yard and a blacktop area with two plastic play structures on it.

  On the first day of school, children streamed onto the blacktop with their parents following at a leisurely pace behind them, most of them wearing flip-flops, shorts, or yoga pants—casual clothing rarely seen on the streets of Berlin. They grouped on the blacktop and chatted with other parents as their kids formed loose lines near their designated classrooms. I almost relaxed looking at them. This was California after all! It’s supposed to be alternative, innovative, and laid-back. It was hard to imagine that the school that served this community would be a traditional, highly structured institution, focused on driving the kids to achieve well on state standardized tests.

  We had two nervous children, but Sophia boldly waited with a group of kids she had never met, while Zac and I walked Ozzie over to his line for first grade. At first I didn’t think we had the right line. Ozzie was tall for his age, and he had been one of the biggest kids in his kita. Yet here most of the boys were bigger than him, much bigger. Some did not look like first graders at all.

  Another mother introduced herself to us and started up a conversation. She soon got around to asking Ozzie’s age. “I don’t think that’s allowed,” she said in a confidential voice and then informed us of the state cutoff date. Her son was on the cusp of that date, but she had still held him back. He was seven, a head taller than Ozzie and a full year older. I explained that Ozzie had been well prepared in Germany to start first grade this year. The mother smiled politely, but I could see the doubt in her eyes. She was wondering if our son would be able to hack it.

  Later, another mother told me that many parents “redshirted” their children, boys in particular, holding them back for an extra year of kindergarten or simply starting them later, so they would be more ready for the demands of first grade—and for a possible advantage in sports later on. She sounded like she thought that this practice was ridiculous, but I also noted that her seven-year-old first grader was already heavily involved in several organized sports.

  Academic redshirting, which borrows its name from the college sports term for postponing competitive play to lengthen a player’s eligibility, used to be rare in the United States. In 1968, only 4 percent of children starting kindergarten were six or older, but according to census data, that figure rose to 20 percent by 2013. I’d heard redshirting was becoming even more popular as academic pressure was being ramped up at all grade levels, but it was strange to see the trend illustrated so dramatically in real life.

  As Ozzie clung to my hand that first day, I tried not to be anxious too. I should have realized that since kindergarten was the new first grade in America, first grade would now be second. I was confident that Ozzie was ready for first grade, but second? Then the teacher came out, a young woman with a brilliant white California smile. “Good morning, everyone!” She introduced herself and had all the kids respond loudly, “Good morning, Mrs. Tyler!” which was incredibly cute. Then she told the children to hang their backpacks, find their desks, and start their morning work. Clearly, she wasn’t going to waste any time. She motioned the line of kids into the classroom. Ozzie finally let go of my hand and, with only one nervous glance back, went inside.

  It would be all right. Ozzie did well in his American school, even though the work was quite demanding. For instance, the first-grade math ranged from basic addition to word problems and simple algebraic concepts by the end of the year. He didn’t have much time to play, though—only one short recess and another tied to his lunch period. His desire to play was so strong he often didn’t eat much of his lunch. He also had homework.

  Fortunately, Mrs. Tyler wisely assigned worksheets that involved games, coloring, and cutting and pasting. I also had to sign his sheet to ensure that he completed it. I had to do this for Sophia too. This didn’t feel right to me as it moved the responsibility from the children to the parents as enforcers. However, it was relatively painless to get Ozzie to do the homework, so I didn’t raise a fuss. Yet I couldn’t help wondering about all the other kids in his class. What happened to the six- and seven-year-olds who struggled with the academics or resisted doing homework? Surely that would affect their attitude toward school.

  Luckily, Mrs. Tyler also encouraged a lot of individual and group work in her class. While not the same as the self-directed learning the kids had in Germany, it kept Ozzie engaged, and he loved school. Sophia was not so lucky.

  Fourth-Grade Blues

  Sophia’s teacher, Mrs. Alexander, was old-school. She made the children in her fourth-grade class sit with “bubble-gum hands,” fingers laced on top of the desk, while she lectured. There was a spelling and math test every Friday. Students who misbehaved wrote a sentence over and over again about why what they did was wrong. I understood why Mrs. Alexander felt she had to run a strict, traditional classroom. She had thirty active kids—none of whom got enough playtime during the school day—and no assistant to help. But that didn’t make it any easier to watch Sophia struggle in her class.

  The worst part was the homework. It took Sophia two hours to complete every evening. We knew our daughter had a steep learning curve. Her self-directed Montessori-style education in Berlin had meant that she had self-directed away from math, and her skills weren’t up to the U.S. fourth-grade standards. Her spelling would have been wonderful, if the English language followed German rules. She spelled lots of words with ei and could not grasp the need for a silent e. Sophia was also expected to know how to type. Her school had no formal art, music, or theater instruction, but it did have a computer class. This was the exact opposite of her German school, which emphasized the arts in almost every subject and had only one computer for the teacher to use.

  All this seemed a lot for Sophia to take. I watched as my daughter, who used to love school,
began to wilt. “It’s boring,” she complained. “There’s just so much talking and talking.”

  “The other kids are talking in class?”

  “No, Mrs. Alexander talks. We listen, all day.”

  I felt for her. She was used to more creativity and active learning in her school. She had also had a lot more opportunity to play. Here, she had two short recesses and no hort—so that meant no free playtime after school. I’d tried to get both my children into the after-school program on the campus, not just so I could work more but so that they would have more opportunity to play with other kids. I was told there was no space and that the wait list was so long that some parents even registered their kids as soon as they were born to ensure they had a spot by the time they entered first grade.

  Not that Sophia had much time after school anyway. She would come home from school, have a snack, do her homework, have dinner, finish her homework, and then it would be almost time for bed. I feared that the year was going to be completely miserable for her until suddenly the homework got a lot lighter. I found out later that one of the other girls’ parents had complained. It wasn’t just Sophia, the new kid, who had been suffering. Other parents wanted things done differently, and the teacher had listened. This meant there was a chance for change!

  This was also my clue that I had to learn from all those parent meetings at Sophia’s school in Berlin. The parents there did more than complain: they got together, organized, and actually changed things. We didn’t have class-level parents’ organization at our California school, but there was the school-wide parent-teacher association, the PTA.

  I went to a meeting ready to participate in good old American local democracy. Besides the elected officers, I was one of three parents in attendance. The rest of the small crowd was made up of teachers and administrators. The parents were too busy or not interested enough to attend. As I listened to the meeting, I soon learned that all the PTA decisions had been made at the executive meeting the month before, then voted on at this session. The topics they discussed mostly had to do with raising money for PTA-sponsored events and training opportunities for teachers. Good things, sure, but this clearly wasn’t the place to have input into how our children were educated. I left discouraged.

  I wasn’t ready to give up, so I did what I do best. I wrote. I wrote a note to Mrs. Tyler about Ozzie not eating lunch and a letter to the principal requesting she try to add more recess time for the kids, including an adequate lunchtime that didn’t interfere with recess. I wrote to the school district and the park service board that ran the after-school program asking that they open more spaces in their program and look for funding to subsidize it. I even wrote to the PTA and suggested that they sponsor a walk-to-school day.

  In the meantime, Zac and I met with Mrs. Alexander to talk about Sophia. She expressed confidence that Sophia was improving, which was encouraging. I asked her if she could scale back the Friday tests because they were making Sophia anxious, especially when a third subject like social studies was tested on the same day. Mrs. Alexander did agree to not put three tests on one day, but that was the only concession she made on that point. “We have to get them ready for the state standards testing,” she emphasized.

  My letters yielded some results. Mrs. Tyler arranged for Ozzie to stay longer in the cafeteria to finish his lunch. Although this didn’t solve the problem of his not having enough time to play, at least I knew he wouldn’t be going hungry. After I sent my letter to the parks board, the after-school program suddenly found two spaces for my children in the summer—but without any subsidy. The school and the PTA agreed to hold a walk-to-school event in the fall, if I volunteered to lead it.

  Sophia survived her first year in an American school and even managed good grades. Her success was a testament to her own hard work, but it also called into question the value of pushing academics so early in elementary school. She did not have four hard-driving years of academics behind her, as most of her peers did, yet she caught up relatively easily.

  Some of Sophia’s classmates didn’t do as well, and not because they weren’t intelligent. Rather, I think they struggled because they couldn’t handle the boredom of the classroom. Sophia would tell me stories of other kids misbehaving in class, reading in their laps while the teacher lectured, or passing notes and whispering. There was a group of boys who would always get in trouble for joking around and doing silly things like “using the force” to levitate their desks. They also once had a glue bottle battle using their feet to squirt each other when the teacher’s head was turned.

  It’s hard to blame them. They had no say in what they were learning, and they hadn’t much chance to play not just during this year but also in the previous three years (four if you count the new academic-focused kindergarten)—and that means they had fewer opportunities to develop their skills in self-control and concentration.

  Even though my kids are doing well in American school so far, I’m preparing to do battle with the teachers and administration, even the district if I have to, next year. Sophia has had one year of disliking school. I don’t want that dislike to harden into a dislike of learning in general. She deserves the opportunity to have a child-centered classroom, where she can engage her own curiosity and learn independently and from other kids, not just listen to lectures and take never-ending tests. I think many modern American teachers know that group and independent learning is important. I just have to make sure my children are put into their classrooms.

  Freedom for Kids in the Land of the Free

  Once I took the kids to a bagel shop, and we chose a place to sit outside. After the meal, I started to excuse myself to go to the restroom, leaving them at the table by themselves, when Sophia stopped me. “Is that allowed in America?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. Still, the thought of hauling my two responsible children into the restroom with me was too ridiculous, so I risked it. Luckily, there was no concerned citizen (or worse a police officer) waiting to scold me when I returned.

  When I renewed my driver’s license in California, I learned that it is illegal to leave a child under six unattended in a car and that only another child who is older than twelve can supervise a younger child. In other words, I couldn’t leave my nine-year-old and five-year-old alone in the car for even a few minutes. I remembered reading stories about American parents being arrested for leaving children in cars, so I dragged my kids on every errand no matter how small until Ozzie turned six. Now whenever I leave my children in the car for a few minutes, I’m more worried about some well-intentioned citizen making trouble for our family than about an evil-minded stranger snatching them. I know which one is more likely. I’ve already seen it in action.

  I once let Ozzie sit on a bench at the park down the street from us while I biked back home two blocks to get the lunch he’d forgotten. In the five minutes that it took me to do this, an elderly woman out walking in the park stopped to question him. I returned while she was still talking to him. “Hi,” I said. She gave me a disapproving glare and returned to her walk.

  On most days, I bike with Ozzie to and from school. Sophia bikes on her own, usually leaving a few minutes before we do. (Ozzie is a little slower to get his stuff together.) One afternoon, Ozzie wanted to stay later after school so he could play with a friend on the playground. I waited for him at a picnic table area where some other mothers and children had gathered to meet up for an after-school club.

  “Where’s Sophia?” one mother asked me.

  “She’s at home,” I said without elaborating.

  “Oh, she biked there by herself?”

  Other parents’ heads turned.

  “Yes, she’s used to doing it by herself,” I said. “She did it all the time in Germany.”

  I thought that would end it. They could dismiss me as the exotic parent who’d lived in Germany, but the mother kept pushing the point. “So is your husband home?”

  “No,” I said. “She’s there by herself.”
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  Before anyone could question my judgment, the mother’s own daughter, a nine-year-old girl, interrupted, “No fair! You won’t let me stay at home by myself until I’m twelve!”

  Her mother’s mouth opened and closed.

  “Everybody’s different,” I said. The mother looked relieved.

  At the time I thought I’d said the right thing, that I shouldn’t contradict another parent’s rules in front of her child, but on the other hand, I felt like I let that girl down. I knew her. She was in Sophia’s class and very responsible. She lived even closer than we did to school and yet her mother drove her almost every day.

  I don’t mean to imply this mother is horrible. She is quite the opposite. She is a caring, educated, and attentive mother who would do anything for her children, but in our parenting culture, that means doing almost everything. And she wasn’t alone. As my children brought friends for playdates, I could see the results of the parents who were trying so hard to do the right things for their children that they were interfering in their ability to do things for themselves. One child informed me of his attention diagnoses in one fast breath. He loved coming to our house to play, but we rarely saw him because his parents had him scheduled into an activity nearly every day after school. Then there was the little girl who couldn’t think of her own ideas of what to play and kept asking me, instead of the other kids, what to do, or the other little boy who couldn’t concentrate on playing—on playing!—at any one thing but kept hopping from one activity to another. Yet he was already on an organized sports team at age six. (I can only imagine how organized those games really were.)