struggling: kindy to grade 1 transition

I’m new here but have visited in the past. My wife and I are having a difficult time with our son who has just entered public school grade 1. He was in a private kindergarten which was based on the Montesorri education system and he seemed to be very happy there.

It has only been a week in the public school system and we have witnessed a 180-degree change in his behaviour. The teacher is calling us saying he is slow, not focusing and just daydreaming. He already knows bopomofo which is why he’s bored at school (I guess?). He doesn’t have any friends which is fine because because I know it takes time.

We are OK with giving him time to adjust and are hoping there will be benefits that come from this experience, such as resilience and learning discipline. Montessori is great and we’d like to stick with it but wanted him to have a chance to improve his Mandarin.

Have any other parents gone through a similar transition? It’s heart-breaking seeing our son go from coming home happy every day because he feels creative and stress-free, to totally spaced out and hauling 30 pounds of books back and forth with a teacher calling us to say we need to sign up for extra classes. My wish is that there’s light at the end of the tunnel but I’m feeling extremely uncertain of this.

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So does he speak Mandarin? What do you guys speak at home?

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I speak to him in English with the wife, in-laws, and other relatives all speaking to him in Mandarin. His schooling in kindy was mostly in Mandarin, so it’s the better of the two. Some have suggested that maybe he’s still getting used to the tempo of the teacher in public school. I guess it’s the same for other kids too. Not sure why but the teacher seems to think he’s slow. I know that if he’s not interested then he will daydream as kids do. I really hope he learns how to concentrate better or else it’s going to be a long school year.

My kids were in a Montessori school, but we had to move. Tried a public school and my oldest suffered as did I seeing a kindergarten kid with homework everyday. We tried it out for a month, but nothing improved. Wife asked around and found another public school that was very similar in style to the Montessori. We quickly transferred them to the the new school and it’s been perfect. And NO homework.

Fortunately we are in the country side that has a shortage of kids and an over abundance of schools so it was no problem getting them in. I’m not sure if that would be possible in a city setting though.

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Having taught kindergarten here, my job was to crush the kids academically and emotionally. The children I taught would have had an easier transition into Grade 1, because their experience in the local kindergarten prepared them for it. It was quite disturbing to me and I always felt like I was mediating what the school wanted me to do to the children via their curriculum, in order that I ensured they weren’t totally smashed. It is a highly abusive environment, especially so for the sensitive children. Unfortunately, most consider what is in truth, highly abusive, to be normal.

I once started at a brand new kindergarten where the kids across all kindergarten levels had never been to kindergarten before (it was in a province). The first two weeks watching them break and conform to the situation they found themselves, one after the other, is indelibly etched into my memory.

I often say to friends (some things I wont repeat here) but if you knew what kindergarten/school did to your children, you would never send them there. I think the unschooling movement is partially onto what really happens with ‘schooling’ of children, and that’s enough to be deeply disturbed.

As a parent in your situation, I’m not sure what you do. Others are suggesting moving your child. At some point, its likely he’s going to be in these kind of circumstances. As you kind of intimate, its likely not a problem with your child, but with the system he’s in and I feel you need to continue to hold that is most likely the case despite what the ‘expert’ teachers are telling you.

Your consistent loving support is obviously key, as is the need for awareness to what might be happening in his world. Its great that you’re talking with others about it. I hope things turn out well for you.

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I think this varies a lot depending on the teacher.
My son entered grade 1 last year, but the homework didn’t really started until a couple of months in.
I mean, there were some activities to do, but he could finish them until 30 min after school. Later on the homework increased and there were times he couldn’t finish.
I can be stressful, but I think it’s important to not push the kid too hard, and try to talk to the teacher in private so you both can align your expectations.

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As someone who became a montessori teacher because I hated the way children were treated in the public schools here, I cannot imagine what your child is going through right now.

Montessori is about helping a child to develop independence and an ability to do and think for themself. It is focused on child development based on what Maria Montessori (a medical doctor) observed of all children on every human-occupied continent expect Africa.

Public schools in Taiwan serve the function of destroying the will of the child and making them obedient to authority, never thinking for themself or doing anything without being explicitly told to do so. Everything I saw about Taiwan’s public schools when I taught in them went against Montessori in all aspects except for “care of the environment”. Except that caring for the environment (cleaning the classroom and school) in montessori is something that children become self-motivated to do. They see that there is a mess and they clean it up (because the adult or another child modeled for them how to do it). But even that, in the public schools, is a way to “put a child in their place”. Teachers screech at children and point out all the ways they’re doing it wrong, without showing them how to do it right. The function of cleaning, in the public schools, is to make sure children know that they are at the bottom of the pecking order.

I don’t know how montessori your child’s school was, since I’ve seen some pretty bad interpretations of montessori in TW, but assuming your child was choosing their own work and being directed towards meaningful activities with a reasonable about of responsibility + autonomy, your child is dying inside now. Even with all the PD and what not going on in schools, there’s probably a lot of time spent telling the children to shut up and sit in their chairs + chalk and talk.

I’m making a lot of assumptions, but I’m someone who said “omg how can children be treated so horribly in schools?” and then proceeded to spend US$15,000 on tuition for training + a bajillion hours of classes and training to become a montessori elementary teacher. That’s how badly my soul hurt being in Taiwan’s public schools. As an English teacher. So yeah…

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My daughter didn’t go to kindergarten and because she wasn’t used to school, she got this kind of comment from the teacher. Not that she is slow, but she dreams a lot and is quiet. I got the impression that the teacher had low expectations because she was mixed.

My daughter is ten now and she told me that grade one was a blur. She felt really intimidated. She didn’t speak mandarin at the same level as others and she couldn’t understand a lot. She didn’t say this at the time. She knew bpmf and could speak Mandarin but she didn’t understand the way they were testing her and her home life was in English.

My wife is a bit of a tiger mom so she wouldn’t accept poor grades so she pushed her a lot. After six months, she was flying and she still is. She was speaking more and was more outgoing.

The teacher kept saying how much she had changed but that was the real her. She enjoys school and likes her teachers now. But there is too much homework and too many tests. Luckily, the wife has relaxed……a little.

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Taiwanese school is a meat grinder. The pressure are known to be so harsh that elementary students have been known to commit suicide over academic pressure. Either take your kids out and home school them, or take them to an international school, or find a school in the country that don’t put so much pressure on young minds.

Every Taiwanese institution I been to basically tells you that you’re never ever good enough. Even if you have 99% the fact that you didn’t get the 1% means you would be scolded.

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My 2cents, stick it out at this school and tell your son no worries about the homework and what the teacher thinks. Just tell your son to slowly adjust and make sure he has time after school to play. Tell your son that you know he is going through a nightmare and it may take time to get used to, but it is what it is and there is nothing to be done. Some crushing of spirit may happen, but Taiwanese kids adjust in time and honestly speaking, they get used to it. My kids went to public school and they were fine all through elementary school. They had a local kindy to prepare them though. Also, your child will learn what it takes to “get along well” in Taiwanese society.

OR send your son to a school that is not the regular public school system and he may never be able to go back to the regular public school system. Whether this is a choice is up to you to decide.

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Yeah, they get used to being crushed by a loveless, soul-destroying system and they conform to whatever it wants or demands of them, often thinking that there is actually something wrong with themselves.

Its kind of like saying, don’t worry, eventually your child’s will will be broken as well, just is the case with almost every other child, and they’ll just accept it as the way things are… even though it might take a little while for that to happen.

What we tolerate in modern society is absolutely incredible.

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The experience I’ve had putting my child through the Taiwanese elementary school system hasn’t been loveless and soul-destroying. It’s not been perfect, for sure, but it’s not a total negative.

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I have this photo, which, unfortunately I can’t share here, because I took it in my kindergarten classroom. Its all the boys lined up against the wall, they all have their eyes closed and expressions of what appears to be sheer agony on their face. What they were trying to do, was use their memory to recall the phonetic alphabet in order. But without that context, it looks like they were being tortured. What we do to kids is unfathomable.

That sounds like a private kindergarten, not a public elementary school.

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My kids went to school in the local system and they are fine. They are in public high school now. It was me that had more problems with their schools and the teaching than they ever had.

By the way, another factor is also money. If you are able and willing to pay a little more and find a school more oriented around the Western ways then go for it. Not all of us choose to do that. I do not regret sending my kids to the local elementary school. They had a very happy time there, all things considered.

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We copped the same thing. Even had one teacher accuse our kid of cheating on tests simply because they couldn’t be off in the clouds and still get 98 or whatever score they got.

Best advice I can give you is keep being honest with your son. And let him communicate with you. Ask him how his day was. Don’t focus on the teacher. Focus on what he was learning. But in doing that teach him that there are good teachers and bad ones. And sometimes you can’t really choose which one you end up with. But you can always prove them wrong by doing better than they expected (or wanted) you to.

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And don’t sign him up for extra classes. Sign him up for soccer or ping pong or swimming or chess or programming or any of the other after school programs they have. The teacher is just doing the hard sell. Although it is cheaper than sending them to after school buxibans. Personally other than sports I pretty much stayed out of sight of their Chinese teachers. Only met their English teacher once. And only ever met their main class teacher a couple of times over 6 years. They had 3 different main class teachers. Same teacher for grades 1,2, then 3,4, then 5,6.

Watch out for the teacher trying to scapegoat your kid in the class. Meaning blaming your son for something in order to get him to snitch on whoever did it. I had to teach mine to say “I’m not sure. I didn’t see who did it.” And after a few weeks the teacher moved on to another kid.

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That’s what I would say about the school I went to as a child, including that I was happy and successful at school.

As I continue to awaken, decades later, I’m still unpacking and undoing the damage inflicted by my ‘education’ whether that be primary/secondary/tertiary. Maybe that’s one reason I work in the industry.

Given what I know, I have no idea how I’d put my own kids through such a system.

So I went through this with them too. My trick, and I’ve used this trick with all kids I’ve taught, is aim for 100 and be happy with what you get. This gets them to focus when they do the test. So long as they’ve done their homework they’ll usually get 90+.

The other thing I’ve always done is taken something that a kid is passionate about and puts all their effort into. Even when they have to do things that they don’t like in order to get better. Then encourage them to look at whatever it is that they’re learning and apply the same effort. To do this you have to be very good at regulating their downtime. Taking them for trips to climb mountains. Taking them to a movie. Having a family get together. These things take the stress off.

I also always walked my kids to school in the days they were doing their tests. Calmed them down and tried to boost their confidence.

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[quote=“Denver_Machina, post:1, topic:223311”]
Montessori is great and we’d like to stick with it but wanted him to have a chance to improve his Mandarin.[/quote]

Are you trying to fix a problem that’s not there?