American Kindergarten: Dispatches from the First Year of School

An unexpected portrait of the first year of school for America's youngest learners.

When we think of kindergarten, many might imagine joyous free play, and a tangle of trucks, dress-up clothes, and blocks, as five-year-olds explore their vivid imaginations and budding social skills. Others might envision a quiet group sitting cross-legged in a circle during story time. Neither of these scenes would be an inaccurate representation of the pivotal year of entry into traditional education in this country. However, neither offers a complete picture of what children do every day in those seemingly transparent, yet actually mysterious, classrooms. What can or should we expect during the first year of school? How are children learning and growing during those hours spent away from their homes?

Susan Engel embarked on finding these answers in American Kindergarten: Dispatches from the First Year of School. Engel toured twenty-nine classrooms across fourteen states, observing each closely, with a special eye toward the ways each classroom's goals reflect its community. As she made her way across the country, Engel found that on the surface, kindergarten students are similar: good-natured, eager to learn, and deeply affectionate. Their classrooms, too, feature many of the same expectations, routines, and activities. But the differences between the classrooms were striking and often surprising. Over the two years of her classroom visits, Engel identified five promises that teachers and their classrooms make to their students: reading, order, thinking, identity, and love. Engel found that schools differ in how they prioritize and keep the promises they make; some make all five promises, while others emphasize only one or two. The five promises capture a set of values, aspirations, and goals that drive everything that happens in a classroom.

Engaging and incisive, American Kindergarten is the story of the promises our country's schools make to five-year-old children, and how those promises are kept and sometimes broken.