In a critique on Education.com, early educator Traci Geiser
has written a detailed description of what an inappropriate classroom
looks like, warning parents of high-pressure pre-k environments. She
points out the futility of paper and pencil tasks and worksheet driven
homework to accelerate learning, and acknowledges the inappropriate
amount of time spent expecting children to be quiet and listen to the
teacher as a frustration factor. Finally, she addresses how the
pressure of kindergarten curriculum pushed down into pre-k classrooms
can suck the joy out of learning.

What Traci doesn't do in her
article is address why these practices have come about. The answer for
me is clear. Fear. Kids today are growing up in a culture of fear that
causes parents to expect preschools to produce kindergarten ready children. No parent wants their child to be "left behind"
because they aren't ready, so we push out kids to be over-prepared.
Here, it is up to the practitioner to educate parents about what
developmentally appropriate really means. Check out the blog bakersandastronauts to see the kinds of activities that can be done in a developmentally appropriate classroom. When children play,
the work the children do in this class is at a higher level cognitively
than any worksheet I have ever seen in a pre-k or kindergarten
classroom.  Most of all, these students are learning actively, not just completing worksheets that make it look like they are learning.

Thanks to retweets from @KarenNemethEdM and @Ed_Leadership on twitter, I learned about this article on Education.com.

Image from: http://blog.newsok.com/educationstation/files/2008/06/412007_preschool_class_activities_3.jpg