The first year of full-day kindergarten at River Forest School District 90 has wrapped up. And administrators and teachers are calling it a successful launch.
According to district officials, there were 47 full-time kindergarten students at Willard School and 57 full-day kindergarten students at Lincoln School.
While the district allowed families to request a half-day option, none did.
Conversations around the possibility of a full-day kindergarten option had waxed and waned over many years in River Forest.
Following a review of what best practices would look like and the approval of the Kindergarten Program Review Process by the board of education in February 2023, the timing was finally right.
“The teachers, the stakeholders, and the students were really primed for the launch this year,” said Christine Gerges, assistant principal at both Lincoln and Willard.
To get ready for the arrival of the 2023-24 kindergarten class, Gerges said the district worked collaboratively on research, and bringing in ideas of how programming should be structured to ensure the students were prepared for future learning.
“We were able to create a program that is truly amazing,” Gerges said.
Teachers were a critical part of that conversation.
Lincoln Elementary kindergarten teacher Lori Suzuki said full-day kindergarten was something the community had wanted for a long time.
Barb Garvey, Willard Elementary kindergarten teacher, said there was a little concern surrounding stamina, whether a full-day program would be too much for five-year-olds, but kids were able to adjust quickly.
“I wasn’t really that worried about stamina,” Garvey said, adding most were already attending an afterschool program after their half-day school day.
More hours in a day also means teachers are able to dedicate more time to developing those highly desired strengths in subjects such as reading and math.
“While our direct teaching of literacy or math hasn’t increased significantly, their application of it has,” Garvey said. “I think that has been more meaningful to them.”
The additional time has also allowed students to really soak in what they are learning, said Garvey.
Slowing down has given kids the time to have autonomy in their learning.
“With the right book and the right story you can get kindergarten kids to do so many things, but you have to have the right book and this full day offers so much more time to let kids explore,” Suzuki said.
The teachers were able to include more time in exploration stations, which gave way for students to develop their social relationships and learn how to navigate peer interactions, critical learning moments in the life of a kindergartener. They ranged from a quiet reading station to a construction station.
“It is a really awesome time when the kids get together that we didn’t have time for in a half day program because we were working so hard to get content, content, content. They had an element of that time but research shows that it is so important for students,” Gerges said.
Having a more relaxed pace also helped students grapple with the content, said Gerges.
“I don’t think we imagined how successful the program would be in terms of how our students did academically,” Gerges said.
Megan Bruce, a district parent, said they believe the full-day program better prepared their daughter, Harper, for first grade.
“It is actually wild to me that full day wasn’t implemented sooner, just based on need from the community and from the kids in general,” Bruce said.
Harper feels more confident going into first grade, Bruce added, saying she already knows more students and teachers.
For the Bruce family, like many others in River Forest, the full-day kindergarten program was needed as the parents both work full-time.
Christine O’Brien, a district parent, said she was excited to hear about the full-day program.
“For the energy level, for the engagement and the development, my son needed a full day,” O’Brien said.
She said her son has “blossomed” in Suzuki’s class.
O’Brien also credits Suzuki for helping them fast track their son’s speech and reading.
“The kid that is coming out of kindergarten is not the same kid that went into kindergarten,” O’Brien said. “Now he is a chatterbox. It’s just incredible … I don’t know if he would have gotten that if it was just half-day.”
The district also had to navigate more of the mundane issues such as fitting lunch and recess into a schedule that formerly did not have to account for kindergarteners.
“Kindergarteners are so excited about their learning and they are eager to learn and share either wonderings and express their curiosity. It has been really wonderful to have,” said Gerges.