confessions of a preschool teacher

I am feeling a bit defeated today. This is not an emotion I entertain very often. After a long day of conferences, I am a bit at a loss. I am super passionate about teaching to the level of dorkiness. I love love love to learn all there is to know about preschool, child development, etc. All teachers must put in a certain amount of professional development hours. For someone like me, this means nights and weekends. Although it takes time away from my family, I am happy to be privy to the cutting edge ideas of educators. I am blessed with a school who funds these workshop. Now to the point at hand, I am bewildered by the expectations that have been set forth for preschoolers. I am here to tell you we are focusing on the wrong developmental areas of children. After meeting with several parents, who were concerned about letter-sound connection, pencil grip etc, I am feeling the urge to vent. We are discovering that children ultimately succeed in a child focused play based learning environment. A place where open-ended play is embraced. This means blocks, play dough, process art, dramatic play. As children, we fondly remember playing outside with little supervision. This kind of play is so important because we used our imaginations in sustained, elaborate role play. This is where we discovered what we wanted out of life and how to resolve conflict. Children are becoming more and more unsatisfied with toys because they are so used to being entertained by media. From the womb we hang toys in their faces then on to being entertained by tv leading to toys that make noise and talk for them and on to video games and computers. Toys are give to children with a script. Here is a toy, here is how to play with it. Also, we have to schedule play dates. We are no longer in a world where the back yard and the neighborhood is a safe place to play unsupervised. Parents hover and pounce on kids when conflict arise during a play date. And we play with our kids! I can't remember a time my mother played with me. Our kids don't know how to play by themselves. I am guilty of all of this as a parent. As an educator, it's time to make parents aware of what our media-saturated world is doing to our kids. It's time to get kids back into play....free play....open-ended play. But how do we get back there? How do we rescue childhood? Who can remember games of kick the can, cops and robbers, capture the flag? When we played these games we resolved conflict, worked as a team, learned defeat and success, helped our wounded friends, etc. What will happen if our children aren't given the opportunity to develop these skills? How come we don't keep score anymore? Isn't winning and losing part of life? If everyone wins then what is the point of trying our best? Feeling depressed yet? Or inspired? Let's get inspired and rescue childhood for our kids sake!