I got to know what the levels of giftedness were with all the kids in my son's grade and what the levels of motivation were of the teachers in that school.
I also saw first hand how bored my Kindergartener was even when he attended 1st grade math and LA and how he was singing to himself, reading books and playing with Legos and blocks to entertain himself.
I also know exactly what little they do when they use the words "differentiated instruction".
All factors that helped me decide to afterschool more intensely for the K year and make an informed decision on what to do for the future schooling of my child.
This is what happened with us for the beginning of Kinder at the public school. My DS started rolling around on the floor in a kind of zoned-out-ness! Through our insistence, the principal got DS tested in reading. His teacher was informed he could read at a 4th grade level and exclaimed, "That explains a lot! No wonder- he was bored!" Their solution: send him to the third grade for reading. When I overheard the teacher being told by another volunteer in that third grade class that my DS had a book report to turn in (news to me!), I knew the "differentiation" was only superficial. DS was never treated as a Kindergartener who happened to read at a high level. He had no idea what a book report was!
In one month of volunteering, we discovered that teacher was over her head even with volunteers; the school was allowing children who obviously needed more one-on-one attention to disrupt the overall class, (one child chewed pencils, knocked over desks, got up and jumped around like a monkey, etc.); and also (right before Sandy Hook incident), they were horribly lax on security (they didn't even lock doors). After attending PTA meetings and bringing these issues to the attention of the board and Super with no results, we decided to pull DS in October and place him in a private Kinder. It was not perfect, but waaaay better than the public school.
Cons of volunteering:
Any layperson who is a parent could volunteer for a job which could be done so much more effectively by a person who is qualified for it (a real teacher's aide).
I know too much about the kids, their personal lives and any learning issues they have which I am not supposed to know (privacy issues? a lot of them are our neighbors, so we meet them outside of school).
Our son's school said they couldn't afford a teacher's aide.
I know what you mean about knowing so much about the kids and their personal lives. I felt my heart constrict thinking about one little girl in particular as we were pulling our DS out of the public. She needed so much. If she were mine, I would have held her back a year. As it was, she was placed on the bus, expected to remember her backpack when she got off (she went into a full-on meltdown when she left it), and when she got to class, she was not in any way receiving enough one-on-one help to understand what she was expected to do.
I still wonder what happened to her.
