eBeth - your post brought back some bad memories of when I was teaching Kindergarten in a special Magnet School....your whole comment of "(I wanted to yell "Step on those toes! Step, step, step!)" is SOOOOOO true. I LOVED teaching my kids and I didn't hold back anything - if they wanted to learn something that was "outside" of the curriculum I had NO issue pushing on - I had someone I knew that for some bizarre reason had bleached out cow bones - I begged her for them (which she gladly passed on) and I planned a whole Dinosaur 2 week unit around a massive paleontology dig site I set up in our large sand playground area complete with gridded off dig sites and parents spent all morning burying the bones (w/o the kids knowing) and then I let them re-enact a dig site. They had the best time and wow - they were learning all at the same time -what a concept and boy oh boy you should have seen the "dinosaur" rebuilding finished item with all the bones!
Then one year, I had a group of K kids that were fascinated with the planets and space and Space was not on the K curriculum guide - it was in First Grade- I went to my principal for permission to do an introductory unit on Space and she allowed me and I set up a special star watching night for the whole K-1 grade levels and had over 25 people from a local astronomy society set up telescopes for the kids to all look through in the back play fields of the school- everyone had a blast but I later that week found out, that 2 of the First Grade Teachers were furious with me because I "stepped on their toes"...they were honestly mad because "now what would they teach". I was totally blown away - so what, I am supposed to ignore my kids questions? I was supposed to tell them, sorry, your only 5, you can't learn about space until you are 6? I only did an introductory unit and there is NO possible way you can cover the Solar System in 2 weeks much less than several years!!! I then found out that several of them were really mad that I kept going above and beyond on my units and said that I made the "other teachers look bad because they didn't have time to plan such large units". I just got so sick of hearing all the complaining that I left...I am sad to say, that this mentality is VERY strong and doing well in many, many schools!
