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American Kindergarten: Dispatches from the First Year of School
- GenresEducation
256 pages, Hardcover
Published March 4, 2026
About the author
Susan Engel
31 books19 followersSusan Engel is a developmental psychologist in the Department of Psychology at Williams College and the founder and director of the Williams Program in Teaching. She wrote a column on teaching for "The""New York Times" called "Lessons" and is a cofounder of The Hayground School in Eastern Long Island.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 31, 2026
Purchased the book from bookshop but first saw it from U chicago, see here https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/...
I don’t have a lot of experience teaching or mentoring small children but am interested with my own children now approaching school so it was an interesting survey of many different types of kindergarten. I wish I could say a survey of “what works and what doesn’t” but this wasn’t a comprehensive research survey and didn’t follow classrooms over years. It’s just interesting multi day drop ins to a few classrooms, only a couple being memorable.
The author doesn’t say or predict what will work and which kids will turn out the best but she comments on the vibes and feelings of the classrooms that she visits. She seems to do a great job of noticing some of the special touches from some teachers. I don’t know if this kind of classroom review is common for professionals but it sounds like she can give some great feedback to teachers.
“Over the two years of her classroom visits, Engel identified five promises that teachers and their classrooms make to their students: reading, order, thinking, identity, and love.”
Further expanded:
“The Five Classroom Promises
Reading: Opening the door to literacy and helping children interact with books and words.
Order: Teaching structure, routines, and how to keep things in their proper place so kids feel stable.
Thinking: Bringing the wider world inside by encouraging curiosity, questions, and problem-solving.
Identity: Supporting the unique self ("me, you, and us") and how a child fits into a social group.
Love: Providing a safe, warm, and deeply affectionate space where young children feel emotionally secure.“
Spoiler - she identifies the sixth promise that only a few teachers achieved- bringing joy to the children.
My thoughts on the 5 promises:
There’s lots of ways to do the reading part and probably many books written on that topic alone.
Order I’d important but can be overdone and if it’s too much of a dictatorship then it won’t work (my words not hers).
I really enjoyed the section on thinking and will probably try to read more about this topic because definitely can be grown at school and at home.
Identity seems so hard to define and even witness so credit to author for discussing it.
Love is certainly important and honestly makes it so hard to ask so much of our school teachers and pay them so little.
Lastly, I can see what she means about joy but how do you see that or measure it? Such a challenge to replicate our teach.
I don’t have a lot of experience teaching or mentoring small children but am interested with my own children now approaching school so it was an interesting survey of many different types of kindergarten. I wish I could say a survey of “what works and what doesn’t” but this wasn’t a comprehensive research survey and didn’t follow classrooms over years. It’s just interesting multi day drop ins to a few classrooms, only a couple being memorable.
The author doesn’t say or predict what will work and which kids will turn out the best but she comments on the vibes and feelings of the classrooms that she visits. She seems to do a great job of noticing some of the special touches from some teachers. I don’t know if this kind of classroom review is common for professionals but it sounds like she can give some great feedback to teachers.
“Over the two years of her classroom visits, Engel identified five promises that teachers and their classrooms make to their students: reading, order, thinking, identity, and love.”
Further expanded:
“The Five Classroom Promises
Reading: Opening the door to literacy and helping children interact with books and words.
Order: Teaching structure, routines, and how to keep things in their proper place so kids feel stable.
Thinking: Bringing the wider world inside by encouraging curiosity, questions, and problem-solving.
Identity: Supporting the unique self ("me, you, and us") and how a child fits into a social group.
Love: Providing a safe, warm, and deeply affectionate space where young children feel emotionally secure.“
Spoiler - she identifies the sixth promise that only a few teachers achieved- bringing joy to the children.
My thoughts on the 5 promises:
There’s lots of ways to do the reading part and probably many books written on that topic alone.
Order I’d important but can be overdone and if it’s too much of a dictatorship then it won’t work (my words not hers).
I really enjoyed the section on thinking and will probably try to read more about this topic because definitely can be grown at school and at home.
Identity seems so hard to define and even witness so credit to author for discussing it.
Love is certainly important and honestly makes it so hard to ask so much of our school teachers and pay them so little.
Lastly, I can see what she means about joy but how do you see that or measure it? Such a challenge to replicate our teach.
May 24, 2026
“If you did want to know more about what does or should happen to children in kindergarten, you’d be hard pressed to find out.”
Exactly. Everyone goes to kindergarten; everyone sends their children there. And yet what we remember and what we hear as parents during 2 or 3 conferences that year is not enough. Susan Engel sits quietly in the classrooms and reports back with a combination of science, insight and dry wit. She breaks down the essential elements of the modern kindergarten experience as some combination of love, order, reading, identity and thinking. But what she shows us is that it is the teachers who decide the priorities and a good teacher, who balances all five, can be magical.
In kindergarten, my son came home with a 4-page story about his holidays, a basic sentence and a hand drawn picture on each page. One of the pages was: “We went to the tree farm to get our tree.” The picture showed the tree, the saw and the stump. I questioned him, “What’s up with this page? You’ve never been to a tree farm in your life.” He explained, “I wrote that we got our tree out of the crawl space. But Mrs. S erased it and made me do it over”. Looking closely, I could see the eraser marks across both the sentence and the drawing. I asked how he even knew about tree farms. He said he copied it from someone else’s page at his table. Mrs. S lost me right there.
Pulling back the curtain on something that is mysterious, but should not be, is powerful.
Exactly. Everyone goes to kindergarten; everyone sends their children there. And yet what we remember and what we hear as parents during 2 or 3 conferences that year is not enough. Susan Engel sits quietly in the classrooms and reports back with a combination of science, insight and dry wit. She breaks down the essential elements of the modern kindergarten experience as some combination of love, order, reading, identity and thinking. But what she shows us is that it is the teachers who decide the priorities and a good teacher, who balances all five, can be magical.
In kindergarten, my son came home with a 4-page story about his holidays, a basic sentence and a hand drawn picture on each page. One of the pages was: “We went to the tree farm to get our tree.” The picture showed the tree, the saw and the stump. I questioned him, “What’s up with this page? You’ve never been to a tree farm in your life.” He explained, “I wrote that we got our tree out of the crawl space. But Mrs. S erased it and made me do it over”. Looking closely, I could see the eraser marks across both the sentence and the drawing. I asked how he even knew about tree farms. He said he copied it from someone else’s page at his table. Mrs. S lost me right there.
Pulling back the curtain on something that is mysterious, but should not be, is powerful.
June 20, 2026
This book was great for thinking through what children really need when they enter kindergarten. It helped me refine my goals and philosophies for helping young ones flourish. My take-aways include: Ask more questions. Help children dig deeper into "why." Present ambiguities and let curiosity lead the way. Chit-chat!
I appreciate a non-fiction book that is narrative-based. So much better than NF that tries to convince you of something through argument and fact!! Thank you to the author for that.
I appreciate a non-fiction book that is narrative-based. So much better than NF that tries to convince you of something through argument and fact!! Thank you to the author for that.
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February 12, 2026review text for 274
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews