Friday, May 10, 2013

The DAP Mystery.


My son getting ready to start kindergarten has gotten me thinking about my own kindergarten experience. I find that while I have brief flashes of memories from preschool on a farm in Iowa (feeding the animals, climbing on the empty propane tank, making Thanksgiving hats as either an Indian or Pilgrim—I was an Indian, and I was pissed) I have many more solid memories of kindergarten. I have a sense of who I was in kindergarten, who I was becoming, what that period of life meant for me. And I’m hoping that perhaps now that my son is entering kindergarten, his experience will shed some light on mysteries from my own kindergarten experience. Like the mystery of “DAP.”

DAP* was a unit in kindergarten, like finger painting or gluing toothpicks on construction paper. It was a “floor activity” rather than a “table activity” and an “individual activity” rather than a “group activity.” It was an individual floor activity where each child picked a basket of dumpable objects, small things like balls and bottle caps. Well, actually, the only basket I can remember was the basket full of Barbie accessories. There were lots of different baskets, but only one Barbie basket. So DAP Lesson #1: position yourself to be the girl who gets the Barbie accessories.

Anyway, in DAP you picked or were assigned your basket. You found a spot on the rug not near any other kids. Then you dumped out your basket. I was pretty OK until this point. It was the next 18 minutes that mystified me. I had no idea what to do with the junk in the basket. I looked around at the other kids for ideas. Their stuff was spread out. So I spread mine out. I remember thinking that if I just had the Barbie stuff I would know what to do. Hello—imaginative play! But inexplicably there was no actual Barbie with the Barbie stuff. Just accessories. DAP Lesson #2: learn to deal with disappointment; and DAP Lesson #3: accessories do not a person make.

I’m not sure if we had DAP all year, but I’m guessing we did because how could they tell if we had mastered the skills it was supposed to teach and moved us on to something else (like actually playing Barbie)? So I spent 20 minutes a day for a year dumping out baskets, moving the stuff around so it looked like I knew what I was doing, and then cleaning it all up nicely and not fighting over the Barbie purses.

I went to law school. A good one, and I also practiced at a big fancy law firm. I took the New York State Bar Exam. I parent two young children, at least one of whom made it to kindergarten. I owe some of this to DAP. I have no idea what the other kids learned—probably math skills, or spatial reasoning, or architecture. What I learned was how to look like you knew what you were doing. Years later, in college, a friend asked if she could borrow my notes from a seminar we had both attended. It was boring. I told her that actually I didn’t take very many notes, and generally have very little idea what the seminar was about. She looked surprised. But you looked like you were really paying attention, she said. Aha! DAP! I learned that in DAP! (With these skills I feel I would also excel in careers in sales, clinical psychology, or politics.)

I’m sure they have DAP or its equivalent at PS8. I hope my son is smart and creative enough to figure out the developmentally appropriate lessons. But if nothing else, I sort of hope he learns DAP Lesson #4: fake it and smile.

*I am now informed that DAP stands for “Developmentally Appropriate Practice,” which means about as much to me as an adult as it would have as a kindergartener. Personally, I would go with "Dump and Pretend."

1 comment: