Exploring Borders in a Texas Prekindergarten: Storytelling from the In-Between

ABSTRACT

This article is a collective narration of our work in a prekindergarten and its curriculum, designed to employ student choice as a connection-making mechanism. We describe a series of “boundaries,” social constructions, recognitions and physical barriers to illustrate the movement of the students within the curriculum, their negotiation of these boundaries, the meanings made, and our negotiated storytelling.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ In our state, Texas, and in other places in the United States, “prekindergarten” (or “pre-K” to which it will be referred throughout the remainder of this article) is generally used to describe a public school or grade level that serves children prior to their kindergarten year (the year that precedes “first grade”). In our city the pre-K campus is a centralized school serving all of the four-year-olds who qualify for public pre-K services (these qualifiers are described above). The term Pre-K, or prekindergarten, is usually reserved for schools for the very young that are public schools themselves or are classrooms in a public school, as opposed to “preschools,” which usually refer to private facilities.