I'm not a visual person. I don't really look at the living room and say, "You know what would be great? Some curtains in a color that compliments the couch, with a chair over here and..."
But today, I looked at our playground (not very far from the legendary recycled-rubber bits), and I saw it where it does not currently exist: a raised bed of... peppers, maybe. Or something, anything, green and growing.
I think that in the wider world, I would be easily dismissed as an unrealistic, idealistic, hippy-liberal or any number of epitaphs to describe someone who thinks that we can actually all get along, even if we never quite understand each other fully. But the reality is, while I am socially liberal, I am personally quite conservative: I think as a whole, people can't do for themselves and need help, but individually, we should all be capable of taking care of ourselves and our surroundings (home, family, community...).
In other words, you need to protect and take care of your own.
So as a teacher, I need to teach these kids to care about their own. And what is theirs? This space at school, for one. That's where we begin. We take care of our space. We take care of our bodies, too - that's why we go outside every day, why we have a 'fitness' program, why we have healthy snacks at snack time. It then makes sense that we can do both at once by gardening.
Therefore... raise the beds!
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Monday, March 15, 2010
Recent Letter to Families
Dear Families,
It all began with snack gone awry. Several times, when we had yogurt or applesauce or something vaguely liquidy for snack, Mrs. B and I noticed that several cups ended up in the cup bin with a cloudy mixture in them: a sign that snack was being used to play and not to eat!
A lot of times, there's a knee-jerk reaction to something like this--children do something they're not "supposed" to do, and so we adults immediately forbid the inappropriate action. The problem with this reaction is, it might suppress the behavior, but it doesn't erase the desire to do whatever it is the children are doing, and often it leads to us being upset at them for finding ways to continue doing it.
In this case, clearly, the kids wanted to mix stuff.
Normally, we're not big proponents of using food for anything but eating at school--I know one of my own personal values is to waste as little as possible. But here, I don't consider it a waste to provide the children with an opportunity for scientific exploration. (Yes, I said it: mixing random food together is scientific exploration!)
Science is all about asking questions and conducting experiments to find answers. For three and four year olds, those questions are things like, "What happens if we mix bread with water?" and then of course we use our hands to mix the bread and the water together, to feel the changes in the texture. Then we ask again. "What happens if we add jelly to the bread and water?" And we mix and we feel the changes (and as several children noted, "My hands are all sticky!")
So far the children came up with a list of things they'd like to mix, and we've completed two concoctions. The recipes were as follows...
Concoction #1
bread
water
grape jelly
blue food coloring
mini marshmallows
green paint
purple paint
Concoction #2
soy sauce
duck sauce
hot mustard
bananas
mini marshmallows
We'll do another concoction this week, and we can start to point out patterns: marshmallows don't mix like the other stuff does, for example. Perhaps just as importantly, together we've turned what could have been an ongoing tension in the classroom--the children playing with their food and teachers getting frustrated--into an ongoing scientific inquiry that challenges the children to stretch their minds and allows them to really do some hands-on work!
Not a bad fate for all those ketchup packets, eh?
It all began with snack gone awry. Several times, when we had yogurt or applesauce or something vaguely liquidy for snack, Mrs. B and I noticed that several cups ended up in the cup bin with a cloudy mixture in them: a sign that snack was being used to play and not to eat!
A lot of times, there's a knee-jerk reaction to something like this--children do something they're not "supposed" to do, and so we adults immediately forbid the inappropriate action. The problem with this reaction is, it might suppress the behavior, but it doesn't erase the desire to do whatever it is the children are doing, and often it leads to us being upset at them for finding ways to continue doing it.
In this case, clearly, the kids wanted to mix stuff.
Normally, we're not big proponents of using food for anything but eating at school--I know one of my own personal values is to waste as little as possible. But here, I don't consider it a waste to provide the children with an opportunity for scientific exploration. (Yes, I said it: mixing random food together is scientific exploration!)
Science is all about asking questions and conducting experiments to find answers. For three and four year olds, those questions are things like, "What happens if we mix bread with water?" and then of course we use our hands to mix the bread and the water together, to feel the changes in the texture. Then we ask again. "What happens if we add jelly to the bread and water?" And we mix and we feel the changes (and as several children noted, "My hands are all sticky!")
So far the children came up with a list of things they'd like to mix, and we've completed two concoctions. The recipes were as follows...
Concoction #1
bread
water
grape jelly
blue food coloring
mini marshmallows
green paint
purple paint
Concoction #2
soy sauce
duck sauce
hot mustard
bananas
mini marshmallows
We'll do another concoction this week, and we can start to point out patterns: marshmallows don't mix like the other stuff does, for example. Perhaps just as importantly, together we've turned what could have been an ongoing tension in the classroom--the children playing with their food and teachers getting frustrated--into an ongoing scientific inquiry that challenges the children to stretch their minds and allows them to really do some hands-on work!
Not a bad fate for all those ketchup packets, eh?
Saturday, March 6, 2010
The Rock of Interest
One of the two playgrounds at my school is covered in a recycled-rubber surface, or in other words, many many pieces of shredded tires.
Underneath the tires, I assume there has to be dirt, and rocks. But if ever I've seen a version of the needle in the haystack with my own eyes, it's a rock in the playground. Try finding rocks in something that looks like this:
But here's the thing: one kid in my afternoon group decided he was going to look for rocks. He took a bucket and got to work, and before long, he'd found a rock. And then another one. And another, and on until when it was time to go home, he had too many rocks to carry in his hands. I had to give him a Ziploc to put them in. I poured his new rock collection into the bag, thinking that was the end of it.
Silly thought, that.
The next day, half the class was scouring the playground for rocks. And they all found enough rocks to fill their hands and beyond. And even today, a week or two later, I put four rocks in a child's mailbox that she'd asked me to hold on to for her while she played elsewhere on the playground. Chances are, they'll find rocks until the end of the year.
Why does this matter?
Simply because if I had asked the children, or told the children, to look for rocks, they probably wouldn't have done it. Or, maybe a little bit, but not the handfuls of rocks they've uncovered, and not for the length of time they've spent searching. Looking for stones half the size of a golf ball amid thousands and thousands of little black rubber pieces half the size of a golf ball... well, it takes patience, and persistence, and a desire to find what you're looking for. It's not something you do unless you're interested in doing it.
And isn't that how we operate in life? Don't we perform better, feel better, interact with others better, remember better, when we're interested in whatever's going on? Interest fuels learning, and when we take away the balance of things that children learn "because they should/need to" and things they learn because they want to, we destroy entire worlds of possibility.
Underneath the tires, I assume there has to be dirt, and rocks. But if ever I've seen a version of the needle in the haystack with my own eyes, it's a rock in the playground. Try finding rocks in something that looks like this:
But here's the thing: one kid in my afternoon group decided he was going to look for rocks. He took a bucket and got to work, and before long, he'd found a rock. And then another one. And another, and on until when it was time to go home, he had too many rocks to carry in his hands. I had to give him a Ziploc to put them in. I poured his new rock collection into the bag, thinking that was the end of it.
Silly thought, that.
The next day, half the class was scouring the playground for rocks. And they all found enough rocks to fill their hands and beyond. And even today, a week or two later, I put four rocks in a child's mailbox that she'd asked me to hold on to for her while she played elsewhere on the playground. Chances are, they'll find rocks until the end of the year.
Why does this matter?
Simply because if I had asked the children, or told the children, to look for rocks, they probably wouldn't have done it. Or, maybe a little bit, but not the handfuls of rocks they've uncovered, and not for the length of time they've spent searching. Looking for stones half the size of a golf ball amid thousands and thousands of little black rubber pieces half the size of a golf ball... well, it takes patience, and persistence, and a desire to find what you're looking for. It's not something you do unless you're interested in doing it.
And isn't that how we operate in life? Don't we perform better, feel better, interact with others better, remember better, when we're interested in whatever's going on? Interest fuels learning, and when we take away the balance of things that children learn "because they should/need to" and things they learn because they want to, we destroy entire worlds of possibility.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Overlooking the Obvious
Families have to trust teachers - adults outside the demarcations of 'family'- to aid in the rearing of their children. So a good rapport between teachers and families is important. Trust and good rapport, as I see it, has honesty as its base.
So it annoys me that I am not honest, and that I feel I cannot be honest, about a very basic piece of my life with families.
Why should it matter that my significant other is a woman? It shouldn't. And maybe it wouldn't, if I happened to mention it in conversation.
But I work hard enough as it is to convince families (not all, but many) that my approach to education is thorough and informed, that I understand their children's needs, and that even though I have a facial piercing and I wear jeans & t-shirts to work, I am a professional. I carry around this niggling feeling that if I were to share this piece about my life (a piece that I feel is ultimately inconsequential), there are enough people out there who would second-guess my work as to make my already substantial efforts unsustainable. It's not a feeling I enjoy, and as I said maybe it's unfounded, but there it is.
However, as with so many things, people don't see what they're not looking for. A week or two ago I guess I let slip a first-person plural pronoun sort of story--"we" don't watch much tv or whatever it was--and the mom I was talking with exclaimed, "Oh! I didn't realize you were married!"
Though I've known this woman for almost two years, we've only ever encountered one another within the hallways of the school. How many moms, dads, grandparents, etc. have had countless conversations with me about families and never noticed that I am particularly oblique about my own? When my colleague became a grandmother, signs went up announcing it. Others talk about their children freely; it's never a question that they have husbands (or less frequently, ex-husbands) who are a part of those children's lives. In my case, maybe there are a few parents who have put two and two together, but one way or the other, I've fallen into this 'don't ask, don't tell' policy with families.
Trust? Check. Good rapport? Check. Total honesty? Hm, we're all working on it.
So it annoys me that I am not honest, and that I feel I cannot be honest, about a very basic piece of my life with families.
Why should it matter that my significant other is a woman? It shouldn't. And maybe it wouldn't, if I happened to mention it in conversation.
But I work hard enough as it is to convince families (not all, but many) that my approach to education is thorough and informed, that I understand their children's needs, and that even though I have a facial piercing and I wear jeans & t-shirts to work, I am a professional. I carry around this niggling feeling that if I were to share this piece about my life (a piece that I feel is ultimately inconsequential), there are enough people out there who would second-guess my work as to make my already substantial efforts unsustainable. It's not a feeling I enjoy, and as I said maybe it's unfounded, but there it is.
However, as with so many things, people don't see what they're not looking for. A week or two ago I guess I let slip a first-person plural pronoun sort of story--"we" don't watch much tv or whatever it was--and the mom I was talking with exclaimed, "Oh! I didn't realize you were married!"
Though I've known this woman for almost two years, we've only ever encountered one another within the hallways of the school. How many moms, dads, grandparents, etc. have had countless conversations with me about families and never noticed that I am particularly oblique about my own? When my colleague became a grandmother, signs went up announcing it. Others talk about their children freely; it's never a question that they have husbands (or less frequently, ex-husbands) who are a part of those children's lives. In my case, maybe there are a few parents who have put two and two together, but one way or the other, I've fallen into this 'don't ask, don't tell' policy with families.
Trust? Check. Good rapport? Check. Total honesty? Hm, we're all working on it.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Yes, But Can He Count to Five?
I'm writing some descriptive reviews, based on the Prospect School process (oh, how my grad school teachers would be bouncing with glee to know that), and I'm doing it in place of the assessments that my director keeps insisting I produce. I can't help myself.
And I can't help but notice the difference in what her sheet asks me to write, and what I'm actually writing. For your reference, this is:
- fine motor coordination
- gross motor coordination
- concept development
- continued observation of relationships
- observations of activities
versus
- physical presence
- disposition/temperament
- relationships with others
- interests and preferences
(I'm not doing the fifth Prospect piece, which is about a child's learning style, though I have at previous times.)
It struck me just as I was writing about this child who is very funny. I mean, he cracks people up, adults and children alike. I don't know, is that supposed to fit under "concept development"? Should I say "he has a highly developed concept of how humor works"? I will admit this assessment isn't as awful as many that are out there, but... I don't enjoy chopping a child up into a series of skills and activities. It's like I say, "this kid is really funny," and the paper says back, "yes, but can he cut with scissors?"
It gets me thinking about the lens we use to look at people, children or adults. (Ah, now there's one of those stellar academic catchphrases, "the lens" with which we view things.) What Prospect's process does that so many do not is look at a child for who they are and what they can do, not how they measure up to an abstract category of ability. Being funny is one of those things that is so important and definitive of who this boy is, yet would go completely unnoted if I were to focus solely on his activities or his fine motor skills.
See, the thing is, there's no "yes, but" with the descriptive review. There's plenty of opportunity to mention things that might be of concern, but they are in the context of an entire person with strengths and weaknesses; it doesn't end up sounding like there's this broken part of a machine that we need to fix so that it works properly. When it comes to people, there's a hell of a lot of parts, and the descriptive review allows you to have a to look at what is, not some idea of what "should be," and go from there.
The phrase that I mentioned in an earlier post - people don't see what they're not looking for - is one that certainly applies here and will apply again in a future post, one that will take a slight diversion from children themselves into a personal issue of mine as a teacher. For now let me end by saying it is dangerous to summarize someone, child or adult, by what they lack, and especially to do so while overlooking the context of that person as a whole being.
And I can't help but notice the difference in what her sheet asks me to write, and what I'm actually writing. For your reference, this is:
- fine motor coordination
- gross motor coordination
- concept development
- continued observation of relationships
- observations of activities
versus
- physical presence
- disposition/temperament
- relationships with others
- interests and preferences
(I'm not doing the fifth Prospect piece, which is about a child's learning style, though I have at previous times.)
It struck me just as I was writing about this child who is very funny. I mean, he cracks people up, adults and children alike. I don't know, is that supposed to fit under "concept development"? Should I say "he has a highly developed concept of how humor works"? I will admit this assessment isn't as awful as many that are out there, but... I don't enjoy chopping a child up into a series of skills and activities. It's like I say, "this kid is really funny," and the paper says back, "yes, but can he cut with scissors?"
It gets me thinking about the lens we use to look at people, children or adults. (Ah, now there's one of those stellar academic catchphrases, "the lens" with which we view things.) What Prospect's process does that so many do not is look at a child for who they are and what they can do, not how they measure up to an abstract category of ability. Being funny is one of those things that is so important and definitive of who this boy is, yet would go completely unnoted if I were to focus solely on his activities or his fine motor skills.
See, the thing is, there's no "yes, but" with the descriptive review. There's plenty of opportunity to mention things that might be of concern, but they are in the context of an entire person with strengths and weaknesses; it doesn't end up sounding like there's this broken part of a machine that we need to fix so that it works properly. When it comes to people, there's a hell of a lot of parts, and the descriptive review allows you to have a to look at what is, not some idea of what "should be," and go from there.
The phrase that I mentioned in an earlier post - people don't see what they're not looking for - is one that certainly applies here and will apply again in a future post, one that will take a slight diversion from children themselves into a personal issue of mine as a teacher. For now let me end by saying it is dangerous to summarize someone, child or adult, by what they lack, and especially to do so while overlooking the context of that person as a whole being.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Relax.
Greetings from Barbados!
When I told people I was coming here over the February break, I got a lot of "oh, aren't you lucky" kinds of looks and comments. And I very heartily believe part of that is weather-related; at this time of year, the novel thrill of cold and snow has long given way to a feeling of endless drab and dreariness, and the idea of a tropical climate is just heaven. But also, I think part of the reaction is a general perception of the Caribbean as a place where people (Americans) go to relax and get away from the responsibilities and pressures of their daily lives, regardless of the weather.
The truth of the pace of life here in Barbados (or anywhere tropical) is a much bigger topic than I am able or prepared to talk about; however, I do feel that in terms of the responsibilities and pressures Americans feel, there is more than a little that seems self-made in nature. Education is no exception. And so I offer this piece from Lisa Murphy, which speaks very well to how we might begin to unravel some of the tension we carry around and place upon children as well. The original link is here, and without further ado...
November 29, 2008
RESISTING THE URGE TO CREATE TEACHABLE MOMENTS
By Lisa Murphy
Ooey Gooey® Membership Musing #6 July 2007
A little bit of history: This piece was originally written for an Indiana newspaper. There were 16 of us asked to be contributors for a special Father's Day Sunday paper insert. The original title was "Using Everyday Moments to Teach". I am not sure if my piece actually appeared in the paper, but I wanted to share it with you. I also wanted to change the title.
============================
When asked to be a contributor for the special newspaper insert mentioned above, I was honored. When told what the title of my piece would be I found myself letting out a big heavy sigh. The idea behind the original title, of course, is that we can use what goes on around us to impart knowledge to our young, and don't need to "go buy stuff" in order to teach things to our children. All in all this is true. What then was the reason for my big heavy sigh? Well, right now amid testing frenzy, elementary school level expectations showing up in preschool classrooms, teachers being second guessed, districts pressured to purchase pre-packaged, dry curriculum aligned with content standards, recess being outlawed, tag and running on play yards being banned, pressure on babies to be reading, toddlers doing homework and three and four year olds plastered to computers all in the name of"learning" while at the same time our society as a whole is showing evidence of a lack of communication skills, social skills and a general disappearance of common sense, maybe instead of another article about teaching and learning what we really need is for someone to say,"HOLD ON A MINUTE!! STOP! Everyone just slow down for a minute! Stop just for a second and take a breath." Parents are frantic, children are stressed. Pressure is coming at everyone from all sides. Very few are immune from these recent outlandish expectations. As a preschool owner and educator for almost 20 years, I would argue that instead of another article about teaching our kids, what is needed is permission to be with our kids. Permission to stay strong and resist the urge to make everything a teachable moment. Permission to listen to the birds in the yard without needing to know their genus and species. Permission to build with Lego blocks without needing to count how many we used. Permission to plant flowers without needing to take the "What color are they?" quiz. Permission is hereby granted to appreciate everyday moments without the "moment" needing to be folded, spindled or mutilated into a learning experience. I would send a gentle reminder that in our hunt for these teachable moments we can miss the forest for the trees. I shudder at the thought of folks starting to"plan" (can you imagine??!) everyday experiences to make sure our children are "learning things." As adults we often forget that children are constantly learning from the world around them. More often we forget that children are capable of learning things and acquiring knowledge without adult intervention. Now before you denounce me as just another liberal, learn as they go, touchy feely educator, I challenge you to hear me out on this one. First off, we want kids to read and write. No one is saying otherwise. What I am saying is that instead of learning being a natural, authentic experience which children take part in, it has become something done to them. Truth be told, most folks, young or old, don't like things done to them. Learning has been reduced to a list of items to be checked off a to-do list. Colors? Check! ABCs? Check! The entire process got skewed along the way and has become very frantic and forced both for adults and children alike. From Dr. Maxine Greene, education professor at New York University, "You cannot teach them anything unless they want to be there." With this maxim in mind, if every single outing to the zoo becomes an unnecessary and exhausting day of drill and kill (How many hippos? What color are the giraffes? Where is the alligator? What kind of bird is that?) the honest truth is that eventually kids aren't going to want to go to the zoo any more. And neither will you. To paraphrase Joseph Chilton Pearce in his book "Evolution's End" : little learning takes place from willful forced attempts to make children learn. Provide an appropriate environment and appropriate experiences and you cannot prevent their brains from learning because learning is what their brains are designed to do. Cheers to you Mr. Pearce! And here's to all of you too. Permission granted. I'll see you at the zoo.
===========================
Lisa Murphy, B.S., educator and author, CEO of Ooey Gooey Inc. and owner of The Ooey Gooey® Playschools, can be reached at her office via phone (800) 477-7977 or through her websites www.ooeygooey.com and www.ooeygooeyplayschools.com
When I told people I was coming here over the February break, I got a lot of "oh, aren't you lucky" kinds of looks and comments. And I very heartily believe part of that is weather-related; at this time of year, the novel thrill of cold and snow has long given way to a feeling of endless drab and dreariness, and the idea of a tropical climate is just heaven. But also, I think part of the reaction is a general perception of the Caribbean as a place where people (Americans) go to relax and get away from the responsibilities and pressures of their daily lives, regardless of the weather.
The truth of the pace of life here in Barbados (or anywhere tropical) is a much bigger topic than I am able or prepared to talk about; however, I do feel that in terms of the responsibilities and pressures Americans feel, there is more than a little that seems self-made in nature. Education is no exception. And so I offer this piece from Lisa Murphy, which speaks very well to how we might begin to unravel some of the tension we carry around and place upon children as well. The original link is here, and without further ado...
November 29, 2008
RESISTING THE URGE TO CREATE TEACHABLE MOMENTS
By Lisa Murphy
Ooey Gooey® Membership Musing #6 July 2007
A little bit of history: This piece was originally written for an Indiana newspaper. There were 16 of us asked to be contributors for a special Father's Day Sunday paper insert. The original title was "Using Everyday Moments to Teach". I am not sure if my piece actually appeared in the paper, but I wanted to share it with you. I also wanted to change the title.
============================
When asked to be a contributor for the special newspaper insert mentioned above, I was honored. When told what the title of my piece would be I found myself letting out a big heavy sigh. The idea behind the original title, of course, is that we can use what goes on around us to impart knowledge to our young, and don't need to "go buy stuff" in order to teach things to our children. All in all this is true. What then was the reason for my big heavy sigh? Well, right now amid testing frenzy, elementary school level expectations showing up in preschool classrooms, teachers being second guessed, districts pressured to purchase pre-packaged, dry curriculum aligned with content standards, recess being outlawed, tag and running on play yards being banned, pressure on babies to be reading, toddlers doing homework and three and four year olds plastered to computers all in the name of"learning" while at the same time our society as a whole is showing evidence of a lack of communication skills, social skills and a general disappearance of common sense, maybe instead of another article about teaching and learning what we really need is for someone to say,"HOLD ON A MINUTE!! STOP! Everyone just slow down for a minute! Stop just for a second and take a breath." Parents are frantic, children are stressed. Pressure is coming at everyone from all sides. Very few are immune from these recent outlandish expectations. As a preschool owner and educator for almost 20 years, I would argue that instead of another article about teaching our kids, what is needed is permission to be with our kids. Permission to stay strong and resist the urge to make everything a teachable moment. Permission to listen to the birds in the yard without needing to know their genus and species. Permission to build with Lego blocks without needing to count how many we used. Permission to plant flowers without needing to take the "What color are they?" quiz. Permission is hereby granted to appreciate everyday moments without the "moment" needing to be folded, spindled or mutilated into a learning experience. I would send a gentle reminder that in our hunt for these teachable moments we can miss the forest for the trees. I shudder at the thought of folks starting to"plan" (can you imagine??!) everyday experiences to make sure our children are "learning things." As adults we often forget that children are constantly learning from the world around them. More often we forget that children are capable of learning things and acquiring knowledge without adult intervention. Now before you denounce me as just another liberal, learn as they go, touchy feely educator, I challenge you to hear me out on this one. First off, we want kids to read and write. No one is saying otherwise. What I am saying is that instead of learning being a natural, authentic experience which children take part in, it has become something done to them. Truth be told, most folks, young or old, don't like things done to them. Learning has been reduced to a list of items to be checked off a to-do list. Colors? Check! ABCs? Check! The entire process got skewed along the way and has become very frantic and forced both for adults and children alike. From Dr. Maxine Greene, education professor at New York University, "You cannot teach them anything unless they want to be there." With this maxim in mind, if every single outing to the zoo becomes an unnecessary and exhausting day of drill and kill (How many hippos? What color are the giraffes? Where is the alligator? What kind of bird is that?) the honest truth is that eventually kids aren't going to want to go to the zoo any more. And neither will you. To paraphrase Joseph Chilton Pearce in his book "Evolution's End" : little learning takes place from willful forced attempts to make children learn. Provide an appropriate environment and appropriate experiences and you cannot prevent their brains from learning because learning is what their brains are designed to do. Cheers to you Mr. Pearce! And here's to all of you too. Permission granted. I'll see you at the zoo.
===========================
Lisa Murphy, B.S., educator and author, CEO of Ooey Gooey Inc. and owner of The Ooey Gooey® Playschools, can be reached at her office via phone (800) 477-7977 or through her websites www.ooeygooey.com and www.ooeygooeyplayschools.com
Monday, February 8, 2010
The Smartest Things I've Seen
I mentioned better means of assessment than tests. I should add that I'm talking about cognitive assessment - there are many kinds of smart, and mental facility with language and mathematics and the like is only one kind. That's the kind tests are designed to measure, and that's the focus here. That said.
Better assessment often depends on our own powers of observation: people don't see what they're not looking for, so if you're not looking for a child's ability to make meaningful connections, you'll miss it. Three stories to illustrate my point.
1. The Napkin
The first classroom I ever worked in was a 3-year-old room. One day at the easel, we teachers had put out bits of different colored tissue paper for the kids to stick to their paintings. There was one boy who was very excited to try it, but by the time he got a chance to paint, the tissue paper had been used up by others. His reaction was to stop and look around. He went over to the sink, where we kept the supply of cups and napkins for snack. He grabbed a napkin off the top, tore it and wadded it up all over his painting.
2. The Teacup
The pitchers we use at snack have handles that slide off for easy cleaning. Some of the kids discovered they could take the handle off all by themselves. One boy took the handle and balanced it next to his snack cup. He called me over. "Look! A teacup!!"
3. The Rainstick
One girl in my class loves music. By now I've learned not to worry if I don't see her for five minutes after she comes into school: I know she's gone across the hall to visit, dance, and sing with our music specialist. So one day, she was playing with the periscope from our science center. She'd removed the two mirror pieces at each end, and was looking through it like a spyglass. She spied a pile of bits and bobs from the carpentry table where we were taking apart a computer; she put a few screws and things in the periscope, placed her hands at both ends, and turned to me as she rotated her new invention - "a rainstick. Listen, doesn't it sound like a rainstick?"
So why's that so smart?
When you learn something, you literally make a connection in your brain, a new neural pathway that wasn't there before. What the children did in these stories was make a connection in their brain that could be seen by anyone who was watching. The boy in the first story spoke Spanish as a first language, and it was difficult to assess his cognitive skills through language alone, since he was learning English as part of his first school experience. Yet clearly, he made the connection between what he wanted (little bits of paper on his painting) and something that often ended up torn and wadded up (napkins from snack), and solved the problem of having no tissue paper for himself.
Both of the children in my current class made a connection between something they've previously encountered (a teacup, a rainstick) and the materials at hand. These small moments are easy to dismiss, but these are the moments that reveal a child's thinking and learning. This is what they do naturally. If we're not looking for it, we don't see it.
I understand that on a large scale, it is difficult to assess children observationally. It is time and labor-intensive on the adults' part. But what kind of example are we for the children we care for, if our assessments are slapdash, our efforts minimal, our attention somewhere else? What message do we send? It is a message of value: your ideas are not worth investigating, we are only interested in the right answer to an arbitrary series of questions. And so children - who are always making connections - make the connection that value lies in a very superficial measure of their experience (like ignoring all the other kinds of smart). The smartest things I've seen are moments when a child thinks something through, figures something out, goes deep into the soup of their experience to ask, "where have I seen this before? how does it apply to what I'm doing now?"
I'll talk more about those questions another time, in relation to the "other" kinds of smart, since they're just as applicable. For now, I will leave you with a task: think of a time when you made a cognitive leap - when something 'clicked' and you understood something you didn't before. Then think about whether it was something you were tested on or not.
Feel free to share if you'd like.
Better assessment often depends on our own powers of observation: people don't see what they're not looking for, so if you're not looking for a child's ability to make meaningful connections, you'll miss it. Three stories to illustrate my point.
1. The Napkin
The first classroom I ever worked in was a 3-year-old room. One day at the easel, we teachers had put out bits of different colored tissue paper for the kids to stick to their paintings. There was one boy who was very excited to try it, but by the time he got a chance to paint, the tissue paper had been used up by others. His reaction was to stop and look around. He went over to the sink, where we kept the supply of cups and napkins for snack. He grabbed a napkin off the top, tore it and wadded it up all over his painting.
2. The Teacup
The pitchers we use at snack have handles that slide off for easy cleaning. Some of the kids discovered they could take the handle off all by themselves. One boy took the handle and balanced it next to his snack cup. He called me over. "Look! A teacup!!"
3. The Rainstick
One girl in my class loves music. By now I've learned not to worry if I don't see her for five minutes after she comes into school: I know she's gone across the hall to visit, dance, and sing with our music specialist. So one day, she was playing with the periscope from our science center. She'd removed the two mirror pieces at each end, and was looking through it like a spyglass. She spied a pile of bits and bobs from the carpentry table where we were taking apart a computer; she put a few screws and things in the periscope, placed her hands at both ends, and turned to me as she rotated her new invention - "a rainstick. Listen, doesn't it sound like a rainstick?"
So why's that so smart?
When you learn something, you literally make a connection in your brain, a new neural pathway that wasn't there before. What the children did in these stories was make a connection in their brain that could be seen by anyone who was watching. The boy in the first story spoke Spanish as a first language, and it was difficult to assess his cognitive skills through language alone, since he was learning English as part of his first school experience. Yet clearly, he made the connection between what he wanted (little bits of paper on his painting) and something that often ended up torn and wadded up (napkins from snack), and solved the problem of having no tissue paper for himself.
Both of the children in my current class made a connection between something they've previously encountered (a teacup, a rainstick) and the materials at hand. These small moments are easy to dismiss, but these are the moments that reveal a child's thinking and learning. This is what they do naturally. If we're not looking for it, we don't see it.
I understand that on a large scale, it is difficult to assess children observationally. It is time and labor-intensive on the adults' part. But what kind of example are we for the children we care for, if our assessments are slapdash, our efforts minimal, our attention somewhere else? What message do we send? It is a message of value: your ideas are not worth investigating, we are only interested in the right answer to an arbitrary series of questions. And so children - who are always making connections - make the connection that value lies in a very superficial measure of their experience (like ignoring all the other kinds of smart). The smartest things I've seen are moments when a child thinks something through, figures something out, goes deep into the soup of their experience to ask, "where have I seen this before? how does it apply to what I'm doing now?"
I'll talk more about those questions another time, in relation to the "other" kinds of smart, since they're just as applicable. For now, I will leave you with a task: think of a time when you made a cognitive leap - when something 'clicked' and you understood something you didn't before. Then think about whether it was something you were tested on or not.
Feel free to share if you'd like.
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