More on Emotional Safety – For the emotional environment to be safe and the learning process to be as proficient as possible, each child must be guaranteed certain rights, These freedoms are choice, expression, the freedom to make and use mistakes, and some special rights that may not occur to us so easily. Let’s start with Freedom of Choice.

Freedom of Choice – The empowerment of free choice improves self-esteem, increases intelligence, and develops the ability to solve problems, work both cooperatively and independently, and to feel good about school. It takes both child development knowledge and patience to allow and wait for children to make their own decisions choices, but it is one of the most important techniques a teacher employs.

A Little SARA – I like a curriculum that mandates that the day be full of learning experiences arranged in a system I call SARA, for Selection, Action, Reflection, and Application, which calls for each child to select his area of work or the tools for work, to take action in the experience, to be given time to reflect on the work that took place, and then to apply the knowledge or skill to new use.

Yes, this is similar to High Scope’s “Plan, Do, and Review”, but it adds the element of Application of learned skills to new learning or practical use that Lev Vygotsky (google him) taught. So SARA is like a continuing joyous conga line of “Plan, Do, Review, Vygotsky! Plan, Do, Review, Vygotsky!”

The act of selection involves skills in all areas of development. For an infant to reach for a toy, he must see or hear it (fitness); determine interest (reason, logic, and self-awareness) by either showing curiosity (intelligence) or by recalling (cognition/memory) how he felt when he last played with it. He may be influenced by its color (art), texture or taste (science), size or shape or how it fit in his hand or mouth (math). He has to figure out how to grasp it (problem-solving) and he has to reach, grasp, lift, hold, and manipulate it (skills of fitness/gross motor/strength and fine motor/hand-eye coordination). Whew! In a matter of seconds, his brain has created millions of connections. Connections mean learning, so choosing means learning.

Set Some Limits – Teachers must limit available choices to meet developmentally appropriate stages as far as safety, health, level of frustration, and sometimes, time constraints. A child may choose activities, equipment, materials, and experiences from an appropriately limited number of options. He can play on the monkey bars, the swings, or in the sandbox, but he may not choose to leave the playground. She may paint on the easel or the paper, but not on the wall. He may build a farm, a house, a building, or a bridge with the blocks, but he may not throw them. She may put her jacket on by herself or with help, but she may not choose to go outside without it. He may have his diaper changed now or in two minutes, but his diaper will be changed. Here are some areas where children can and should make choices:

Eating and Sleeping – Children can be encouraged, invited, persuaded, lulled, even bribed and tempted to eat and sleep, but cannot and should not be forced to do so. Offer an option to sleeping like resting on the mat with a book or music of choice on a headset. If there are enough staffers, when the sleepers are asleep, take the non-sleepers for a walk.

NEVER force feed any child. Offer only nutritious foods. Encourage parents to send in nutritious food, but do not make value judgments by insisting children eat ‘your’ way or the ‘right’ way. Juice sometimes fills tummies, so serve food first, then add juice or water when some food has been eaten. Do not serve “reward desserts”. Do not insist that children eat their food in a particular order. Allow and encourage choices to be made and use meal times as learning experiences. Say, “Do you want two carrots or three?” Use “I” messages and role modeling such as, “I LOVE butter beans! How many do you have on your plate? You are three years old. Can you eat three butter beans?” Encourage parents to allow children to make choices about the food they bring to school (from only nutritious items) so the children have more ownership of their preferences and may even eat all they have chosen.

 Diapers and Potty – Encourage but never force bathroom issues. Unless there is a diaper or underpants emergency of an extreme nature, give the baby or toddler some verbal warning before scooping him up for a change. Five more minutes of concentrated attention span-building play is much more important than diapers changed at exactly ten o’clock. Give older children verbal warnings as well – “Three, almost your turn in the potty. Do you want to go now or in five minutes? Your choice, Pal.”

Self-help Skills – Allow children to choose whether they will try to dress, button, zip, tie, wash hands, etc, with or without your help and only assist if they become frustrated. Yes, this is time-consuming and sometimes tedious, but it is VERY important for self-esteem, skill building, independence and empowerment.

Next Blog: More Choices