Some teachers get into the early ed business because they want to TEACH and SHARE KNOWLEDGE and MAKE THINGS BETTER, all with the greatest of good intentions. I say, also with the best of intentions, BACK OFF! Our purpose as teachers of children from birth to 8, is to set it up, make it safe, get out of the way, and LET LEARNING HAPPEN.

Real Learning – Real Learning happens through SARA – Selection, Action, Reflection, and Application. If learning is to be of the highest quality and the greatest value, THE CHILD must be the center, the composer, the playwright, the ‘boss’ of it. Teachers need to learn to let learning come from the child’s choices and the child’s self-determined methods of Movement, Sensory Exploration, Manipulation, Construction (and destruction), Role Play, and Expression.

Learning happens all day long in the early ed community, because children learn something from everything they experience, but Center or Choice Time is the traditional meat of the learning sandwich. It should take place for at least one-third of the day’s schedule. It is that STAGED but not ORCHESTRATED time in which children and teachers share in the experience of purposeful play (using the methods listed above).

During Center/Choice Time teachers need to:

• Observe and Listen
• Narrate the Action as Needed
• Keep Their Hands and Personal Opinions to Themselves
• Ask the Right Kinds of Questions*
• Document the Learning that Happens**

*Always giving a child immediate answers and facts without encouraging his own research through play, is both presumptuous and wrong. Ask, Don’t Tell. The right kinds of questions are open-ended and ask what, how, who, and what would happen if.   What are you working on? How did you make that? Who might use that? What would happen if you . . . ? Questions that require one-word answers have their place, but they are limited in value. They determine proof of memory, speech, and recognition skills, but they do not determine proof of real (SARA) learning.

**Document the learning AND THE PROGRESS OF THE LEARNING by writing down the child’s words, taking pictures of the action and any product the child creates from the action, and displaying the words and works for the child, the other children, and any classroom visitors to see. Put post-it notes and Word Walls up with the children’s words so they can begin to make the action-object-language-print connection. Encourage them to record these moments in their journals through drawings and beginning, personal, original, phonetic or pretend writing. Make notes of the learning in their portfolios and share with parents and on ‘formal’ assessment report forms.

It is hard for teachers whose hearts are in the right place and who want so much to share and care for young children to remove themselves a bit from the learning process, but if you want to engender real and high quality learning, play Mother, May I and take one giant step back.

 

 

 

Rules – Many programs have detailed written policies for teachers to follow, most of which (rightfully so) deal with physical safety and health. Within a program, teachers should follow these health and safety policies to the letter without question.

But let’s talk about classroom rules. Some teachers LOVE rules and they create one for EVERY possible situation that may arise. Others see no need for stated rules of behavior and simply deal with situations as they arise. As with most things, the mid-point is the smartest place to be.

Rules on Rules – Classroom rules should be developmentally appropriate; agreed upon by parents, teachers, and children old enough to have input; consistently enforced whenever possible; practical and useful – with rules of safety being the most strictly enforced; simple and practical and limited to common sense situations (not nitpicky regulations for imagined worries that may not occur); and they should be stated and written positively, telling the children what TO DO, not just what not to do.

Developmental appropriateness is the rule for all things preschool. Whenever possible – and as possible as often – children should be involved in rule writing. Even two-year-olds can begin to take part. Hence the rules in my room one year included, among others:

• Be Nice
• No Taking Toys
• No Tee Tee on Thomas (or anyone else)
• If you gonna’ ‘flow up’, ‘flow up’ at home

When children are involved in making the rules, there is more ownership of the behaviors. This does not mean there will be fewer unattractive behaviors, it’s just another way of instilling ownership and creating an environment of child-centeredness. The benefits of ownership for young children are these:

• When they have ownership of their bodies, they learn to use them more appropriately and to protect them with safety, nutrition, and health
• When they have ownership of their environment, they learn to respect & care for it
• When they have ownership of their actions and behaviors, they learn to be more aware of the consequences of those actions
• When they have ownership of their attempts and their mistakes, they learn to keep trying
• When they have ownership of their decisions, they learn to make better ones
• When they have ownership of the learning process, they become increasingly self-sufficient, independent, and more successful as students and human beings
• Psst! – (Two more secret side effects of ownership and responsibility are that the greater the ownership, the better the behaviors and the better you look to parents during Teacher Appreciation Week).

Rules need to make sense to the children; need to be followed by the whole class and consistently enforced by the adults; should be posted (even in non-reading classrooms) for referral; and even though NO! is a fine word, to be saved for instances where physical safety is in peril, rules should be stated positively so they tell the children what TO DO, not just what NOT TO DO.

Remember that the word, “DON’T” is confusing for young children. They may not even hear that word itself, but will recognize the verb after the “don’t”, and many times do the exact opposite of what the teacher intends. Saying, “Don’t Run!” often results in a stampede of two-year-old marathon sprinters headed for the finish line.

So, let’s review:

• Be Nice
• Be a Friend
• Pee Pee in the Potty
• If You Are Sick, Please Stay at Home

 

YOU MAY NOT CARE FOR THIS ONE, BUT:

There is a lot of information floating around about early education classroom design. There are hundreds of blogs, websites, and articles that show photos of classrooms designed like imaginary lands of enchantment with hanging strings of holiday lights and boughs of branches artistically placed to create an aura of wonder and fantasy as if the room will be inhabited by little elves and pixies working as shoemakers and giggling in whispery voices.

Two of the absolute best of these sites is Fairy Dust Teaching, which, in spite of its sort of ethereal name, is one of the most practical and best research-based sites for early learning I have found, and Stimulating Learning from Rachel. Both are outstanding in their advice on developmentally appropriate practice and suggestions for the use of natural, raw materials in preschool environments. I often share their posts with teachers I train.

• https://fairydustteaching.com
• http://stimulatinglearning.co.uk/

BUT – While some of these environments are absolutely beautiful and I would love to live this way myself, LET’S GET REAL. We do not live or teach in the kingdom of Pinterest or in Never Never Land. The classroom environment must be inviting and attractive and provocative (in the Reggio Emilia sense of the word) to THE CHILDREN, not to our adult interpretation of the child’s interests and preferences.

In the US, we rely far too much on Walt Disney and our favorite school supply catalogue for primary colored plastic furniture and Winnie the Pooh decor. We also overdo it in the amount of ‘stuff’ we display for the children. In the UK (where I’m beginning to think the local fire codes are fairly lax) they seem to make more use of natural and raw materials and the shelves hold a quite modest amount of equipment and materials.

Either way, it is not for our own or the parents’ eye that we should be designing the physical environment. It is for the children. Look at your room from their perspective and observe how they use the space and the materials. Arrange furniture for practical use. Stop somewhere between the US and the UK (mid-Atlantic Ocean, maybe) and create spaces in which the children’s work and words cover the walls, not Walt’s; spaces that are safe and follow all your local fire codes; spaces that use natural, raw materials but aren’t staged like a production of Lord of the Rings.

An old local tv commercial in Orlando, FL, had a gangly, bald-headed man who used to come out of his store and say, ‘TIRES AIN’T PRETTY!’, but he used to sell a LOT of tires. Classrooms do not have to be princess-pretty. They need to be safe, practical, and appealing to little girls and boys who need to move freely; taste, smell, touch, hear, and see stuff; mess with stuff; build, break, and rebuild with stuff; pretend with raw stuff; and express themselves in Reggio’s 100 languages

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