Many preschool teachers see themselves as                                             

GREAT GRANTORS OF KNOWLEDGE, BENEFICENT BESTOWERS OF BEHAVIOR, and MIGHTY MAVENS OF MANNERS!

whose job it is to impart their personal versions of facts, developmental timetables, and social norms to the little minions in their realms.

NO WAY!

It is our job, our purpose, our mission, to encourage children to use their own bodies, brains, and hearts to explore, discover, and learn HOW to learn. We must be:

Renderers of Resources, telling children where they might find answers and offering them choices in work and play along with opportunities to make and use mistakes
Lenders of Language, asking the children for words, writing and displaying them, and offering words when a child need them
Models of Methods used to solve problems and conflicts appropriately

So, stop answering all their questions; stop using one dimensional one-way-to-do-it worksheets; stop talking quite so much and do more listening; NEVER stop writing and displaying THEIR words; stop making them eat their lunches in a particular order; NEVER push them to the potty; and sometimes let a harmless argument, tantrum, or fuss be solved by the children themselves.

Look at the Big Picture – A good ‘whole child’ curriculum consists of a continuum of Evidence (knowledge of sound child development facts); Expectations (what the children will learn); Environment (provision of physical, emotional, and educational safety); Experiences (how the children will learn); Execution (how the learning is delivered); and Evaluation (measurement of the quality of the learning – were the Expectations met).

Here are the child’s responsibilities in each aspect:

• Evidence – The child has no responsibilities in this area except for his innate natural growth
• Expectations – It is the child’s responsibility (with parent and teacher encouragement) to make efforts to reach the Expectations through curiosity, interest, and participation.
• Environment of Physical Safety – It is the child’s responsibility to developmentally acquire respect for the care of the environment and for the safety of all members of the learning community by growing in the skills of self-regulation.
• Environment of Emotional Safety – It is the child’s responsibility to make attempts to developmentally gain the skills of self-awareness, self-expression, and humanity (bonding, playing, empathy, respect, turn-taking, making friends, cooperating, and caring for others).
• Environment of Educational Safety – It is the child’s responsibility to developmentally acquire the skills to SARA – Select from given work/play options; participate Actively; Reflect, recall, and remember to the best of his ability, how he has taken part; and Apply the learning to new experiences.
• Experiences – It is the child’s responsibility to developmentally acquire the skills to be curious, to show interest, and to take part in the experiences offered.             
• Execution – It is the child’s responsibility to developmentally acquire the skills to regulate his behavior and participate so the learning process can proceed.
• Evaluation – The child has no responsibilities in the formal assessment procedure as no child under the age of eight should be held accountable for determining the measurement of his strengths or needs, BUT teachers must give children the responsibility for making judgement calls when it comes to their WORK. The more approval and satisfaction they get from their WORK, the better off they are in self-esteem and ownership. Instead of you saying “I LOVE IT!” or “GOOD JOB!” try, “DO YOU LOVE IT?” or “WOW! LOOK AT THAT RED!” or “YOU CLIMBED TO THE TOP!” or the best of all, “HOW DID YOU DO THAT?!?!”

Next Blog: Assignment of Responsibilities, Developmentally Speaking

Long, long, long, really long years ago, when television was newer, there was a character on “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis” (about teenagers in the 50-60’s) called Maynard G. Krebs. He was a beatnik – later called hippies, now slackers – who never had a job. Every time another character said the word, “work”, Maynard would do an exaggerated repulsed shudder and yell, “WORK?!?!” It was funny in 1960.

When it comes to young children, there is no better way to build self-esteem and to build your classroom into a cohesive community of learners than to put everyone – EVERYONE – to work every day.

Work engenders ownership and 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 and 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 smarter (and Mission Accomplished!)

It is hard for some teachers to give ownership to very young children. Obviously, the teacher must ALWAYS be present as an integral part of the process by assuring physical and emotional safety, setting the stage, offering concepts and language, encouraging continuous progress by asking the right kinds of questions, and assessing progress and need, but she must know when to step aside and let learning happen.

I call this Hokey-Pokey Teaching – you should know when to put your whole self in and your whole self out.

Some of us find this giving of ownership and assignment of responsibility hard because of our feeling that teachers should be LARGE and IN CHARGE to keep everyone safe and to keep the classroom from becoming chaotic. Many of us feel that giving young children so much independence reflects badly on US and some of us feel the day simply runs more smoothly if the teacher handles everything.

STEP BACK, ladies and gentlemen of the early education persuasion!

It is smarter and easier – though it may be messier and harder to watch on occasion – to give the job of learning to the little learners.

Next Blog: Work II – The Art of Letting Go

 

Every Child, Every Day Has the Right to:

Be greeted daily with a sincerely welcoming and friendly smile with his name spoken in an attitude of warmth, respect, acceptance, and if need be, forgiveness

Be protected from actual or threatened harm and illness and from any emotional injury

Have his name and his family’s name pronounced and written accurately

Have his ethnicity, culture, faith, appearance, gender, and abilities honored and his personal belonging respected and protected

Be offered experiences that develop optimal natural brain growth through opportunities in movement, exploration with the senses, manipulation of appropriate materials, construction, role play, and self-expression

Be offered experiences that are real, relevant, purposeful, and presented within age appropriate time frames using Developmentally Appropriate Practice

Be offered experiences that challenge without frustration, in which learning from errors is accepted and encouraged and through which learning can be repeated and applied

Be offered opportunities for choice, decision-making, and problem-solving

Be read to and offered experiences that develop literacy, math, science, and social studies

Be allowed freedom of expression in a variety of ways without judgment

Be listened to with active listening techniques

Be allowed to learn at his own pace and offered learning options if that pace is either delayed or accelerated from the majority of his fellow learners

Be given opportunities to work alone and work with others

Be given developmentally appropriate responsibility and ownership of his learning, his behaviors, and his role in the community of learners

Be noticed for appropriate behaviors and corrected but forgiven for inappropriate ones

Be sent home daily with a sincerely warm, hopeful, and if need be, forgiving, farewell

 

 

Next Blog: Assignment of Responsibilities – WORK!

 

Special Rights for Special Needs?  The 3 D’s

Each and every child in a class deserves individual attention and an individualized learning plan, but there must be an awarding of uniquely designed rights for children who have diagnosed Disabilities, developmental Delays, or Differences in learning. Some children arrive in the classroom with diagnosed conditions of any of these 3 D’s, while some of these conditions will be discovered by a teacher’s careful assessment of each child using observation, collaboration, documentation, and referral.

We have gone through many changes over the generations in the way educators talk about, look at, treat, and work with children who have one or more of these three D’s. We’ve ignored them, institutionalized them, experimented on them, drugged them, developed therapies for them, excluded them, included them, and renamed them.

In this blog I will refer to the children as 3D Learners and their rights as 3D Rights.

I underline the word diagnosed, because it’s important for classroom teachers NOT to DIAGNOSE or give labels to any of the D’s without professional determination of a child’s individual issues. There is a careful system of determining need and diagnosis and the preschool teacher and the parent are only the first responders. The process begins with observation – non-judgmental observation that does not compare one child to another in any way; moves to collaboration with parent or trusted co-worker; includes documentation of observation; and ends with referral to a professional specialized diagnostician.

It’s Hard – If possible, every 3D child should have his needs met by accommodations within the curriculum. These may include hiring of extra staff or specialized therapists, making facility renovations, altering space and equipment, and providing specialized training for existing staff.  I have encountered situations in which a program cannot afford the special accommodations needed, but every program – public, private, faith-based, or government-funded, should make every effort to grant these rights to 3D children through the use of their own curriculum.

And Sometimes It’s Too Hard – If ALL options have been offered, a program may need to use its referral list for parents to find a program that meets the unique needs of their 3D child.

Sometimes a 3D child will have behaviors that are difficult. If ALL options have been used, when an individual child’s behavior caused by a 3D, does harm to other children or the curricular accommodations being made cause disruption of the learning process in the community, a teacher should realize this and suggest to administrators that her community cannot award the special rights needed with the quality the diagnosed disable, delayed, or learning-different child deserves.

Next Blog: The Early Education Child’s Bill of Rights

 

In creating and maintaining an environment of safety in which the best learning happens, teachers need to use warmth and humor, acceptance and respect (not just tolerance) and must protect the rights of each child to make decisions, express himself, make and use mistakes, and to have ownership of some personal rights. These personal rights are Privacy and Peace, Respect for Belongings and Names, Listening, and Forgiveness. 

Privacy and Peace – Children have a right to privacy when they are feeling singled out for either positive or negative attention during times of natural developmental self-consciousness; and a right to peace when they are anxious, unsure, or hesitant.

Privacy – Teachers need to know ALL children (child development) and to know THEIR children. There are times in their development (18 months, 3 and a half, and sometimes 5 years) when children are naturally hesitant to do things like separate from their parents, join in group play, or ‘perform’ in artistic expression, and there are some children who are simply hesitant by nature.

If there is a problem with separating a child from a parent on arrival at school, respect the parent’s system of separation unless it becomes a HUGE distraction to other children. Use humor, honesty, and distraction (“Sorry you’re sad. Mommy will be back at Noon. Mommy always comes back. Look at this elephant puzzle!” How long should they cry? My advice is to see how the situation affects the child (crying until he throws up or moves into a dangerous tantrum) and the other children. Be patient but be practical.

Always gently and positively encourage a hesitant child. Never put a child on ‘stage’ and insist they perform in order to “make that shyness go away”. This is simply cruel. NEVER label a child “shy” when talking to the child, other children, other teachers, or parents.

Always try to discipline a child in private so he understands he is being reprimanded without being shamed and named. Children who are publicly shamed become sad, have low self-esteem, and may even act out with aggressive behaviors against others in their anger. Shaming makes bullies.

Peace – Always have a safe place in your classroom where a child may retreat – NOT A TIMEOUT, NAUGHTY SPOT, or THINKING CORNER where ‘bad listeners’ go during Circle Time or biters sit when they’ve chomped a classmate’s arm, but a place where a child can read, sleep, listen to music, or play with soft toys when he is missing his mom or feels sad.

Personal Belongings – Some teachers find it difficult to protect and respect a child’s personal belongings as this means putting your opinions about pacifiers, bottles, blankies, and other lovies aside and assuring the child that whatever he brings to school for comfort will be treasured as he treasures it and available to him if he should need it during the day.

Think developmentally on this issue. If an Infant, Baby, Toddler, or Young Two needs his pacifier, he should have it! If an older Two or older child still brings his pacifier to school, let his parents know that it is hard to develop language skills with something in your mouth and tell the child, “I’m sorry. I can’t understand what you’re saying. Put your pacifier in your cubby, please.” Praise appropriately when the binkie is put away. “Ah, look at your wonderful face! I can hear everything you say.”

Since it’s hard to keep up with lots of extra “stuff” during the day, make a rule that if an older child brings a security item to school, he has to be responsible for it during the day. Work with parents on this rule from the beginning of the year. Limit the number of toys brought from home to special days only.

Over the years I have seen children bring security items like blankets, stuffed animals, dryer sheets and lovely pieces of lingerie that smelled like Mommy. One wonderful little gentleman whose parents picked oranges all day long, came to Head Start every day in a suit and tie and kept two pacifiers in his breast pocket – one for himself, and one for his little sister. I can think of no greater love – and that love is to be respected.

Names – Learn to pronounce and spell individual and family names correctly. If a child feels you haven’t the time to learn his name, what does this say about how he sees himself? If you make an error, correct it and apologize. “I am so sorry. I called you the wrong name, didn’t I? Your wonderful name is Dexter!” I learned this from my mother who always greeted her six grandchildren with a hug and said, “You are my favorite grandchild named (Margaret, Robert, Vanessa, Melissa, Stephanie, or Thomas). Worked every time.

Listening and Forgiveness – Two other rights of great value but that are hard to grant during a busy day are to be listened to with active listening techniques and to be forgiven for inappropriate behaviors and given an opportunity to correct them. It takes a BIG big person to give a little person the time, attention, and respect of listening and forgiveness, when the constraints of time and numbers of little people are not always conducive to doing so, but it is well worth your effort and vital for the emotional safety of each and every child.

Next Blog: Special Rights

 

 

 

 

Freedom to Make and Use Mistakes – Children need the freedom to make mistakes in their work and to use them to gain new knowledge. The ‘trial and error’ system is the most natural method of learning. If teachers create a learning environment which allows children to feel all right about making mistakes (and making attempts) and gives them time and opportunity to use those missteps – through the process of elimination – to find the best way to solve problems, they are giving children a lifelong gift.

All scientific discovery of note has been made using this method. The child who can comfortably have an attitude characterized by, “OK, that did not work well. Now I know there must be a different or better way to solve this”, is a child who can better deal with frustration and keep working until a problem is solved.

Wise teachers allow children to make attempts and mistakes without making immediate judgments or corrections. They relax about ‘wrong’ answers and assist both children and parents to understand the importance of trial and error learning which helps children learn strategies for using the mistakes to create new learning challenges. When a child knows what does not work, he knows more about what might work. When he is criticized, over corrected, or punished for mistakes, he is less likely to try again and more likely to either lose interest in an experience or not participate at all for fear of disapproval.

Young children quickly bond with and learn to revere and love teachers who are kind, warm, and offer much for them to enjoy. Five year olds, in particular, will treat the word of the TEACHER as gold, often saying to their parents, “TEACHER says. . . or TEACHER does it this way!” Teachers must assure they are worthy of that reverence by letting each child know that they are always respected in the learning community and that mistakes – in work OR behavior – will not change that respect.

Teachers must learn to use children’s mistakes as well. These missteps in the path to growth are signs that there may be a need to observe more closely, give more individual attention, or make curricular changes. Of course, children need to ‘hear’ about both mistakes and successes so they can be aware of their needs and take ownership of their work (and behavior) and there are many ways to celebrate success.

It’s tempting to use tangible rewards to celebrate these successes, but the best way is to use gestures, smiles, hugs, and praise that encourages intrinsic motivation which is praise that encourages the child to be proud of himself and his accomplishment rather than relying on praise from another person. Instead of saying, “I’m proud of you”, find a way to say, “You must be so proud!”, or “How do you feel about that?”

Tigers, Helicopters, and Trophies, Oh, My! – There is a lot of debate these days among parents, teachers and experts about the different styles of parenting and educating – the Tiger Mom or Tiger Teacher pushes her children to do better than other children and refuses to praise or even accept work that is of “lesser’ standard quality. The non-competition-everybody-gets-a trophy system unrealistically praises all children equally and plays down individual strengths. The Helicopter philosophy describes a parent or teacher so concerned about both safety and failure that they hover over a child, often doing much for him that the child needs to learn to do for himself.

Use common sense. Somewhere between the tiger teacher, the /nobody’s a loser’, and the helicopter, is the right place to be. Set standards and have high expectations for each child, but allow each one the freedom to find his own way of problem-solving; give his attempts and errors respect before correcting them; give him time and opportunity to correct them himself; never make snap judgments about mistakes or use them for diagnosis of a severe problem without a great deal observation, collaboration, and referral to a professional diagnostician; and adopt a relaxed attitude about “deadlines” in child development.

Next Blog: Some Special Rights

 

We’re talking about creating emotional safety by guaranteeing the rights of freedom of choice, freedom of expression, freedom to make and use mistakes, and some personal and special rights.      Let’s look at Expression and Mistakes         

Express Yourself! – Expression is not merely talking, it is demonstrating learning and using gesture, sound, words, movement, sensory exploration, manipulation, construction, role play, and the arts to show all the aspects of self in body, mind, and spirit. Expression is a skill that includes articulation of personal need (Baby is hungry, so Baby cries); imitation of adults, others, nature, and media; use of words; conversations with others; the arts; and finally use of written words.

Each and every child must feel good about how and what he thinks, what he says and how he says it, what he can (and cannot) do, how he moves, and how he feels, For the teacher, there are two components to assuring this freedom – provision of the opportunity to express and acceptance of that expression.

Every day every child must have an opportunity to express himself by showing interest in and taking part in the experiences offered to him, and then talking, dancing, singing, drawing, writing, or recreating the learning he gained from the experience.

There must be opportunities for expression physically through dance, role play, music, song, and movement (on and off the playground). There must be opportunities for expression intellectually through the sharing of words, thoughts, plans, opinions, and appropriate humor. There must be opportunities for expression emotionally through group and cooperative play and by being given responsibilities for maintaining the learning environment. Expression through art is vital on a daily basis as art is physical, intellectual, and emotional expression.

But That’s Only the Beginning – Not only must those opportunities for expression be offered on a daily basis, but there must be full acceptance and respect for the expression and attempted expressions of each child. Acceptance of expression is not as easy as it sounds. Often we are so focused on “right” answers that when a child expresses himself in a way that doesn’t seem to fit those answers (he colors outside the lines, figuratively and literally, or “thinks outside the box”) we miss the value of his learning or fail to recognize it as learning at all.

Recognizing Learning – We need to very carefully and expectantly listen to and observe our children in the personal and individualized expressions of their comprehension. When we get ourselves stuck in that narrow place that only recognizes learning as successful when it meets our written standards or when we do not accept and respect the ‘offbeat’ expressions, we often miss the fact that successful learning has occurred.

Collins and Glover (authors of a number of books and articles from Heinemann Press) say that children’s expressions and attempts at expression and skills must be “Noticed, Named, and Honored”. I love this way of stressing the importance of seeing REAL learning, giving it a name or explaining to the child what he has accomplished, and then giving that learning recognition as REAL and of importance.

Children who express themselves “differently” from the standard expectations are sometimes not given credit for having learned when in reality they have REALLY, REALLY gained knowledge and are even moving that learning to a new level. Pay attention to the “odd” ways some children have of expressing their knowledge or out of the box ways some have of doing things.

I had a Two who said, “I not ready to go outside. I only have on one cloe.” It took me a minute to realize that she had grasped the rule of English grammar that says adding an “s” to most words make them plural and she was telling me that she didn’t have enough clothes on to go to the cool playground. This was not just ‘cute’ and not ‘wrong’, but a very real learned concept to be recognized as a high level language skill!

Next blog:  The Right to Make and Use Mistakes

Participation – (NOTE: Not IF to work, but WHERE and HOW to work). Every day every child must be given opportunities to choose what he wishes to work with within the limited choices you make available to him. The ability to select, act, reflect, and apply his learning (SARA) through the process is vital to cognitive development. Plan, Do Review, Vygotsky!

More rigid conformity to an academic routine determined only by the teacher or the curriculum comes later along the developmental journey to kindergarten and there are many ways a creative teacher can encourage a child to try new experiences or to expand his interests and take part in a variety of experiences.

 There’s Always a Herbie Blockbuilder – If a child chooses the same activity daily for weeks at a time, the teacher needs to alter the presentation of the experience to “squeeze” appropriate learning from it. This is the method of meeting need by using strength and creating relevant child-centered or personal–interest learning while still meeting the standards or objectives of your curriculum. Change the work by encouraging him to count, stack, arrange and sort the blocks to build math skills, use letter blocks to make words for literacy, build an igloo for social studies, paint them for art, and make some blocks from other materials for science. If a child only chooses to play in the Dress up Center, make sure there are non-structured* props for creative role play that can be used in a variety of ways suited to concept-building themes matching the strength expectations.

*When I say “non-structured” I mean raw, creative, open-ended materials, not Disney Princess dresses and plastic Kim Kardashian pumps!

Three Examples of Choices That Are Sometimes Hard to Grant:

Separation System – You respectfully suggest, but he and Mom choose

Behavior Bartering – “You need to get off that table NOW! Can you get down by yourself, or shall I help you?”

Authentic Art – Art projects must be completely child created or they are not art.  No teacher should ever alter a child’s original art in any way make any decision about how the creation looks. HANDS OFF!

Offering Choices, Developmentally Speaking    

Infant, Baby or Young Toddler – verbalize both your offer and his choice so you’re developing both cognitive and language skills. “Look, Baby. Here’s a teddy bear and a rattle.” When baby makes his choice, reaches, and grasps, “You picked the soft teddy bear.”

Older Toddlers – verbalize your offer and his choice and encourage him to point at his choice, repeat your words, or ask him to say words of his own. “Toddler, show me what you want to play with.” When he points, “You want the truck. Can you say, ‘truck’?”

Twos – verbalize your offer and his choice and more firmly ask for words. “Two, do you want to play in the water table or build with blocks?” If he points to the water table say, “.” This lets you asses his skills in both receptive language, in which a child shows the understanding of what is said, and expressive language, in which a child repeats or originates words or phrases. Receptive – “Do you want the truck or the puppet?” When child points to truck, say, “You want the truck?” and the child nods affirmatively. Expressive – “What do you want to play with?” When child says, “Truck”, say “Good talking. You wanted the truck.” Help Twos recall their choices later in the day to build skills of memory and expression. “Remember this morning when we were playing with those things with the wheels, those. . .” and hopefully Two says, “Trucks!”

Threes – verbalize a more general offer and gently insist on words. “Three, tell me what you want to do first today.” Threes need to give verbal answers rather than merely point or gesture, but respect the gesture and note the need (do some assessment) to verbalize so expressive skills can be worked on. Later in the day, ask Threes to verbally recall (reflection) what they worked with. Take dictation of their reflection and post it or save it in the child’s portfolio.

Fours and Fives – verbalize your offer and firmly insist on a verbal expression of choice. “Four, tell me which Center you are going to work in first and what are you going to do (make, play with) there?” When Four answers verbally, make a positive comment on his choice (“Sounds like a neat idea.”) or ask a question that encourages further learning (“How many blocks do you think that will take?”). Later in the day, Fours and Fives should be asked to verbally or representationally (through journaling or drawing) recall their actions and reflect on any learning that took place.

Next blogs: Protection of Rights – Expression

 

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

 

To Create Emotional Safety with Acceptance and Respect, We Must:

• Understand developmental nature and ‘typical’ behaviors so that a child’s actions are also understood and accepted as natural rather than “bad”                    
• Have realistic expectations so you don’t overtly express disappointment or compare child to child when a difference in development occurs                      
• Accept each child for who he is right here and now, and not what you wish or think he “should be” or “should be doing by now”                                      
• Place no conditions on acceptance of each and every child, no matter who he is, what he does, what he looks like, or what and how he speaks            
• Show disapproval of unsafe behaviors, but never of a child himself. It’s, “NO BITE”, not, “BAD BOY!”              
• Allow freedom of expression, and the freedom to make errors without reprimand, critique, or judgment. All humans learn by making and correcting mistakes.  
• Accept a child’s answers, attempts, and successes without judgment or immediate correction – “Almost. Good try. Think again. You did it!”              
• Respect each child’s decisions and choices unless they are harmful – even if he chooses only to play with the blocks every day every day for six weeks. (Change the blocks, not the kid.)        
• Practice active listening with each child every day by getting down on his physical level and making eye contact, giving undivided attention when a child speaks or attempts to communicate, restating what the child says, asking questions, and creating a personal learning connection.

Behaviorism – The Hidden Prejudice

It is extremely rare that good teachers are openly bigoted or racist, but even in classrooms led by great teachers, who are human beings effected by stress, fatigue, frustration, and their desire to keep their community of learners safe and the learning process successful, there is a form of discrimination I call “Behaviorism”. It is the prejudice teachers have for children who exhibit inappropriate, annoying, and sometimes harmful behaviors on a regular basis or children about whom a teacher might have preconceived ideas and feelings about based on past experience with the child or members of his family.

Be honest – there is always a child (or two or three) in the community who exhibit very unattractive behaviors on a daily basis – the child whom a teacher secretly wishes might catch a mild case of the sniffles once in a while, but who has a perfect attendance record – the child whose name immediately comes to mind when there is a loud crash of noise or a cry from another student – the child whose parent is difficult to deal with – the child whose sibling was a difficult student in the past.

Without realizing it, teachers may express a bias against a misbehaving child as if the behaviors were as integral a part of the child’s identity as his race, gender, faith, or family rather than judging the behaviors as indicators of either normal developmental stages or symptoms of need for attention or correction. Teachers may even unwittingly express their behaviorism in terms and actions that are just as damaging to the child’s self-esteem as are racial or religious biases.

Some of the more subtle self-esteem crushers teachers might use are facial expressions, eye rolling, frowning, grimacing, and body postures such as turning away from a child, hands on hips, arms folded across the chest that say to the child, “AGH! You again! What is WRONG with you? Why can’t you behave?” Children are not stupid. They feel this rejection from the earliest ages and their sensitivity and vulnerability to emotional damage is intense and must be taken into consideration at every turn.

Some less obvious expressions of behaviorism are automatically calling a child’s name in a harsh manner, blaming him for causing incidents before investigating the facts, constantly “over watching” him to make sure he is not misbehaving, and sharing negative feelings about him in unprofessional ways with colleagues.

Some actions even effect educational methods a teacher may use, like ignoring a child’s needs, comments, questions, and attempts at learning; constantly harping on him, pressuring him or over correcting him; and having unrealistic expectations – either too high or too low – for the child’s skill attainment based on his behavior rather than his actual, factual intelligence or fitness.

To reduce behaviorism in your community of learners:

• Know what behaviors are natural and normal stages of development and which ones are a shout out for attention or symptoms of a serious need
• Use a developmentally appropriate behavior management system that will reduce truly harmful behaviors
• Learn to relax about behaviors that are merely unattractive and silly
• Never label a child by his behaviors
• Never let a child feel you are giving up on him, even if his behaviors are very difficult
• Understand that reluctance to fully and immediately embrace differences is human, but agree that discrimination and prejudice are simply wrong
• Be aware of any personal negative feelings and actions you may unwittingly express
• Create an environment of emotional safety for each and every child and create a community of earners for all of them
• Remember that zero tolerance is for the behavior the child exhibits, not for the child himself

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