Watch Out for Bigfoot! – I live in the rural Midwest half the year and love to walk through the woods. Once I heard a rustling sound on my walk. When I stopped, it stopped. When I walked faster, it did the same. I ran for the house, sure a big bear or hairy woods monster was hot on my trail. When I got home and heard the same sound as I ran up the stairs, I realized I was hearing the sound of my big fat thighs rubbing together in my big fat walking shorts. No Bigfoot to blame – just me. If you are looking for the cause of General Troubles (aide to General Chaos) in your learning community – disruptive behaviors that happen on a consistent, continuing, and daily basis with more than just one or two of your children – the problem may be you.

Salute! – If there are consistent and continual harmful behaviors happening with a large majority of a class, the teacher needs to look at the safety of the physical, emotional, and educational environment she has created. It could be a problem with General Chaos – we all know him well. He visits classrooms on rainy days, picture day, and “Oh, Look! Melissa’s grandma is here with two piñatas and a clown for her birthday!” days.

What to Look For – When disruptive and harmful behaviors are widespread in the community of learners, teachers need to review the quality of the environment they have created. Each facet of environment must be reassessed:

Physical:  security, safety, cleanliness, maintenance, lighting, air, nutrition, health, firm limits on harmful behaviors, and use of a good behavior management system

Emotional: warmth, humor, acceptance, respect, protection of rights, assignment of responsibilities, celebrations, and strong family connections

Educational: professionalism and training of staff; suitability of setting; and organization of systems of the learning process  

There’s Always a Thomas or Two – (I use the name Thomas for all my examples of questionable behavior because I have a personal family Thomas and do not want to offend any sensitive Teachers of Thomases or parents of Thomases). If you have a child who eight times out of ten is the cause of disruption of the learning process for the whole class – the one the other children tell their parents about; the one whose name you seem to find yourself calling out daily in a negative voice; the one who loves and secretly works for General Chaos – be kind. He needs your positive attention when he’s doing something right (notice and compliment him when he’s breathing really well if you can find nothing else uplifting to say). Hire him away from the General and give him a difficult, distracting job like Napkin Captain or Chair Washer so the rest of your community can carry on with learning.

Looking for a behavior management system that may help? Here comes VMAN!

Next Blog: VMAN! Superhero of the Preschool!

 

 

 

Moving on to the Big D (Discipline) – One of the foundations of Maria Montessori’s work was the concept of keeping the children safe from harmful behaviors and it is still the essence of the safe learning environment. Harmful behaviors are behaviors that hurt or threaten to hurt anyone in the community of learners or behaviors which completely disrupt the learning process. Teachers must set appropriate, firm and consistent limits on unsafe behaviors and follow the discipline techniques or behavior management system mandated by their program.

Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff – There are many behaviors that may be annoying, irritating, distasteful, and unattractive, but they are NOT HARMFUL. So often teachers spend lots of time reacting to behaviors that need little or no reaction at all. This is a waste of time and attention, and often causes the minor infractions and annoying behaviors to increase.

You need to know the difference between behaviors that are harmful and truly disruptive of the learning process and those which may be considered negative, but are most often developmentally appropriate for the child’s age, cause little harm to the community or to the learning process, and are most often merely unattractive.

Remember, these are little people who put beans in their ears and remove things from their nostrils and hand them to you with pride. Manners are NOT their strong suit. Spend time and attention on truly harmful behaviors and treat the merely unattractive behaviors that my dear Southern mama insisted on calling, “unfortunate”, with little or no attention at all. Like Elsa, from Frozen, LET IT GO!”

Like They Do on Reruns of MASH and that Dr. McDreamy Show – Behavior “triage” is necessary and knowledge of child development milestones and familiarity with your program’s Strength Expectations (goals, standards, objectives) are the best assets in this process. Triage is usually used as a medical system of looking at injured, wounded, or ill persons and determining which of them needs to be cared for first. Behavior triage does the same thing.

‘Meh’ Behaviors – If a behavior is typical of a developmental phase, is necessary for development to continue to the next phase, does no damage or harm to a child, another person, materials, or equipment, and does not harm the learning process, other than being unattractive or irritating, (nose picking, all table manner issues, loud voices, giggling, not listening, etc.) there’s no need to deal with it as a big issue. Ignore it, distract from it, or calmly redirect the child’s attention to another action.

‘Ahem! or Psst! Behaviors – If a behavior is developmentally typical and necessary, but causes a disruption to the learning process, or minor harm to anyone or anything (sand or toy throwing at random, occasional running in line, interrupting when excited, whining, pushing or hitting without damage, coloring on walls or books, etc.) it needs to be dealt with appropriately by use of the methods in an appropriate behavior management system. Privately remind child of the rules and impose a consequence if repeated.

‘NO!’ Behaviors – If a behavior is not typical of normal development, is extreme and harmful to physical safety, and happens on a regular basis (throwing toys with aim, hitting, biting, scratching, pinching, running away, using threatening language) it must be dealt with immediately. FIRMLY STOP the action and remove the child or impose a consequence. If a truly harmful behavior recurs or increases in severity, both teachers and parents should begin to assess these behaviors to determine their cause and find a way to eliminate them with administrators supporting appropriate actions to be taken (referral to outside resources, curtailing attendance, or creating options in staffing).

Other than that they are very young and very human, there are many reasons for children to exhibit ugly behaviors. If there are consistent and continual harmful behaviors happening with an individual child, the teacher, parents, and possibly outside resource persons need to look at the causes in the three major learning areas of body, mind, and spirit.

 

How Many?!?!? – The most ‘doable’ of the physical safety issues are that of providing adequate space for the number of children, maintaining adult-child ratios, and strictly mandating careful supervision of children. Common sense tells us young children must have ample indoor and outdoor space to move their active bodies because physical movement and manipulative action is how they learn best.When I first began working in early childhood education, (at a private daycare in the 70’s) I more than occasionally had sole supervisory responsibility for between 20 and 30 Twos!!!  

It cannot be said strongly enough – young children MUST be watched constantly.The regulations on adult-child ratios in preschool and child care programs have improved enormously in the past years, and although they can be tedious to follow to the letter on every occasion, they are completely necessary, essential, and crucial.  

It’s easy to say and hard to do, but you have to show you CARE. Many accidents are preventable if the adults responsible use their knowledge of child development and their common sense. Use the CARE system:

• Count the children often.  It takes only minutes to get into mischief that could be troublesome or dangerous.
• Always expect the unexpected.  Young children do not always think of the consequences of their actions and their natural curiosity can move them into unsafe situations. Peas up the nose & legos in their ears!                                                                                                     
• Review resources.  Keep emergency communications ready – easy access to help from 911, poison control, animal control, and the administrative office or nurse.  Keep charts of first aid, CPR, Choking and Universal Precautions posted and available indoors and outdoors and always have a first aid kit handy.                                                  
• Examine the environment carefully and constantly.  Look for obvious dangers and hidden ones like rusty swing chains, splintery uncovered plugs, electrical wires, broken equipment, trash or debris, nonedible plants, and tippable furniture. Less easily handled, is the fact that teachers must set appropriate, firm and consistent limits on unsafe behaviors and must follow the discipline techniques or behavior management system mandated by their program. In the next blog we’ll look at a good system to use.

Just Sayin’ – It may seem silly to write about such obvious safety factors, but I still see some surprising and disappointing things happen in programs of all kinds with children from all kinds of families, so I have no problem reminding my readers of the need for simple common sense safety.

Less easily handled, is the fact that teachers must set appropriate, firm and consistent limits on unsafe behaviors and must follow the discipline techniques or behavior management system mandated by their program. In the next few blogs, we’ll talk about that.

Next Blog: Data About Discipline

 

 

My Motto? – If they come to school alive, send them home the same way!

Physical Safety is provided by maintaining a safe physical environment, by the provision of security, by the promotion of good health and nutrition, (which we’ll cover in this blog) and by mandating firm limits on unsafe  behaviors and using an appropriate and effective system of behavior management all along the journey.

There is nothing more basic than keeping each and every child safe from physical harm on a constant basis by physically maintaining the cleanliness of all play and work areas, having all staff trained in first aid and CPR, connecting closely with first responder agencies, designing and strictly following emergency plans, practicing emergency drills, and carrying out safe arrival and pick-up procedures.

Been There, Been Called That – In my days as a director, I was called many names, but my favorite was, “Safety Queen” (I can’t repeat here what some angry parents actually called me, but it harkened back to WWII Germany, and had to do with my ardor for safety in the Car Circle). Here are some statements I found myself making over the years:  “Mr. Daddy, I need you to hold Toddler’s hand in the parking lot”.  “Dr. Grandfather, your granddaughter needs to be in the back seat in her car seat, not in your lap helping you drive”; “Sorry, Mrs. Just-Three-Blocks-Away, I cannot let your five-year-old walk your two-year-old home from school”;  “Mr. Officemanager, I know you’re busy on that cellphone, but your three-year-old cannot hang out of the car sunroof like that”; and,  “Sorry, Uncle 20-Something, I will not put your nephew in the car with that weed cloud around your head.” I was tough and expected my staff to be the same.

Be Brave – Staff must be assertive, even aggressive when it comes to security. Teachers must be strong in confronting strangers on campus. Never, NEVER let an unidentified person into a classroom or remove a child from a program without written identification. Grrr! Teachers who are hesitant or embarrassed to confront strangers on campus make me mad.

It’s a Sign of the Times – It also makes me mad and terribly sad that we must practice lockdown drills in preschools these days, but this is our life in 2016, so practice drills of all kinds in a mood of firm but calm reassurance.

Be Firm – As far as health is concerned, the real responsibility for a child’s health is that of his parent, but teachers can model, teach, and encourage good health and hygiene and can keep the children in their care healthy at school by mandating health standards.  Every program must have a written policy on illness that states precisely what symptoms are worthy of a child being dismissed from school.  Obviously if a child shows any sign of infection or contagion, parents should be notified immediately and the child should be dismissed into the parent’s care.

Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes – Every child should be observed discreetly upon arrival, looking for notable signs of illness or injury.  Teachers may even document this for the purpose of comparing a child whose physical appearance may deteriorate later in the day.  As the day progresses teachers should observe for changes in appearance or behavior that might be symptomatic of illness. Obviously, if a child is injured or shows sign of serious illness requiring immediate emergency assistance, 911 should be called. 

There must be a space for sick children to be isolated from classmates until he is removed from school.  Administrators must support teacher use of the mandated procedures. Often teachers do not feel supported by administrators in this area, but they should not have to ask twice for a Director or Receptionist to call the parent of a truly sick child to remove the child from school.

Green Means Go – Runny noses are constant among young children.  If the discharge is clear, no problem.  If it is yellow, watch for oncoming infection.  If it is green, send the child home or ask parent for a written statement that the child is free from infection.  Insist, if possible, that any child who has a fever, diarrhea, any unidentified rash or has been on an antibiotic for less than 48 hours, be taken to an isolation space or sent home.  The most common go-homers – and sometimes school-closers – are pink eye, head lice, worms (ring or pin), impetigo, and varying viral illnesses with upper respiratory and intestinal symptoms.  Know their symptoms and react accordingly.

Food Issues – The three components of safe nutrition are nutritious foods served by the program, nutritious foods brought in by parents, and nutrition education for staff, parents, and children. It is not a teacher’s responsibility to be the food police, forcing children to eat or not eat certain foods or determining what order foods are to be eaten, but it is our job to serve nutritious food and to educate parents respectfully when food from home is not healthy.

You Can’t Win ‘Em All – I remember a child who used to come to school every morning with a Dunkin’ Donut sprinkle-covered pastry and a 12 oz. bottle of Coca Cola for breakfast. One of my teachers wept and worried over this child for four years before accepting the fact that she could not change the situation. (Needless to say, the Dunkin’ & Coke breakfast did not serve this child well and she had behavioral, health, and educational troubles for years, but we must keep respectful limits – and personal nutritional concerns are one of them).

 

Next Blog: Physical Safety II – Take Care

DUH! – We know that the foundation for a good early learning program curriculum, is the Evidence of all the common sense theories on basic child development and that of all of the reliable past studies and all of the findings of all the latest research on learning and the human brain. ALL of them say the same thing. (For many experienced practitioners in our field, there is a similar reaction to reading the newest studies on child development and learning. It is a shaking of the head and the shouting of a big fat “DUH!” We’ve been saying, shouting, writing, singing, and preaching this for years.

Here is what we know from the best in the business: Optimum Learning takes place in an Environment of Physical, Emotional, and Educational Safety.

Young children learn best when they are healthy, well fed, and free from physical harm. DUH!

Young children learn best when they have daily realistic affirmation of their self-esteem and when they feel comfortable in a close-knit connected community of learners. DUH!

Young children learn best when they can actively manipulate materials in an environment where there is a professional well-trained staff, an appropriate physical setting, and an organized system of education. DUH!

When I say ‘safety’ I do not mean coddled, protected, and helicoptered over. Brain research also tells us that learning happens during times of challenge and risk and that both overprotectiveness on the teacher’s part and lack of independence on the child’s part inhibit learning. I am talking about creating an environment in which the basic physical, emotional, and educational safety nets are in place.

Don’t Just take My Word for It – Ask the neuroscientists at Cornell and Harvard. Take a look at the best early education curricula like High Scope, Bank Street, and Creative Curriculum. Read the work of Montessori and Malaguzzi.

Look at the best days in your own classrooms. You will find that your children’s brains work best when their bodies are well, their hearts are happy, and their heads and hands are busy with learning experiences that allow them to move; use their senses to explore; manipulate age appropriate “stuff”; construct and build; imagine and imitate through role play; and express themselves through language and the arts.

So? – The questions then, become:

#1. How do we, as teachers who understand and believe in Developmentally Appropriate Practice, (DAP) convince parents, administrators, legislators, well-meaning rich folk (talking to you, Bill Gates) and those making vast amounts of money from the creation, sale, and evaluation of our children’s learning through standardized tests, that the provision of realistic age appropriate SAFETY is what determines the quality of learning for children under eight?

We must stay strong in our beliefs and share them as often as possible with the parents of our students. We must invite them into our classrooms and educate them. We must respect them and include them in all we are doing now and we must support them when they leave us to go to “big school” so that they demand these things for their children from kindergarten through at least second grade:

• physical safety by assuring them protection from harm, opportunities for recess, access to breakfast if they need it, and relaxed lunch experiences
• emotional safety by lessening the pressure of proving their personal worth by their scores on unending inappropriate tests, and worse, being held responsible by their errors on those tests, for the status of their teachers’ jobs and salaries or funding for their schools
• educational safety by guaranteeing that each child is given daily opportunities to learn through purposeful play experiences within an organized and appropriate curricular setting offered by teachers who fully understand and believe in the exclusive use of Developmentally Appropriate Practice

#2. How do we assure that the children in our classrooms are awarded physical, emotional, and educational safety right now? As they say at the end of many of your favorite tv shows, “Coming up next on Survivor, The Bachelor, or Law & Order SVU. . .”

Next Blog: Send ‘Em Home Alive – Providing Physical Safety

More Thoughts on the Evidence

I am a Gesell Girl (that’s somewhere between the Gilmore Girls and the Golden Girls). Dr. Arnold Gesell observed and documented patterns in the way children develop, showing that all children go through similar and predictable sequences, though which each child moves at his/her individual ease and speed. What it all means is that you can’t ask a child to hold a pencil and print his name if he’s still flailing his arms like one of those inflatable twenty foot balloons that advertise used cars on street corners. 

I like Gesell’s Six Month Theory, which says that children go through periods of stability and instability that seem to last about six months in time. Because of individualized influences, these phases don’t occur on exact chronological birthdays, but do seem to match with age on a general basis. During stable times, a child feels fairly confident, able, and good about himself and during unstable times, he/she may feel sad, angry, overly sensitive and self-conscious. Behaviors during both stable and unstable times can be both ‘good’ and ugly, but knowing the phases helps understand the behaviors a bit better. Check out this article at http://schoolworkhelper.net/growth-and-development-theory-arnold-gesell-1880-%e2%80%93-1961/. I also like Dr. Pam Schiller’s Windows of Opportunity. It gives a general picture of the ages at which children generally excel at particular types of learning.

Teachers who are not well-informed about the facts of child development (or those who do not accept these facts as accurate and use teaching practices that are not developmentally appropriate) can inhibit the learning process and sometimes do harm to the little learners themselves. Having unrealistic expectations leads to frustration for children and parents.

• Frustrated (under or over stimulated) children have lower self-esteems, are turned off by school, do not behave well and more importantly, do not learn with as much efficiency. The quality of their learning is actually reduced.
• Frustrated parents become rightfully defensive and doubtful when their children come home tired from the pressure of too-high expectations, or bored from the presentation of experiences based on too-low expectations, or when they receive notices of misbehavior or lack of progress that may well be caused by the use of teaching practices that are not developmentally appropriate.
• Frustrated teachers burn out quickly when they must struggle to find ways to teach that do not match appropriate learning and behavioral expectations.

I Believe in Mr. Rogers and Tinker Bell – Years ago I was lucky enough to have met (up close and personal, with dinner and everything) Fred Rogers, one of the greatest early education experts and children’s television icons of our time. I asked him if all of the changes in the world, socially and technologically speaking, called for a change in the way we teach young children. His answer was a big ole Mr. Rogers NO! He said the evidence of child development was hard and fast and teachers should NEVER alter their methods and practices or the philosophy of building early education on the foundation of developmental appropriateness. I’m with Fred.

Knowing the evidence and believing it are two different things. When Tinker Bell dies in the stage show of Peter Pan and Peter begs the audience to clap if they believe in fairies so Tink can come back to life, all of the children and most of the adults in the audience, clap their hearts out – and it always works! Tinker Bell might be imaginary, but If you are one of the sourpusses who doesn’t clap – if you are one of the teachers who does not believe in the proven, natural, wonderful, even magical facts of child development – then please stay away from the Neverland of early education.

Next Blog: Great Expectations

 

In My Day – Traditionally, we have been trained to create lesson plans that show parents, administrators, and licensing reps, what kinds of experiences we’re going to offer our children to meet the educational objectives of our programs, what materials we’re going to use, and WHERE (what Learning Center) we’re going to offer those experiences.

I don’t mind proving what I’m planning and what skills I hope will be gained, and it is good to show the materials needed, but it is not important WHERE they are learning. It is important to show HOW they will learn it. This is the difference between Learning Centers, which are simply locations of materials, and Learning Methods, the proven means children use for high quality learning.

Young children learn from everything they experience and they learn in every location in which they experience it. We need to prove that we are offering them appropriate activities using appropriate materials so they may have opportunities to learn the way children learn.

Children from birth to about age eight, learn best through:

• Movement
• Sensory Exploration & Stimulation
• Manipulation of Materials
• Construction
• Role Play
• Expression

Movement means just that – movement. It means using the body and all of its parts in a variety of ways to gain gross and fine motor skills needed for life

Sensory Exploration is the way young children begin to explore objects Exploration leads to discovery and discovery leads to knowledge. Later in life, they lean less on their senses.

Manipulation of Materials, a method ‘evolved’ from Sensory Exploration but often simultaneously used, is moving changing, relocating, and repositioning objects to further understand their makeup and their purpose.

Construction consists of using objects for a continuous building and ‘unbuilding’ and rebuilding of objects to discover their mathematical and creative purposes.

Role Play is the use of imitation and imagination to understand life.

Expression is the use of words, music, and all of the arts to learn to express ideas, thoughts, and feelings.

All of the skills and concepts listed in a good program’s learning objectives are learned best through these methods and it is important for teachers to believe that this is the way children learn, and that HOW matters more than WHERE.

Next Blog: Great Expectations

Evidence – The Facts of Child Development and Early Learning

Over the years I have spent observing in preschool and day care classrooms

I’ve heard many teachers say, “I don’t care what Piaget, Dewey, and Gesell said about child development! MY three-year-olds can sit quietly in chapel without wiggling, listen to me in Circle Time for 25 minutes and ALL my boys are potty trained!” Riiight.

Then I spend a day with the children under the reign of these queens of early education and I learn that their classrooms are not fun places to be. They often turn out to be sit-and-listen, sit-and-listen, sit-and-listen, time-out-for-not-listening, wiggle-and-whine and stampede-for-the-playground-like-an Orange is the New Black-prison-escape.

A good preschool teacher knows and believes the facts of child development. “She” (because let’s face it, we are a workforce of women) familiarizes herself with the expectations for what her children will be able to do, what they will understand, and how they will behave in her classroom and she uses that knowledge to plan and react appropriately.

In your vast amounts of spare time, I urge you to do some research on child development and familiarize yourself with the theories of Ames and Ilg with the Gesell Institute, Brofenbrenner, Erickson, Freud (meh), Maslow, Piaget, and Vygotsky.

Most of the best theorists agree there are three areas of development: body, mind, and spirit (some theorists divide spirit into social and emotional) and that the evidence shows the patterns and influences of development are:

• Development begins with the child’s interest and focus on himself and moves outward to family, friends, other persons, other things, other concepts in the environment.                                              
• Physical development proceeds from general to specific movement, from head to toe, and from the center of the body out to the arms, legs, fingers, and toes                                            
• Development is continuous and interrelated
• Development seems to occur in predictable stages and usually each child moves through these stages in the same sequence, but at individualized rates   
• Each developmental stage has its place and purpose and usually a child must go through each of them in order to reach the next one.                                                                                                        
• The influences on development are: heredity, environment, birth order, general and specific health and social conditions.
• By far, the persons who have the most influence on a child’s development are his parents.

By the Way – It has also been theorized and proven that race and ethnicity alone do not cause developmental differences. As I can personally and genetically attest, the Irish are not always drunk, the Scotch are not always tight with their money, and people from Poland have no problem with lightbulbs!

Next Blog: Believe It or Leave It – Part 2