October 10
Hi Mom,
There
are two major changes I want to see happen in my school this year. One is the curriculum and
the other is behavior management. Before
we even consider going through accreditation, I want these teachers to
understand developmentally appropriate practice (DAP) and emergent learning. DAP entails teaching to the individual child
not the whole group. It means that what
we do is aligned with who the children really are, not who we “expect” them to
be.
For
example, 4 year olds are not going to learn the letter A by bingo dotting red
paint and then placing apple seeds onto a coloring sheet of an apple. To expect them to learn from that experience
is inappropriate. This school currently uses the worksheet method of
teaching. The teachers will show an
apple to the group, say ‘this is an apple, everyone say apple. Apple starts with A. Everyone say A. Now let’s glue 4 apple seeds onto our
paper.
This
is really boring! The children are
better than that. They deserve to be
treated with the same respect that we offer each other. They have natural curiosity and want to learn
as much as they can about things that
are interesting to them. Children are
always looking for connections. How is
that apple relevant in my life? Does it
smell familiar? Have I had this
before? Why is this one green? Do green ones taste the same? I love how they taste, I wonder what else I
can do with this.
What
the teachers need to learn to do is plan for children who are
investigators. The classroom needs real
apples laid out on a table for them to “discover”, then let the children taste,
touch, open, sniff, and explore that apple.
Add plastic knives to the mix. They can find the seeds inside. Help the make applesauce or do apple
stamping. (Do you know that there is a
paint that is edible? ) These hands of
experiences help make connections for the child. If the teacher is smart, she will have
journals for the children to then write/draw about the apples if they
want. When the child draws in his
journal and the teacher asks him to label the apple, the child will now say,
“How do you spell apple.” BINGO! Relevant opportunity to introduce the letter
A.
The
problem with this scenario, or so it seems, is that the teachers are worried
about the child who doesn’t want to write/draw in his journal. If he doesn’t write, how will he ever learn
the letter A? That’s where I have get
involved. My job is to help them
understand that language and literacy skills
happen all day long in every part of the classroom. They just need to look for the opportunities
that are interesting and relevant, and use those times to teach. It’s a new way of thinking.
The
other piece to DAP is how it pertains to behavior management. What is it with teachers and time out? Busy
children are happy children. If we
expect them to sit while we count out 4 seeds, one child at a time, there will
be problems. Someone is going to get
bored and start flinging the seeds. At
that point the teacher is going to have to “teach” the seed flinger that he
needs to be polite. Which means the
others have to wait and watch as one child gets reprimanded. And as if that wasn’t awkward enough, someone
else is probably going to act out and put a seed up her nose, which is now
going to force the other seed counters to wait while the teacher panics and
tries to get the lodged seed out of said child’s nose. It’s a
vicious cycle, I tell you!
Once
the teacher understands that waiting for every child to count seeds is both
unnecessary and boring, she will change her
plan, (maybe add a egg carton with numbers in the spots and challenge
the children to a seed counting game they can play during center time) and then
children will be busy, and then no one flings seeds, although I can’t guarantee
that no one will try to shove a seed up her nose. Noses are like magnets for tiny round things.
I
guess you can see how that this is going to be a busy year for me. It’s okay, I love the challenge and know that
the results are worth the effort. I’ll
keep you posted.
