"My teacher says we have to learn..."

Recently, one of our school's alumni, now a second grader, came along with his Dad to pick up his sister. His Dad said that this boy missed our program, and the boy told me that he "only had a half hour for recess", that the rest was "boring". He explained to me that his teacher told him that, while it might be boring, children had to learn, so they had to sit still and pay attention. There they are in school, then, sitting still, doing boring work, because they "have to learn". No one could have been more articulate about the frustrations of children in school than this boy. He knew intuitively what is well-known in the field: A child who is distracted by his body's need to move, or his mind's need to explore and create, is not going to be able to learn at his/her potential. This is canonical in Early Childhood Education and yet the public schools still insist on treating young learners as if they were "brains on sticks" . Child development is not seen as an important part of a teacher's toolkit. People who graduate from Master's Programs in Education come out with practically no knowledge of how children learn.  This should be an integral part of the Master's program. 

How much more this boy would be learning if the instruction was project-based and developmentally appropriate! But this type of learning is harder to measure for the test-mavens. Let's rally in support of educating young children, including second and third-graders, the way they learn best! 

How do you motivate teachers to be creative?

As anyone who reads my blog knows, I love to write with a picture in mind, even if the subject doesn't necessarily connect to the topic, I will make it connect. So if you read this, you can give me a thumbs-up or -down on how well I connect this picture to what I'm about to write!

In this photo, I am four and my brother is two. We were brought into a photographic studio of a tall blonde woman who had a large studio with big, rectangular shaped lights. I wasn't thrilled about having my picture taken with my dopey (sorry, Bob) little brother to begin with, and then we were asked to sit together on a table all cozy while the photographer struggled with her equipment. When she was finally ready to take our picture I had already had enough of her fussing, ignoring moi, and giving us curt commands. I did not want to smile and I definitely didn't want to look directly into the big rectangular light that  hurt my eyes. I fidgeted, and kept looking away. My mother, somewhere to my right, pleaded with me to cooperate. You can see from the picture that I did. but I was not happy about it!

What, does this have to do with motivating teachers to be creative, you may well ask, and with good reason! I will attempt to explain.

In the first place one has to consider that there are preschools where teachers and management have little interest in creativity in the first place. I am  not going to go there. They have their own reward, as they say in church. I am talking about how schools that have NAEYC accreditation, and have, in their literature, explanations of how their curriculum is creative, stimulating and developmentally appropriate. How does management--"heads of school", directors, and other administrators--motivate its teaching staff to go beyond creating the everyday, ordinary curricular learning experiences that usually satisfy the majority of parents who know little of what can really be done in the service of learning in its broadest sense?

One model I know of does it this way: Teachers are told to create exciting learning activities aligned with the school's yearly curricular goals and its literacy curriculum. Coming into the situation, a new faculty member believes that she can, within the parameters of the school's curriculum, create learning experiences that are as creative and interesting to children as possible, drawing from the world's cultures, traditions and arts to do so. But this teacher soon gets a surprise! Just as my four-year-old self came into a room of cold light, and admonishments to be still and smile, this teacher is asked to put aside her ideas and try to emulate other teachers, the reasoning being that if one teacher does something different, parents will demand the same from other teachers. Go ahead and be creative, but don't "show up your colleagues".

Imagine if the four-year-old, instead of being asked to sit still and stare while the photographer was getting ready, was given permission to explore the studio with parental guidance, and then asked how she would like to pose? I know, it isn't an analogy that quite fits (thumbs-down?), but there is some parallel here. Bear with me.

A second program expresses that it wants teachers to be creative, to bring their own strengths to the job of teaching young children. If teachers do projects that are different from those of other teachers, administrators encourage it, and when parents ask for the same in other classrooms, the pressure is on those teachers to be more creative, to make more connections, to go beyond the boundaries of the average aggregate of activities that are ordinarily used. That the administration has the back of the creative teacher ensures instruction and planning will evolve into new learning and new experiences.

Which way do you like? In which program would you want to teach?

Yoga for Kids: Discipline and play

How enthusiastically my students have always taken up Yoga! I started bringing the original YogaKids video to school quite a few years ago to find that the children actively engaged themselves in mirroring the poses of the young children they saw in the video. Amidst the usual silliness of fours there was a focus centered on doing the poses that I hadn't seen before. My co-teacher and I would walk around and gently correct the children who were willing, giving kind words of encouragement. Soon I had a large book of Yoga poses in the reading corner, and children could be seen laying it on the floor and trying pose after pose, talking to each other about how they were supposed to be done.

The day after our first session parents came in asking for the information on how to obtain YogaKids. The children had enthused about it at home and their excitement was infectious! Soon, parents and children were doing the video together.

Since then the Yoga for Kids movement has grown enormously! There are many resources out there for teachers and parents. I want to offer some of them here. Movement integrates the brain and energizes clear thinking. It enables children to use all of their resources for life in the "fast" lane. It also gives them a sense of what it means to be centered and focused. I myself have done Yoga for years and last year, after a year of practice, was finally able to do a headstand unaided. The accomplishment made me hungry for more Yoga and the self-confidence it generates. Imagine what it will do for your children and students!

http://www.livestrong.com/article/226156-yoga-games-for-kids/ This is a blog entry about Yoga for kids, as well as other physical activities.
http://www.amazon.com/Yoga-Pretzels-Cards-Tara-Guber/dp/1905236042/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1308834312&sr=8-3  This is the Amazon link to Yoga Pretzels, a deck of Yoga pose cards for kids and grown-ups that was lovingly photocopied and laminated for me by a teacher friend. :)
http://www.yogajournal.com/lifestyle/210  Here is a lovely reflection on Yoga with your own children by a mom who knows.
http://www.iyogalife.com/yogaforkids/index.php  A Yoga blog by a Yoga teacher for children!

Music and Movement: Inextricably Intertwined

How amazing it is to put music on during centers, put out a tote full of scarves, and watch children swarm the bag for the colorful banners of movement they would like to wield! If you are lucky and very sneaky you will be able to catch one of them in the act of finding their center and expressing the feelings evoked by the music, as I did in the photo. I have taught college students from several excellent texts that each emphasize a different aspect of what we call "Music and Movement", but these two concepts have no separate meanings to young children. They are inextricably intertwined. In Rae Pica's book, Experiences in Movement, she demonstrates the connection between music skills and movement skills. If the music is pizzacato--plucked strings suggesting light, quick movement, like in Benjamin Britten's Simple Symphony, Playful Pizzacato Movement--children can use movement skills like hopping or jumping. The creative movement becomes perfect for integrating science curriculum concepts about grasshoppers or fireflies blinking on and off! If the music is legato, or smooth and connected--like in Mozart's Rondo in A minor, K 511--children can use movement skills like sliding and swaying. These movements show the smooth movements of fish in water, or birds in the sky. 

Once I played this last lovely piece for my fours so they could move smoothly and freely. One little boy sighed and said, "I love this song...". How glorious to bring together the beauty and power of great music for young bodies to give expression to their innermost feelings through movement. 

                                                                                    

Should children be guided in their art?

On the left is a photograph of a painting, done in silk stick (soft crayon), and liquid water color by a four year old. This work was done in three half-hour sessions in an art studio with an art teacher who had read Through Georgia's Eyes to the class before the sessions began.

The guidance consisted of this: A choice of silk flowers were offered to the children as models for their work. Then the children were encouraged to draw what they saw in pencil. If the children's drawings were not accurate, the teacher asked them questions that highlighted the difference between the flower and the marks on paper. At no time were the children made to feel "wrong". All instruction was geared towards greater perceptual awareness and visual discrimination, an important skill in later reading instruction. Once the flowers were drawn, the children traced their pencil marks in Sharpie pens. They were then provided with silk sticks for color. Again, the teacher made suggestions about contrasting and complimenting color combinations, but she respected each child's ultimate choice. The finishing touch was a watercolor wash, with different colors over each section. The children chose purple over yellow, for example, or blue over green. The effects were striking. In a later school art show these pieces, "in the style of Georgia O'Keefe", were dazzling. And the children glowed with pride.

I have taught Art, Music and Movement at Northern Virginia Community College for years, and our emphasis, consistent with early education practice in the arts, is to value process over product. This is a good thing! We want to get away from cookie-cutter crafts that have been and continue to be rampant in preschools across the country. But I now believe that a loose interpretation of "process" art denies children the opportunity to grow in their creative, aesthetic and cognitive abilities. A little expert guidance seems to bring more out of a child that is there in the first place. What do you think?