How do you make space for a windstorm in the classroom?

Furniture is being shoved out of the way as a child moves through the daycare. He pushes a table up against the toy fridge and stove, knocking over the two wooden chairs with his hands, and tipping over the child size coffee table. He runs back across the room to the entrance door then returns with his arms held out at his sides zig zaging slightly saying quietly, "I am the windstorm." Shoving a plastic chair with metal feet across the floor creates a scraping sound. "I see you are the wind but when you push the chair across the floor it is making scratches." He stops and looks at the floor and turns back to the table and crawls under it informing his friend, "There is a windstorm come hide." The friend crawls under. I comment, "I see there has been a lot of damage. Who is going to fix thing and put them back together." As he picks up a cake pan, "This is a drill," holding it up to the toy fridge, "brrrr."

What looked like random crashing through the daycare causing destruction with out thought was actually a very complicated dramatic play involving weather. We have been having big winds lately. We have been pointing out the different kinds of weather we experience during the Fall and Winter. We have been taking about weather words and printing them out. We have made playing in the rain enticing by making the outdoors a big water sensory experience. Can we really shut down a child who has found a way to incorporate weather into the dramatic play? And when we actually look closely at how the child is moving his body and the furniture we can see that he is actually moving purposely and with much control. He did not slam the chairs over he tipped them slowly. When he shoved the table up against the fridge and stove he did not crash it. When I commented that the chair was scratching the floor he stopped and redirected his play. He also took my comment about who was going to fix the damage and incorporated it into his play. Very little redirection was needed to keep the play from becoming out of control. Play is often messy, loud, and needs to be.

Brain Based Learning

With preschool kids the balance practice is easy to incorporate. I love brain science. I want to help build big brains that work at top efficiency. Early intervention is important. But no brain is hopeless, every brain can learn. It might just take a little more time an a lot of patience but learning will happen. No one should lose the joy of discovery. If they do it is our job as educators to help them find it.

Thinking about being a Mentor: Cultivating curiosity

#1: Curiosity come first: Getting adults to remain curios. Inspiring co-workers to dive into the wonder of why.

#2: Embrace the mess: Face it even as a sophisticated grown up learning new things is messy, we will get to wrong, we will stumble and in those stumbles we learn. IT IS O.K. to get it wrong. I say this to the children all the time. I am mindful to say it to my co-workers.

#3: Practice Reflection: In making the messes and the mistakes we get to rethink, redo, and move forward to the next what if and why. In being a mentor we need to show our work, bring our messy thinking out into the light so that we can show our peers that we don't always have our shit together. We have just learned to stumble with some grace.

Identity

People/Families

Teaching is a learning curve that never really ends. I am thinking a lot about stereotypes these days, looking at my bias, where do I fall into the trap of stereotype. I make an effort to make space for conversations when stereotypes come up. I realized that one of my go to props for engaging play was causing me to fall in to the trap of stereotyping. My People/Families set is a great prop for engaging play because all children relate to family. We are all the product of and all function in a family unit of one kind or another. It promotes stereotypes in that is made up of Mom, Dad, Brother, Sister, baby, and Cat. I had a shift of thinking a few weeks back when I decided to label the characters differently as I handed out sets. Partly because I purchased some new figures that are wooden and I could only afford to buy three figures each to make up six sets. So I decided to not buy the larger figure that was curvy (feminine?) and only one large and one small figure that were the same shape and added a baby that was a slightly different shape but did not specify gender. When I handed out the new figures to the children I labelled them as Adult, Child, and Baby because it caused me to realize the Adult could be a Mom, Aunt, Dad, Grandpa, etc and the child could be Boy (Son, Brother, etc) or Girl (Daughter, Sister, etc). So the next time I shared my People/Families I labelled them like this, Adult with pants, Adult with skirt, Child with pants, Child with skirt, Baby, and Cat. When the talk of gender came up, calling the one with a skirt the sister, I remarked, "Well what about when he wears the princess dress, and look she is wearing pants, and so am I." We had a big chat about clothing and girls clothes and boys clothes and who can wear what. In the end there was a general conciseness that clothing does not decide gender, the person wearing the clothing does. We have visited this topic almost ever day, but now I have one more tool in my teachers tool kit. I am doing my best help shift preconceived notions of gender stereotypes and I hope it is helping to firm up the self confidence of some of the children with wobbly self images and give others the freedom to accept people as they are.

Here is an article that is worth the read:
why-all-parents-should-care-about-kids-and-gender

Patience.

When people say, "You must have a lot of patience to work with children." I think, I don't. I think of children as people who do not have a lot of experience with life. I chose to be that person who is there to help them gain knowledge about the world around them. It is not patience but understanding and compassion that I have. Now when people say, "You must have a lot of energy to work with children." I think, "Oh man yes I do!" That energy is fuelled by the enthusiasm of the children I work with every day.

Why I love my job.

Because I get to have conversations like this one...

As one old daycare family comes to pick up a new daycare family a question is put to me.

Mom: Ask Quincey your question.

Big Kid: You know that song YMCA?

Me: Ya.

Big kid: Well this is a YMCA, are they the same?

Me: Actually they are. In the song they are talking about meeting up with friends and using the gym, like Robert Lee YMCA has, and having fun. That is just like us.

Big kid: look of acknowledgment on her face.

Me: Did you know what YMCA letters stand for?

Big kid: No.

Me: Young Men’s Christian Association. That is who it was for when it started but not now. It is for everyone. You don’t have to be young, you could be old. You don’t have to be a man, you could be a girl, a boy, a man, or a woman. You don’t have to be a Christian you can go to any church or not. But it is still an association because there are YMCAs all over the world helping people stay healthy.

Big kid: What are the letters for again?

Me: Young. Men’s. Christian. Association.

Little kid: I have a half elf ear. I am half elf you know.

Me: I remember, Elves can come to the YMCA too.

Little kid: Huge smile on her face.

Blocks!!!

Blocks are a staple of my learning tools. There is so much play that happens with blocks. There is so much learning that happens when children play with blocks. I love blocks. I have a few sets.

my block creation at home with two of my sets

child's block creation at work with re-purposed sample tiles 

Stand tall

Storytelling

I am a huge fan of stories. My family tells stories. So I collect story tellers as well as stories. I am fascinated in the why of a story. Why do we tell them? Why do we need to hear them? I think that this man gives a good explanation of the why in his story here:

How the story transforms the teller 

Be yourself and teach

This made me smile when I found it posted on Richard Cohen's and the Art of Early Childhood Education's page. Being a teacher no matter who you are matters. If you have a skill to share (for the love of all the little people wanting to learn) share it.