Soap box

For those of you who follow this blog, my sincerest apologies for not writing anything until today- half way through the week. I also happen to work at a church and it is getting to be "crunch time" for church, and thus, I do not have the luxury to sit down to my computer as much, and when I do, I generally chose dinner over blogging.  This being said, here are some links I've stumbled across that I think are of interest.

1.  Why preschool should not be like school This article is from slate.com and is about why the push for children to have formal education at earlier and earlier ages hurts them.

2.  Seperate but Equal?  This is an article from the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle from this past Sunday; It is about how (in Rochester) that schools are still predominately segregated with impoverished African- American students in city schools and middle class Caucasian students in the Suburban Schools;  It goes on to discuss the negative impact it has specifically on city children but also on the suburban children (though less significantly) as well as the problem it brings for all of the city and suburbs. It is specifically about Rochester but points out that many many cities in the Nation are the same way.  It is a very well written article, bound to get one thinking about these problems and what can be done.  I remember when I was doing part of my student hours at School of the Arts in Rochester noticing the incredible disparity between the many African American students and the few Caucasian students.  Many of the African American students, in fact the overwhelming majority, lived in a nearby neighborhood and were (many of them) dealing with poverty, while the few Caucasian students that attended lived in the huge mansion- like houses that decorated the "nice" residential areas of the city.  Also the difference between working and observing in suburban schools and working and observing in the city schools (we were required to do a lot of each) is incredible.  Part of it, I suppose (though this may be an unfair or inaccurate assessment, I am no expert), is based on the difference in culture- but I think that the biggest difference is because of living situations and financial situations.  In the suburbs most of the kids have everything they need for school (backpacks, writing implements, notebooks), in Greece schools the driving situation is a mess because hundreds of parents drive their children to school rather than make them "suffer" riding the bus or walking.  I know this is a generalization, but overwhelmingly in that school students were "spoiled." Their classrooms were gleaming, they had huge gorgeous facilities, lots of money put into the arts, ample classroom supplies like tissues, and textbooks.  In the city schools have very little funding because  the people who are taxed for that area have little money themselves.  Students do not have notebooks or pencils that they need in many cases.  Teachers often do not have the resources they need to teach their best and often end up buying things for their room from their own pockets- after all they need enough tissues in their class, enough paper and folders and pencils and pens for students who have none.  The facilities at these schools are often run down, and with the exception of School of the Arts, there isn't always a lot of money put into school music, there is rarely enough staff to best serve students.  It goes on and on.  The time that I was in these schools was before the recession- so you can just imagine what especially city schools must be like now with the state  and city funding for schools being slashed and slashed again.

Image belongs to Rochester City Newspaper

Encouraging Reading Acquisition

As teachers or parents of preschoolers there are so many things we can do to encourage literacy acquisition for our children; Unfortunately, sometimes it is easy to stand in their way and not even know it.  In this entry I would like to address two common practices in preschool classrooms and why they should be modified.  (Yes, I am aware that this will not be an exceedingly popular post and that upon reading the first three sentences many people will navigate away from this page; I implore you to stick with me, and perhaps even leave some feedback- whether agreeable or disagreeable). Often in preschool classrooms there is a tendency to read a book once or maybe twice- usually that book coincides with whatever unit they are teaching.  The other tendency is to keep the "beat up" or "cheap" books in the children's book area and not in the the library area.

According to the book Learning to Read and Write: Developmentally Appropriate Practices for Young Children by Susan B. Neuman in collaboration with Carol Copple and Sue Bredekamp,  "the single most important activity [in building the skills essential to literacy] appears to be reading to children."  While few would dispute this fact the authors also assert the opinion that "multiple re-readings" in addition to pointing out features of print encourage children to "practice what they've learned about print on their peers and on their own," by "reading,"  which is really "retelling."  Neuman says this on the topic:

"...Children will often pretend to read, using visual cues to remember the words of their favorite stories. Although studies have shown that these pretend readings are just that, such visual readings... demonstrate substantial knowledge about the global features of reading and its purposes." 

As many educators of young children know these same visual "clues" are used for children to aid themselves in reading later on in first, second, and even third grade- something known as "context clues."

These things aside, reading to children the same stories over and over again increases their love for reading or at the very least for literature.  Looking back on ones own childhood anyone who still loves reading (and perhaps people who do not) can remember a few stories that they loved to be read over and over and over again.  My own memories are of Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, Are You My Mother?, and Where the Wild Things Are.  According to Lisa Murphy in Play: the Foundation of the House of Higher Learning and too many literacy experts to name, including the authors of Learning to Read and Write, reading stories over and over again helps them to both understand the features of stories as well as print it self. They begin to understand the literary elements of stories like how stories begin and end, and central conflict and resolutions (although of course they do not label them as such), and they begin to understand front to back (beginning to end), top to bottom, left to right, when they are read to.

"Hearing a story read again and again, children are better able to put together the relation of the characters and the sequence of key events, which they often do not on a first reading."  (Neuman)  

"When adults read to children regularly, children's familiarity with stories ... begins to evolve well before they are able to read or write.  From such experience children learn to distinguish the language used in books from conversational language and to anticipate certain elements in a story.  Later, these expectations assist children in comprehending what they read and in creating their own compositions."  (Neuman)

Hopefully, what all of this shows is that offering multiple readings of the same book is incredibly important to the acquisition of the written language for children.  I would also add to this that the quality of the book is also incredibly important.  Children do not want to hear stories that are not truly engaging more than once if at all.  According to Mem Fox a book that does not connect with the children is "a waste of our time, our money and our precious trees."

It is for this reason that it is also important for children to have the "good books" available for them to use and not just kept safely away from them.  I have, in the past, been as guilty as any of keeping certain beloved favorites out of the reach of little hands- fearing the damage, however, I have recently seen first hand the fruits of quelling my hesitancy to allow them these books and just put them out in the classroom library.  They read the stories they love to themselves, to their friends, to teachers, and to dolls.  The tenants of these stories make their ways into their own stories and playtime as well.  They examine the words on the page and examine the pictures, trying to better retell it, and decode the patterns of words and letters before them.
From putting out these books I have also seen a new reverence for books- they are more careful with them and often treat them  as prized possessions.  From this we have created a "book hospital" (or "hops-pital" as many of them say), where they demand even the tiniest fray or rip be repaired.  From the words of Lisa Murphy "no one learns how to use books the 'right way' if the 'good books' are kept in the cupboard."

A important lesson from Ooblick (and how to make it)

I am almost ashamed to say it; I have never used Ooblick in my classroom before! I know, I know, everyone and their neighbor has used Ooblick in preschool but I never have.  Terrible.  Maybe it is because all of the descriptions I have red of it have been non discrpt and somewhat blasé to say the least.

(the yellow color is from food coloring)

The Basics
If you have not used it before, do not underestimate the awesomeness of this substance.  Ooblick is part corn starch and part water a good batch is comprised of about equal parts corn starch and water but it can vary.  The batch above needed  You will read here, and virtually everywhere else, Ooblick (sometimes spelled Oobleck) is a non- Newtonian fluid;  This means that it exhibits characteristics of both a solid and a liquid.  When there is pressure applied to Ooblick from any angle it acts as a solid, but when there is little or no pressure applied it acts like a liquid.  When using your fingers or a spoon to scrape the bottom it feels like playdough (sort of) but there is no trail left behind your spoon or fingers, no indent made, because the portions of the liquid that pressure is not being applied to move freely just like water.  It feels, with your hand submerged, as though you could grab a clump of it and shape it into a ball, but as soon as you pull it out it runs through your fingers! Children find this fascinating and I am not ashamed to say that I did as well; I perhaps enjoyed it just a tiny bit more than they did.

What can be learned from Ooblick
Let me warn you that the next part is wordy and lengthy, but I beg you to stick with me so that perhaps this rant will be useful to you:
This project was really an eye opener to me about the importance of having EXPERIENCES FOR CHILDREN TO ATTACH WORDS TO (a premise that I was first made to understand completely by Bev Bos).  Now,  am I doing this to teach children who are four years of age to walk around talking to other adults about "non- newtonian fluids?" No. Although, I am not loathe to the idea of throwing that word out to them, still, I do not expect them to pick it up.  BUT, more importantly I am CONVINCED that having this experience will be valuable to them down the road.  When I took chemistry in high school, (which seems like ages ago although it has not yet been a decade),  I remember learning about Non- Newtonian fluids and in theory I suppose I knew what they were, I knew by description what they were and I even knew to give the examples of quick sand and something called Ooblick that I had never touched.  By experience I somewhat knew what quick sand was like; I grew up on a farm so I knew that in the spring when I stepped "mud," (which on farms consists of water, dirt, cow manure, pieces of cow feed, and other odds and ends that the cows have stomped together),  that was very wet and ankle deep (sometimes deeper),  my boot would often get stuck in a "vacuum" which could be quite difficult to navigate.  I also knew that when shoveling this substance that it fell off the shovel easily.  However, I never played in it (for obvious reasons) and hence never took time to examine or ponder these qualities or associate them with the term "non newtonian."   I never understood until the other day (THE OTHER DAY WHEN I PLAYED WITH OOBLICK!) the complete meaning of a non newtonian fluid;  I understood more characteristics of non- newtonian substance and had an expanded understanding of the meaning of viscosity (I will spare you definitions in interest of relevance) and finally was able to equate non-newtonian substances with a colloidal suspension (something I should have been able to do by simple memorizing, but neglected to memorize...).  However, experience would have saved me memorization and ultimately how much do we retain that we simply memorize anyway?
This brings hope to people like myself and I am sure other teachers who are looking a research on brain development and saying to themselves "and if I didn't get enough of this kind of experience as a child, will I ever be reconciled to the missing piece?" In this instance, yes, it is not too late! However, we, generally are looking to give our children a "head start," and what better way to do this than to lay a foundation for future learning.
Have you ever seen the shows where they have to transfer the weight of an entire house so that they can create a strong foundation because the original one was ill built and is crumbling?  How much easier would it have been to built a strong foundation in the first place?
This is one activity and one example.  It is only one, and yet that is something.  President Obama, in his State of the Union address, recently called and expressed concern over the need for a better education system to yield brilliant scientists, mathematicians, and engineers to better serve our nation and society; This is where it starts, in Early Childhood Programs;  It starts by giving children EXPERIENCES that are real to them and that set a foundation for their learning NOT by teaching them to learn and memorize things that they have no real understanding or experience with, but lasting experiences.  

And besides all of this, it's fun!


Some pointers for using Ooblick in your class
1.  Don't cover it, if you are keeping it.  Just leave it open and add more water in the morning.  If you cover it, then it will mold (Lisa Murphy, Ooey Gooey Handbook)
2.  This makes some children's hands very dry- I had a little bit of baby oil on hand that we usually use for sensory play that I gave them on their hands to rub around to help moisturize them.  I had parents bring in lotion for little hands that dried out after the first day, and gave gloves to kids whose hands were severely effected by it.
3.  I plan to need at least 5 cups of corn starch for this project.

Education Reform: Why do we trust politicians with your child's education?

I used to say that I wasn't interested in politics.  The thing is, that politics affect all of us; and as a parent or a teacher the rumblings of Washington are very significant to us.  


Early educators everywhere are being called to push math and science and literacy.  So my question is, what exactly do they presume that we are doing? Playing, I guess.  However, if the education system is failing, if the education system is getting worse- isn't it time to turn around from the direction educational politics are taking us and perhaps ask someone who knows how to educate children?  Isn't it time to ask teachers?  


Why are we asking business men how to best educate our children?  Why are we asking politicians, lawyers, and anyone but teachers how to educate our children? Do you think that business men, lawyers, and political- science students studied child development in depth? 


Take writing.  Children cannot write until they have the proper hand development to do so (this usually happens at about 4), and until the have the fine muscle coordination to do so.  They have to through 5 stages of scribbling to be able to write.  If they are never allowed to scribble because it is "playing,"  how then, are can they ever learn to write? Furthermore they need to have an understanding of words and how they are used, that letters are part of words, and words are used to communicate.  They need to understand the connection between printed and spoken word.  

"Many people today struggle and give up communicating with others because their linguistic foundation is weak." -Bev Bos  

This is just the tip of the iceberg, but the bottom line is, in a DEVELOPMENTALLY APPROPRIATE CLASSROOM children are learning what they need to, when they need to.  Expecting a child who as not gained the proper experiences to read and write (after only having been on the planet for three years) is like teaching a seventh grader, who has not yet mastered even algebra (let alone trig or geometry), calculus.  It might be possible, but it makes no sense and what important mathematical discoveries did he or she miss?  I'll go one more: it is like cutting of his or her hands and expecting them to play catch.  


Example One:  When children are playing, they are learning.  Playing in a sensory bin of mixed beans they may (and probably will) practice sorting, practice counting, examine and label colors and more. 

Example Two:  Using pipettes with runny paints on a paper towel canvas put on an easel allows develops fine motor skills that they need to write and cut.  It also allows them to mix colors and see what happens.  They can also observe absorption and the effects of gravity.  In the words of Bev Bos children need "experiences to attach words to," (Turning Over the Page, Bev Bos).  An activity like this and a billion others that are happening in preschool rooms all over the country, and the world, everyday.  

Here are blog entries from other people that really should be read:

Let the children play: they play but do they write?

Teacher Tom's Blog: Habits

Janet Lansbury: 4 Reasons to Ditch Academic Preschools

Not Just Cute: Play vs. Academics: A False Dichotomy

Books:  

Turning Over the Page:  A Rant For Children's Play, Bev Bos

The Power of Play, David Elkind

Play = Learning, Singer, Golinkoff, Hirsh-Pasek 

The truest, hardest part

Plato said "you can learn more about a person from an hour of play than in a year of conversation." If this is true, then, (besides parents), who knows a preschooler better than their teacher?
The fact of the matter is that teachers who work with children under the age of 5 are parents in microcosm, (or at the very least like a pseudo Aunt or Uncle).  No, these children are not our own flesh and blood, we don't tuck them in at night, we don't get to watch them grow up, we don't have to provide for them. Teachers become immune to puppy dog eyes, alligator tears, and adorable pleas for nonsense things, unlike most parents.  However, for a good preschool teacher, most of your life revolves around these kids.  I see most of these kids (during awake hours) 6-7 hours a day, for more than 250 days a year, (Monday- Friday, September through September).  I know all of their interests, I know all about their family, I know what they are afraid of, what makes them sad, what makes them happy, what foods they like and what foods they don't, what they are allergic to, who their best friend is and when they switch best friends.  I know these children more deeply than I know some of my own friends, because preschoolers aren't guarded and don't keep secrets the way adults do.  I plan my lessons based on their passions, and our days around their interests.  I can tell by the way a child enters the room how their day is so far, and I can tell when something is wrong.  I know when a child hates all red fruits and vegetables.  Children tell me when they are worried because Mommy is getting married. They tell me when Mommy and Daddy are fighting. They tell me about being shuffled back and forth between parents (foster and biological, divorced moms and dads). They tell me when they fight with their sister. They tell me when they have a bad dream.  They tell me about all of their amazing adventures with their parents, and about playing tea with their sister in the living room. I know what makes each child laugh when they are sad, when they need a hug, and when they need to be left alone.
The hard part of being a teacher is that these little bodies become your friends and your family.  You know them for a whole year and see them more than 2000 hours a year.  They have wiped their noses on you, cried on your shoulder, drooled on your leg, accidentally spit food on your face, sometimes hit you, sometimes kicked you,  thrown up on you, and you love them all unconditionally. 
Some children I connect with the moment I meet them, others it takes a few weeks to fully connect with them, still others a few months, but I have never had a child in my class that I didn't connect with, and never had a child that I wasn't sad to see go. Like I said, this is the hardest part of being a teacher. 
Every year you fall in love with the kids, and you fall in love with your class.  There are a few that you get the privilege of seeing after they leave your class, or even more rare that you get to stay a part of their life; but most of the time, these precious little beings that you have centered a year of your life around, just leave.  That's it. 
I had a child leave my class the other day, to go to a school closer to home, in his own school district.  It is the same whenever a child leaves my class, no matter why, and no matter when; At the same time it is different whenever a child leaves my class because my relationship with each child is different, because each child is different, precious, and special. 
When they leave, I have to smile, wish them the best, be excited for them, and help them to be excited for this next, new part of their life because if we do anything else we are not serving that child well.  I want to be sad, I want to tell them that I will miss them horribly, (because I will), and that I will remember them forever (because I will), but what I say is "I will miss you, but I am glad you are excited for your new school, I hope you will love it," because this isn't about me, and it never was.  This is about them, and it always was.  They might remember me, and they might not, but they were my "friends" and my students, and I will always remember them, and hope that each one has a great life.  
I am convinced that real teachers don't choose their profession, in fact many of them might try to avoid it, but it chooses them, because bringing love to a classroom is not something that can be learned.  I know going back on Monday, that everything will be the same, but I will still notice the child's absence a few times each day, as will the other children, who will ask for reminders of where he is and why he isn't "here." They won't be "sad" but they will miss his presence and sometimes it takes months for their little minds to not calculate his absence as not being out of place, (where as for adults, it only takes a few days, but the feelings are the same).

I leave you with a quote from "Children of Eden," by Stephen Schwartz:  "... but the hardest part of love... the truest part of love... is the letting go."

*please note: I am not advocating that teachers act like parents, or are parents, or try to "replace parents."  Parents are parents and teachers are teachers and any good teacher knows the boundaries and does not cross them.  In the early years, children really come to depend on their teacher and develop a more close- knit relationship with them than teachers of school- age children.  This being said, a good teacher brings love to their classroom with only appropriate emotional ties and attachments, and NEVER develops an attachment that would make it difficult for the child to move on, or that would effect the teachers effectiveness or demeanor in the classroom.