The Beginining and the End: 12 Stories

I really haven't wanted to write this blog post because, when I finish writing it I will know, deep down in my clenching heart that it is real.

I am leaving the classroom.

There, I said it. I have accepted a position as a Head Start Child Development Specialist. I will be supporting and supervising approximately 18 classrooms. I am excited and at the same time my heart is sinking. I have been on this teeter-totter for the past two weeks since I accepted the position. I will have the opportunity to practice the leadership skills I have developed as a teacher leader and in my studies in educational leadership. I will also be giving up what I have always known: one class, 18 kids. I will still be in classrooms with kids and teachers a lot. I will learn if I am able to become the transformative leader I hope to be by developing some more streamlined systems to meet accountability requirements. I think my supervisor secretly hopes I can help us move into a paperless system, but we both know how hard that might be. I will keep blogging here, but my stories may change.

I am standing on the edge of a new life.

I think the scariest part is that I won't have "that one kid" this year. Every year, for twelve years, I have felt that there has been a capital R - Reason for me being exactly where I was in that classroom. There has always been "that one kid" that needed me and not anybody else. She could have been a pawn in a inter-family power struggle, or a boy with overly reactive parents. As a way of saying goodbye, here is a list of kids, one for each year in the classroom, who I know I helped.

Benjamin - We went to the Washington Zoo together. He was the only student without a parent on the trip. I treated him like my own son, before I had one. He came to school with a language delay and left on track.

Tarshena - Her mother was on heroin and went to jail before the winter break. I tried to keep her emotionally close by doing home visits at her grandmother's house. She was reading on grade level by third grade.

Craig - An extremely bright boy with lead poisoning. No one understood why he couldn't sit still. I figured out a way to teach him without that being a prerequisite.

Gregory - He was being raised in his great-grandfather's house. His great-grandfather, an eighty year old man, was shot by one of his grandson's with a drug problem. Gregory was in the house. The investigation took several weeks. Later we realized the killer had picked up Gregory a couple times from school. We were able to keep Gregory on track academically and get his family some counseling. I will never forget him.

Nisha - A girl whose mother had not had a decent relationship with a man until she was in my class. She left my class reading small words with a mom who learned how to trust.

KenDaja - Her mother once told me that she wished her daughter had "any other teacher in the school." I think she was afraid that there was something wrong with me because I was a male preschool teacher. I invited her mother into our class to volunteer every day. Her daughter came in with a slight language delay and left reading. Eventually she acknowledged that I had taught her daughter well, but she still couldn't stand me.

Amani - His parents were combative with each other and the world. I held him on my lap as he screamed "I hate this f--in school!." His mother cried on my shoulder as she thanked me for helping him. He left with literacy skills way above level with social skills to take him successfully through the remainder of his schooling.

Shakeece - He had extreme social and language delays when he came to school. He left on track after two years.

Jakeece - The next year I taught Shakeece's younger brother Jakeece who, when I met him as a two year-old, ran around his apartment hitting his big brother with a stick and peeling paint off the walls. He left reading. While in my class, their mother's twin brother was shot and killed for protecting a young woman who was being harassed by some thugs. Over the course of those four years, their mother got her GED, became a certified nurse assistant, and moved out of the housing projects to the suburbs.

Candice - Candice's mother had never learned to read, complicated by a brain injury in middle school. Brianna had some physical delays and wore leg braces as a toddler. She developed her physical abilities in our class and left reading. She stayed at the top of her classes as long as she was at our school. Over the two years Candice's was in my class her mother entered an adult literacy program. As a 6 year-old, Brianna was helping her mother read.

RaShawn - RaShawn had some attention problems and low self-esteem. He was disagreeable and physically aggressive. One day he seemed exceptionally agitated. I called his grandmother and she told me the story. That morning there was a 6:00 A.M. knock on the door. His father was shoved to the floor, hand cuffed, and arrested in front of him. RaShawn left on track, but his behavior threatened to nose dive after the arrest. He eventually became a successful student but it has been excruciating to watch each year as I imagine him asking his teacher, "Will you let me fail?"

TaShaunda - She was the pawn in the inter-family emotional battle. TaShaunda was extremely busy and hard to manage but, in the end, she was the first child I ever taught that I thought might actually need to be in a gifted program. She was reading well when she left our class and had developed social skills that have helped her become a successful student.

There they are, twelve kids, twelve years, twelve stories. Of course there were the ones that got away like LaRon whose language delay was insurmountable, Tevon who was expelled from my class and ended up on Thorazine, and Jonathon who has experimented with shop lifting as a second grader. I have lost fewer as I have gotten better over the years. Then there is the one who I almost lost but, thanks to a mentor, I didn't:

My second year DeVonte was driving me crazy with his anger and hitting. I asked for some help from my program who sent a retired expert teacher to support me. She came to my room, observed for a day, and then came back the next day with some information. We had a conversation and she helped me realize that I was as much a part of the misbehavior as my little troublemaker. She helped me become a better teacher by giving me some practical advice and helping me to see a broader perspective on my teaching. 

So that is what I hope becoming a Child Development Specialist means. Maybe it is time for me to be like that mentor who helped me. She changed the course of my practice and helped me to help all those difficult kids that came after DeVonte. I may not have that one kid but hopefully I can help that one teacher who does. Stay tuned.

5Qs with Lisa Guernsey of Early Ed Watch

Lisa Guernsey is a writer and researcher who has published articles in Newsweek, The New York Times, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. Although she writes on many topics, her true passion is children. As a mom, a writer, and a researcher she became interested in the intersection of media and young children and produced the book, Into the Minds of Babes, that I have mentioned here several times. She is a contributing blogger to Early Ed Watch one of Inside Pre-K's favorite blogs to follow. What has always struck me about Lisa's work is her balanced approach to every topic. Balance is hard to come by on the internet, especially in pre-k policy discussions (even on this blog but we try). I had the opportunity to do a 5Qs interview with Lisa and she happily agreed. So here it is:

How is preschool valuable to young children?

So you want me to take on the big kahuna right from the get-go? Happy to oblige. I could, of course, start recounting the research – the studies that so many readers of this blog can practically repeat in their sleep. There’s Hart & Risley, the renowned study from 1995 that showed us the wide gulf between the language environments of middle-class children and those of children raised in poverty, with the more-advantaged children surrounded by conversations about dinosaurs and Dr. Seuss while less-advantaged children are told to put on their shoes. Preschool – if it’s a language-rich environment –  can help tremendously on this front. Then there are the multiple studies on high-quality preschools in places like Tulsa, Chicago and Ypsilanti that show how much children gain in math, literacy and social skills compared to their peers who didn’t get to attend.

 

But I suspect you want me to go beyond statistics and peer-reviewed results. What is valuable about preschool? It’s the teachers. It’s the impact that comes from putting children under the guidance of a professional who doesn’t just know how to make young children happy and secure, but who also understands how to activate their brains, help them make connections, lead them to explore their curiosities, cause them to think a moment before grabbing or shoving, challenge them to try to answer their own questions and take their thought process to the next level.

 

In other words, preschool is valuable because it recognizes – no, it embraces – the idea that adults have a critical role to play in bringing learning experiences into children’s lives before they arrive in elementary school. We’ve all heard the argument that this is simply the role of parents, that parents should be the ones doing this for their kids. To that I say, pshaw and of course. Of course, parents need to, and want to, do everything they can to expose their children to new ideas, new words, new challenges. But that doesn’t mean we should encourage a mindset that essentially says to today’s parents: So you had a kid? Good luck, go at it. We’ve discovered so much over the past two decades – particularly in the land of cognitive science and developmental psychology -- about how young children take in and digest information, create their own knowledge systems and become motivated to learn. And psychologists continue to discover how different children develop these skills in different ways at different points through their growth as infants, toddlers and then 3, 4 and 5 year olds. These new insights offer a lot for parents to process and learn as they rear their children. As a mother of two young daughters, I’ll readily admit there is no way I could do it on my own. There’s a reason, beyond the modern-day realities of working motherhood, that parents with the means enroll their children in preschool. They want them to spend time with teachers who can draw out children’s natural abilities to learn, who are trained and who specialize in the best ways to engage young kids socially and intellectually, who know what they are doing.

What are some things you think would surprise parents about preschoolers and media that you learned writing your book Into the Minds of Babes?
 

Electronic media is not the enemy. Complacency about electronic media is the enemy. Parents and teachers are inundated with stories about all of the ills that come from TV and computer use, especially with children at young ages. So they figure, understandably, that they should just turn it off, ban it, keep it away. No question, there’s value in limiting media use with young children – in my house I’m very cognizant of whether my kids have been watching 30 minutes or one hour of PBS, and I don’t hesitate to turn it off or train them to turn it off as soon as a show is over. But I also have learned, from conducting research for this book, that I have a responsibility to use that media time to my children’s best advantage. That means not only choosing high-quality content, but also talking to my kids about what they’ve seen on screen, asking them what they did or didn’t understand, explaining how the show is made, watching when new shows or topics spark their interest and using what they see on screen as a jumping off point for new projects or trips to the library.

 

My mantra is to be aware, and think about, the Three C’s: content, context and your child. Content means the quality of the program and whether children of preschool age are getting anything valuable from it. Context means thinking about the environment around the TV viewing, including parents’ responses to it and whether it is just droning on in the background. And Your Child means exactly that: Is your child responding by clapping and dancing, asking questions, re-enacting and re-scripting scenes later, during times of pretend play? Or is he or she confused or upset -- or generally misunderstanding or not taking in the lessons or ideas on the screen?

 

There’s one other tidbit that was surprising to me: There’s no solid research showing that the sedentary behavior of sitting on the couch and watching TV causes obesity. There is, to be sure, research showing a connection between obesity in children and TV watching. But scientists and media experts are starting to examine a culprit other than, or in addition to, sedentary behavior: food marketing and the messages about food that children get when they watch kids TV. Children can watch one show after another, and one commercial after another, and never see a character or family sitting down to have a healthy meal or eat a piece of fruit. That strikes me as an area ripe for some intervention.  

What are some ways parents and teachers can support children as they interact with media?
 

Zoom in on high-quality shows and videos, and then, literally, zoom in on one particular moment in them. Pause the action. Point to what just happened. Ask children what they think might happen next. Consider art projects, journaling projects, science projects that give children a chance to record and talk about what they’ve seen, and why they think it matters.

What have you learned in your current focus on what makes the most impact for children in families of all income levels?

 

I’m learning more everyday about how much the lack of coherence, lack of connections, and lack of bridge-building among today’s hodgepodge of early childhood policies can stymie what parents really want to do for their children. Let me give an example. I met a woman at a Head Start fair in Alexandria, Va., registering her son for the fall semester. She was newly divorced and had just moved her son to Northern Virginia to be closer to family who could support her. She was looking for a job. The only reason she knew about Head Start was because a stranger on the Metro platform one day, with whom she had taken up a casual conversation, had told her about it. There’s problem number one: Finding high-quality preschool and childcare can feel like groping in the dark. Even I, with a decent level of education and membership on too many parenting listservs, felt lost when I started seeking out information on preschools and childcare centers. We need more systematic ways of getting information to parents.

 

Now, for the next problem: This woman I met was excited to sign her child up for Head Start. Her son, climbing over and under chairs in the registration room, kept asking when he would start. But it wasn’t completely clear that her family would actually qualify in the first place. Yes, she was unemployed for the moment, and so her income was clearly low enough to make her son eligible. But what was to happen, she asked me, when she got a job? What if the job paid too much? Where else could she go? And would she be able to find a place to enroll her son that would enable her to work full-time, until 5 or 6 p.m.? Would it be as good as Head Start at preparing her child for school? How expensive would it be? If she got a childcare subsidy to help her with the tuition payments, would she still be eligible for those discounts if she lost her job or her hours were reduced?

 

We don’t have good answers to these questions. Part of our work at the New America Foundation, particularly on Early Ed Watch, is to follow legislation that will, we hope, start to build better systems so that children’s education, yes starting at age 3 and 4, is continuous and interconnected between childcare centers and preschools and public schools, allowing for seamless transitions from one year of preschool to another and then from preschool to kindergarten and up through the early grades.

What can you tell us about the future of preschool education as it relates to technology? What do you see 3 - 10 years down the road?

 

The picture is fuzzy. Technology shouldn’t play more than a supporting role – it should be integrated into the classroom only to the extent that it helps teachers do what they want to do. And the preschool teachers I’ve met have many other priorities that don’t require high-tech gadgetry or TV screens. They want to promote hands-on, fine-motor skills, they want to promote weekly themes and projects that involve lots of picture books, they want to set up science projects that give children time to explore, record their observations and ask questions.

 

In other words, I don’t see a day when TV screens and computers, as we know them now, will become as essential to preschool classrooms as easels and construction paper. But that doesn’t mean that there is no place for video and interactive technology as hardware evolves to take different shapes and as multimedia stories become more integrated into the way teachers work. I’ve seen specialized kid-friendly microscopes that use a TV monitor to display magnified images of carpet fibers or skin pores so that kids can gather around and talk about what they are discovering. As a parent, I would love to give my daughters a chance to experience something like that, and I suspect many teachers would too.

Bringing Common Sense to Media

Often we have to make decisions in our homes or classrooms about appropriate media for our children. If you're like me you may not have time to sit down with your child and watch an entire Disney movie so you can answer questions and maybe fast forward through scary parts. It gets even harder when you have a child who begins reading independently. I had two instances this past year when CommonSenseMedia.org came to my rescue. The first was when my son was shown Sleeping Beauty in his preschool. I had never shown my kids that particular Disney movie because of the dragon scene, possibly one of the scarriest bits of hand drawn animation Disney ever made. Besides the fact that Disney continues to kill off parents in their movies (eight according to some estimates including The Lion King, Dumbo, and Bambi. Sleeping Beauty addresses the idea of evil and some issues that I was not ready to talk to my son about yet. That is the great thing about CommonSenseMedia. If I had been able to check the site before my son watched the movie I would have learned about some of the details that parents need to think about. The website provided this breakdown of the film:

Why We Rated This for Ages 4–5

What to watch out for

• Messages :

  Not an issue.

• Violence & scariness :

  Most notably, the prince confronts a scary dragon and fights it with a sword, almost falling down a cliff. This is after he's kidnapped, tied up, and beaten up by Maleficent's ogre-like goons (mostly shown in shadow). The goons also have a creepy dance around a fire. Maleficent's staff shoots lightning bolts, and at one point she dissolves into a green mist. Before the princess pricks her finger, she appears in a trance as she climbs the tower stairs to the spinning wheel.   Most notably, the prince confronts… More

• Sexy stuff :

  A kiss.

• Language :

  Maleficent utters "fools," "idiots," and "imbeciles." She also makes a reference to "hell."   More

• Consumerism :

  Plenty for sale in the packaging of the 2008… More

• Drinking, drugs, & smoking :

  The kings drink to the impending nuptials of their children, and the minstrel helps himself to the leftovers, falling over drunk under the table.  

   

  The kings drink to the impend… More

 

I was able to copy the info above into an email. It really helped support my case that Sleeping Beauty was not appropriate for school without sounding like a goody two shoes.

 

Another reason I had a problem with my son watching Sleeping Beauty is that as an educator I believe there is a difference between educational entertainment and kids entertainment. Both have their time and place but, the place for kids entertainment is not in the classroom. I can best describe the difference between educational entertainment and kids entertainment as the difference between watching Dora the Explorer and watching Sponge Bob. Most parents don't mind Dora because "Hey, they're learning Spanish." Watching Dora also exposes young kids to sorting, matching, and retelling stories to name just a few of the skills Dora covers. Here is what CommonSense says about Sponge Bob,

 

Parents need to know that this cartoon includes violent, dark satirical humor that will confuse kids who can't separate fantasy and reality. Characters' relationships are marred with name-calling and mockery, but no one ever seems affected by the exchanges. Anger and frustration often lead to physical (which, in the real world, would be harmful) resolutions that leave no lasting effects. Messages about friendship, perseverance, and self-respect are mixed into the plot, but the overall silliness of the show and the main characters' annoying behavior often make them hard to find. All in all, this is a real "know your kid" situation. 

Another way the web site shows it's usefulness is when you have a kid who is reading above their age level. Over the past year my daughter has progressed from reading picture books, to American girls historical novels, to some of the classics of children's fiction. When it came time to decide if she could read the Narnia series I checked the website at the suggestion of our local children's librarian. I found that it was appropriate for her age and did not deal with issues beyond her experience.

 

So the next time you decide to show a child a video in your home and you are not sure how educational it is, check out CommonSenseMedia and make an informed decision.

5Qs with Peter Walsh

Recently I had the opportunity to interview Peter Walsh, an organizational guru and best-selling author with a new book about organizing kids titled “It’s All Too Much, So Get It Together” coming out September 12, 2009. Peter also holds a master’s degree with a specialty in educational psychology. I wanted to ask him about organizing kids from an expert's point of view because in many ways that is a big part of the pre-k teacher's job: Helping kids organize their thoughts and understandings about how the world works. Here are his answers to our 5Qs.

 

How do you believe organization impacts the cognitive development of preschoolers? How does it impact their first experiences with school?

In my experience as both a teacher and a professional organizer, I have no doubt that kids thrive when there is order. Organization provides a framework for developing a healthy relationship with what we own. It assists in understanding routines and above all else creates an atmosphere of calm and focus in which children can learn best. Children need to understand (in general terms) how their day will play out and what to reasonably expect will take place.  This provides a sense of security and order, which creates a conducive atmosphere for learning.
 
What can parents do at home to help prepare their child before s/he go to school for the first time?

It’s important to dedicate time to back-to-school preparation and to include your child actively in that preparation. If your child sees and feels that you are serious about committing time and effort to their attending school then they will naturally infer that it’s important and valuable.  By including your child in the preparations – reading school notices, choosing clothes, shopping for school items – you will also take the mystique out of the new experience and help your child see it as something exciting and an event to look forward to. It’s also important for parents to honestly deal with their own emotions. If they’re sad or upset at this transition for themselves then they need to be careful not to project that onto their child.
 
How do children learn to organize themselves?

Organization is a learned skill like good manners or long division. From the earliest age, we need to demonstrate to our kids that we value organization. We need to show them it’s an important and integral part of the way we live our lives, and without organization, chaos develops. The words ‘organization’ and ‘organic’ come from the same root. Organic – whole, human, complete, one.  This is the reason why we should commit time to organization and show our children that we value it – it’s the way to become the best we can be.  By modeling the behavior we want, helping children take responsibility for their own time and spaces and by committing time to organization, we can show that we value organization and teach kids the skills they need.
 
Are there certain people/kids who are simply destined for disorganization? How can parents help children break this cycle?

Anyone can be taught to be organized.  With kids, this has to start early.  Along with love and food and shelter, kids need two things – limits and routines.  I’ve seen again and again that you can teach kids everything they need to know about clutter and organization from day one. For example, start with their toy bins, and give your child a couple of toy bins - or however many adequately fit into the space you’ve allocated for toys. Tell them that this is where the toys live. When the bins are full of toys, ask your child to discard a toy before s/he are allowed to add new ones. This is a great way to teach you child the idea of limits and that s/he can’t own everything. It’s also a great way to build decision-making skills and introducing the concepts of giving to those less well off (by giving the discarded toys to charity) and that things are not forever.  At the end of the day, when playtime is over, the toys go back into the bins.  This establishes a routine and teaches your child personal responsibility, the notion of time tabling and that they have to contribute to the running of the house.  These concepts – limits and routines – are the basis for living a clutter-free and organized life and can definitely be taught early in a child’s life.
 
What would you tell a child who was going to school for the first time to help them feel prepared and organized? Is there something you’d have them to do?

It’s about how you present the world to your child. This is an exciting new phase for children.  It’s a sign that they are growing up and trying new and challenging things. To facilitate the transition, parents should spend quality time with their children getting everything ready and demonstrate to them that they are fully prepared and organized for every aspect of back-to-school. Make sure they’re involved, get them to talk with other kids, provide opportunities for them to talk about concerns and celebrate this rite of passage as a family. Through preparation, you should be able to instill the necessary confidence and attitude in your child.

Smart vs. Wise in the Pre-K Classroom

A great deal of research is being done in pre-k classrooms thanks to the Early Reading First, one of the truly important and successful reforms of the past 10 years. It is changing what high quality pre-k looks like. Much of the Early Reading First reforms are based on current research as well as the ground breaking early childhood research that has been done over the past twenty years. Researchers like Kagan, Pianta, Bredekamp, and others have created a foundation for effective preschool practice. These are smart people and they have said some smart things. Thankfully, more and more, policymakers are turning to these smart folks to help craft policy. But, research is intended to generate knowledge, not wisdom.

Wisdom only comes with experience. Often, when research is quoted these days it is with the intention of changing what a teacher is doing in their classroom. As in, research says, "You should be doing _X_ in your classroom." What the teacher is doing may not be bad, but, it is not what the research says should be done. That is why there's a gap. Many of the best researchers are not implementing their findings into real classrooms. Some are, especially, those focused on practice like Pianta and Bredekamp, but most just provide the knowledge and reformers, grantees, and other researchers implement this new knowledge creating a notable disconnect.

I am going to tell you a story. Please forgive me if it is a little long.

The Meaning of Life: Age 5

Thank goodness for friends and Facebook. This past Sunday, I was surprised to find a New York Times article posted "on my wall" from a friend I have had several conversations with about children. We've talked about the complex and interesting lives of our preschoolers. We've discussed how kids can know so much and how some adults never see how much they understand. Then, on Sunday, she posted a book review about preschoolers and philosophy on my wall. It was like getting a care package at college or a surprise present from grandma!

Alison Gropnik is my new personal angel because she gives my spiritual philosophy about children a scientific basis so that I can talk about it professionally.

Here is a quote from the article,

Early childhood is both familiar and mysterious. Everyone was a baby once, and most adults have spent plenty of time talking to small children. But we simply can’t remember what it was like to be younger than 5 or 6, and conversations between an adult and a preschool child is far from a dialogue between equals.

 

The problem is we know too much. One of the first things I tell new pre-k teachers is to ask kids to "Tell me about..." their drawings instead of trying to guess, "Is that a boat?" My son will likely say, "No, its a rescue space ship" but many others bend to the suggestion of adults. That's just the way it works, unless we give kids the power to own their perceptions of the world, they will passively bend to ours.

 

This book looks like a great read and I can't wait to pick it up because it may finally open up a conversation about development that is not entirely based on the giants of research. With it, we can better come to an understanding of children based on their brains instead of our adult ideas about kids. Recently, I mentioned the possible falsehoods inherent in antiquated frameworks for understanding children in my post Yoda vs. Piaget: Creativity and Recipes. It seems I might finally have some research to back it up! The review goes on to say, "Thanks to such work, it seems we can now get over some of the false or misleading ideas about childhood inherited from Sigmund Freud and Jean Piaget, the pioneer of developmental psychology." And then there is this, "The notion that moral ideas develop only in adolescence — as Piaget, for one, claimed — appears to be wrong."

If you have read this book or know someone who has leave a comment with your opinion. Is early childhood development done? Do we know everything we need to? Is Piaget and Erickson enough? What about Gilligan or even Gopnik as a new foundation?


Image: http://pushthefuture.org/speaker_profiles/2006/kidsphilosophyslam.html