Taking Back Early Childhood Education

I have been watching with escalating concern the trend of public schools taking over Pre-K in their communities all over the country to bolster their waning enrollments. In my own community, state funding meant to help support local Pre-K programs was diverted into creating and maintaining several public Pre-K classrooms that are not only competing unfairly with long-established local programs, but are being run and taught by people without education or experience in Early Childhood Education. This alarming trend is a threat to the well-being of young children and families. ECE programs should be run and staffed with well-trained Early Childhood professionals, not Elementary educators, not special education staff, not school administrators who have no idea what quality early childhood education looks like. Here are some examples of the kinds of developmentally inappropriate practice going on in these schools:

In one classroom I was observing, a staff person was standing there scowling at the children as they made use of the bakery my student teacher had developed. The student had made mini-muffins for the children to buy from the bakery, and as one girl approached to buy her muffin, this teacher, who made no attempt to do anything but stand and glare at the children, told the girl that she had already had her muffin, so she had to leave. The child quietly told the teacher that she had not had a muffin, and the teacher insisted she had, until the child admitted to having one, when in fact, she had not!

In another instance, one of my students reported that the teacher sat at the table, dabbed the paint brushes into paint one at a time and handed them to each child, one at a time. When my student remarked to a girl that she had created a new color by mixing red and yellow together, the teacher yelled at the child not to mix the colors!

It's bad enough that children in K-2 classes must endure these disrespectful, unethical practices, but we early childhood professional must find a way to take Pre-K back; at the very least, to make sure that it is carried out and administered by competent, trained ECE professionals.

If you are interested in learning more about high-quality, apporopriate practice in Early childhood programs, read We Are All Explorers by D. Scheinfeld, K. Haigh and S. Scheinfeld, Teachers College Press, 2008.

Debra Murphy
http://www.classroomtoclassroom.com/

Imagining Better Images, Part II

In my last entry, I described a strategy for helping students and teachers rethink their mental models, or images about children, families, and themselves. Here are examples of two reinforcing loops: one negative and one positive. Notice how the initial belief influences expectations, behaviors, and outcomes. If we proceed as if we believe the positive image (even if we do not), we can influence the loop to create more positive outcomes.

Sample Negative Reinforcing Loop about Parents/Families

Sample Positive Reinforcing Loop about Parents/Families

Sit down with a group of students or colleagues and write a positive Image of the Child, then create a positive loop. Use the sample as a guide. You can repeat the process with the Image of the Teacher. I think it is worth the time it takes to imagine better images.



Do you want to find out more about working with others to improve policies and practice?

Read The World Cafe: Shaping Our futures Through Conversations That Matter, J. Brown and D. Isaacs. BK Books, 2005.

Imagining Better Images

The early childhood educators in Reggio Emilia have a concept they call the Image of the Child. When I first returned from visiting their schools, I was very surprised by how many teachers and students said, "That's fine for Italy, but we could never do that here. Our children could never do that. Our parents would never do that. We could never do that." When I thought about this, I ended up calling it, the 'Power of No'. I am convinced that as long as we believe that our children, our families, our teachers could never create the experience of exceptional quality preschools, that we will find it very difficult, if not impossible, to do it. I believe that it starts with the image: the image of the child, the image of families, the image of ourselves as teachers. In my Leadership course, we explore the idea of reinforcing loops, as defined by Peter Senge. We start with a negative image (or mental model as Senge calls it), then extrapolate how this impacts our expectations, which in turn impacts our behaviors, resulting in children, families, and teachers living up (or down) to our negative images. Next, we re-write the negative images into positive, and create another reinforcing loop, but this time with positive outcomes. This is a powerful exercise that helps students and teachers reconsider their Images. Students often ask me if they can take the positive loops back to their centers for the rest of the staff to see. In my next entry, I will include some sample loops. Consider creating these loops with your colleagues. Try to imagine better images.

Debra Murphy

If you want to learn more about reinforcing loops and mental models, read Schools That Learn, by Peter Senge, et al. Doubleday. 2000.

Nothing Without Joy

Niente senza gioia.
This is the credo (which means, I believe, in Italian) of the preschools in Reggio Emilia, Italy. The teachers in Reggio Emilia take this very seriously: every school, every classroom, every teacher, every family, every child. Having seen this myself, it makes me very sad to realize how few teachers in this country think about their work in this way. Where has all the joy gone? How might we get it back?

I teach a course called Leadership in Early Childhood Programs. One of the assignments is to interview two teachers: one long-term and one new, and ask them what drew them to this work and what makes them stay, or makes them think they will stay. Without exception, every semester, virtually every teachers says, "The children." I think we are so bogged down in paperwork, regulations, and doubt, that we sometimes forget the reason we started doing this in the first place. Take a moment to reconnect with the joy in your work. A smile, a tiny hand in yours, a child's laughter; these are the reasons we are here. Their joy can spread to us, and ours to them.

Credo.

Debra G Murphy
www.classroomtoclassroom.com

Want to learn more about joyful environments? Read Designs for Living and Learning, by D. Curtis and M. Carter. Redleaf Press. 2003.

An Invitation to Greener Practice

In the United States, thoughtful people have been thinking and talking about conservation and ecology for over 100 years. By 1909, President Theodore Roosevelt had already set aside over 42 million acres of national forests and created 53 national wildlife refuges. John Muir, one of the first modern preservationists, founded the Sierra Club in 1892, and it is still one of the most important conservation organizations in the United States today. In 1962, Rachel Carson published the book, Silent Spring, in which she describes the impact of agricultural chemicals on the environment, and in 1971, Barry Commoner’s The Closing Circle was another wake-up call on the impact of industry on the world’s ecosystems, and was the required text for a course in ecology that I took at UMass in 1972. Here we are, more than 35 years after that course, and we have come to a place where we can longer just think and talk. We have to act. Every one of us in the field today has dedicated our lives to caring for the well-being of young children. Today, we must expand our definition of what this means. If we care about young children, we MUST care about the planet. We have come here to consider strategies and to develop a personal action plan for becoming “green” early childhood practitioners. Five years ago, it would have been difficult to find any information or guidelines for intentional conservationist practices in early childhood classrooms. Now, each day, there are more and more models to follow and ideas to consider from within our field. Child Care Information Exchange has joined the effort by including nature education and recycling topics in their daily e-newsletter. The World Forum Foundation has held national conferences on nature education practices. There are also several books available on the topic, including the provocatively titled: Last Child in the Woods, Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, by Richard Louv. In this book, the author offers a compelling case for bringing children back to the natural world, and the consequences if we do not. He cites several sources of evidence that show that nature has a positive impact on both learning and creativity, as well as the positive impact of nature to restore calm in children with so-called behavior and attention issues, even going so far as to suggest that the surge in these problems might even be related to the disconnect between children and nature. Today, I am asking you to consider the possibility that your actions CAN make a difference for the future. What are YOU going to do to make sure that one of your children is not the “Last child in the woods?”

Would you like to learn more about nature education for young children? Go to http://www.classroomtoclassroom.com/ and click on Book. This will take you to my new book, Science for the Whole Classroom, 2008, Infinity Publishing.

A Reflection on "Reflection"

I recently visited a classroom where the children were asked to do a common fall activity. In all the years I have been observing students I have never seen this activity work, and yet every fall, I see it practiced again and again in classroom after classroom. I cannot help but wonder: why? "Reflection" is a current buzzword in early childhood education, and I hope it's buzzword status doesn't keep teachers from actually doing it. When we have respect for children, we respect their time. Is the activity worthy of their time?

Here are the 3 weakest reasons for doing an activity:

1. We have always done it.

2. It's cute and the parents will like it.

3. I found it in a book and it goes with our theme.

How will you know? Here are 3 signs that an activity might not be worth doing:

1. It's too quick-The children are finished in less than a minute and there is little or no engagement.

2. Children cannot do it- you have to repeatedly help them or do it for them.

3. It doesn't work.


Take a few minutes every day to reflect on the activities you have done and ask your self: Are the children getting anything out of this? Am I bored?

Debra G Murphy
www.classroomtoclassroom.com

Interested in more about this topic?
Read The Intentional Teacher, Ann S. Epstein, NAEYC, 2007.