As teachers we have become keen to observing and documenting the children. And as we all should know that documenting helps us as teachers grow and it helps us help the children. But how do we help the children help one another? How do we help children see one another? And hear one another? How can we help children understand each other?
“Young children don’t yet understand that others have different ideas and perspectives and that talking with each other is the way to explore and possibly bridge those differences. If children come to our programs sometimes seeing other people as objects, we can help them become more adept at relating to others as people who are in some ways like them and in other ways different.”
Knowing the capabilities of children and understanding their milestones, gives us, the teachers, an explanation of what we should be doing. So how do we do with this knowledge?
We build the child!
We build the child through play
We create activities of interaction
We build our own vocabulary to express to children
We plan intentionally!!
We listen to the children
We are the children's role model
We consider the children's thoughts and perspectives and ideas
We allow children to guide their own learning
We build relationships with everyone we come in to contact with
We have an unbiased view
And in addition, we document!!
"The effect of documentation (documents, notes, slides, and recordings) is not limited to making visible that which is, but on the contrary, by making an experience visible, documentation enables the experience to exist and thus makes it shareable and open to the "possibles" (possible interpretations, multiple dialogues among children and adults)," (Project Zero, 150).
So how do we use the children to our advantage? How do we use our documents to our advantage? How do we help build relationships?
Excerpt From: Sydney Gurewitz Clemens & Leslie Gleim. “Seeing Young Children With New Eyes.” Leslie Gleim, 2014-01-28. iBooks.
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Project Zero & Reggio Children (2001). Making learning visible. Reggio Emilia, Italy: Reggio Children.
Reading your post, you raise some really great questions that got me thinking as well. It's weird to say this about children, but I can't quite think of a better word/term, they are very narrow minded and we are there to help expand their minds to see that others may have different ideas or thoughts than they had. Though we try to help children see that not every one has the same ideas as they do, at what age do you feel that they finally truly understand that fact? I am still working on helping children understand that we all have our own opinions and ideas and that there can be multiple right answer, not just one. Also learning to listening what other people have to say an be difficult, sometimes it's also difficult for some adults.
ReplyDeleteHi Jadelynn,
ReplyDeleteI want to focus on a quote you cite from the Seeing Young Children text - "Documentation enables the experience to exist and thus makes it shareable and open to the "possibles" -- What might this mean in terms of how a teacher documents and then how documentation is talked about together as teachers? What possibilities can be discovered through this process?
If you consider the documentation examples shared in the Making Learning Visible text, what do you imagine the teachers might discuss together? Pick one and see if can imagine the conversation and how the conversation might lead to a teacher response to the children.
Something to keep in mind, the teachers in Reggio Emilia, Italy view teaching as "playing catch" with children. The children "toss" something (documented through documentation) and the teachers discuss the documentation and then "toss" back through a response. Consider this metaphor, how might you articulate a response to the children depicted in the documentation from the Making Learning Visible text (consider the same panel you imagined the conversation between teachers)?
Cheers,
Jeanne
Why reading your post I got thinking about my own program and than thought how can I plan activities that encourage social development? How do I teach the children empathy through experiences at school? We actually had a discussion about this the other day in a staff meeting we were getting on the same page as far as making children say sorry to someone when they hurt them, rather than addressing how their actions affected their peer and what they could do to help make the situation better? I think these are some things that will come with practice and through m growth as a teacher.
ReplyDelete