During my lunch break on Tuesday, I was chatting with one of our middle school music teachers – Kingsley – who came to my classroom a few weeks ago just to see what hanging out with little people is all about. He’s used to working with middle school and high school students, so suddenly being in a room with the school’s youngest members is a big change. (I teach Junior Kindergarten which is for four and five year olds.) At lunch, Kings was saying, “Yeah, I went in there and the kids wanted to show me all around their room. And, you know, they’re short, so when they wanted to get my attention, they’d touch me or pull on my pant leg or tap my leg. And there were hands all over me, even on my butt. And I’m like, ‘Hey, whoa! Wait a minute! Don’t you even want to get dinner first?’ … And then I realized I just needed to get down on their level so we could really talk.” I think that’s a common reaction when figuring out what it means to really connect with young children. Their context for understanding the world is different than yours and you have to get out of your own head and your learned ‘grown up’ way of seeing the world so that when they invite you in, you can readily and openly accept that invitation. And I have the opportunity to do that every day! I’m one lucky kid!
Kings has a blog where he makes note of all sorts of things of interest, including his thoughts on education. After visiting my classroom and several other Kindergarten classes, here are a few excerpts from his reflections:
“I can’t imagine teaching students at this age,” is one the first comments teachers say when they observe grade levels they do not normally teach. Last week I spent time visiting three kindergarten classroom and seriously, I would have NO idea what to do with those kids. …
I observed students learning how to draw the letter “D.” There was snack time in which the students struggled to open their snack packs of vegetables and of course needed my help to open. Free playtime was great as students tugged at my pants to show me around the room. The most fascinating part was watching these students have conversations with each other, which made no sense to me at all but seemed [to] work for them.
Then there were the teachers. I have a limited amount of “elementary school affect” that I use with my third graders. It’s when the pitch of my voice gets a little higher, I talk softer and slower, and express a calmness and comfort completely devoid of the sarcastic edge which is characteristic of my voice. These teachers had this affect to spare laced with patience and understanding that was remarkable and awe-inspiring. …
What connected these teachers to the way I teach my eighth graders was the way they talked to the students. When you think about talking to young kids sometimes you think about dumbing things down but the teachers did the exact opposite. They challenged the kids, consistently asked follow up questions and forced the students to talk up to the teachers expressing respect, dignity and belief in the students.
It doesn’t [matter] what age a student is, you can always challenge them and push them to be better. … That's what my time in kindergarten reminded me. We don’t teach subjects, we teach people. The time we spend with students is about helping them be the best people they can be. That is something that is so in the forefront of the kindergarten classrooms and sometimes get lost in the bustle of older grades.
Note: The photos in this post are images I have taken of students in my class over the past few years.
No comments:
Post a Comment