"There are always things we learn when they ask questions of us"

Throughout the year students and teachers from around the world visit our center. Each year we host a group from Iceland, one from Japan and one from Singapore. We discussed this with Lella Gandini when she visited a few months ago and she asked 

"And why do they come?"

"Because we say 'Yes'?" said my director, Katy with a smile.

"and you say yes because there are always things we learn when they ask questions of us."

Of course, Lella is exactly right. We learn from their questions and from seeing our center through their eyes. Today I visited with some students of early childhood education from Singapore. They work at centers with the same age range that we do. It was a joy walking around with twelve young women as they peeked into classrooms, sat down to play with children, pored over our documentation, and pointed out details of our environment to one another.

Here are some highlights of our conversations together today:

• I learned that it is very common for centers to be open there between 7 am and 7 pm daily "or longer, if they have parents who work late" said one of the students.
• They were struck by the fact that we had male teachers. After some conversation about this someone asked if male teachers were allowed to change diapers, and told me that this was not allowed in their centers even in the rare cases that they have a man working there. "They can only teach a class, like maths." This is interesting, because of course, although male teachers are "allowed" here in the US, they are not the norm, and we have to work hard to recruit male teachers because we believe that children benefit from having men and women in nurturing roles in their lives. The students were all excited because they believe that child care teachers should be men and women, they'd just never seen a male teacher before.
• After watching a dad spend snack time with his child's class during an extended drop off time, students asked questions like: "How long are parents allowed to stay in the morning?" and "How many days during the year are parents invited to visit the classroom?" It was clear to these students that we welcomed families, and it felt a little unfamiliar to them, but they were excited about it, too.
• The students were lucky to come just days after our annual Showcase, so we had extra special and extra large pieces of documentation all over the center. They compared what they saw to the report cards that they issued to families at this time of year, and said that they saw "the whole story of each child" when they looked around our center. They marveled at pieces of documentation that welcomed families' collaboration. A couple who were familiar with Learning Stories were happy to see something familiar.
• They were surprised that we don't take showers each day. Singapore, they told me, is so hot that children take a shower between lunchtime and naptime to cool off before they rest. The recent weeks have been so muggy, I felt envious when I heard this.
• They were touched by how children talked together. "The children are so encouraging with one another!" they said.
• They asked about our dress code, and were surprised that we are allowed to wear shorts to work.
• "It is obvious how children's work is valued here." one said, reading the stories of the children of Toddler 1 North.
• "Children must walk in and think 'This is the place where I belong!' every day." said one student.

Teachers also learn just from having visitors in their classrooms, not from what they say, but from their very presence. The observer effect in a classroom is one that usually results in straightening our backs, looking around at our classroom and imaging what another sees. I'm happy that in our center, this usually results in a sense of satisfaction for teachers, and an opening of blindspots.

How does it feel when people visit your classroom or workplace? Have you visited our center? What was your experience?

How do we honor children's hard work?

We might honor it in the moment by observing it, commenting on it, and supporting it. When I see a child has spent time with an idea or a creation - thought about it, struggled with it, maybe had to make changes -  rethink some of its aspects - I want them to know that I was a witness to the process.

We might honor it later by taking time to reflect on what we observed. In reflecting, I feel I am peeling away the layers of the moment, seeking out the glimmer of insight that first drew my attention. I take a second look again at what I sa, turning it over in my minds, like a puzzle box. I search for its intricacies, for its angles, for its potential. I try to use it as a window into children's minds - their understanding of the world's mysteries. More importantly, perhaps, I try to draw back the curtain to look beyond what they know and seek out what it is they want to know.

We might honor it through documentation. I find it liberating to set my thoughts down on paper, sharing all of my musings with children, teachers, and families. It allows me a sense of pride in my work, on the one hand. On the other, it opens up possibilities for further reflection and a sharing of knowledge. Displaying my interpretation of an encounter, I am inviting the community to share in a conversation.

We might honor it by offering further provocation. Mother, art educator, and blogger, Rachelle Doorley writes, "Children who set up their own problems are invested in the process of learning and are motivated to see a project through completion." I constantly strive to offer children provocations that will present them with potentially interesting problems - problems that they will want to work hard and long to solve. I want to follow along with them as they question and probe and discover, and I continue to ask my own questions as we take the journey together. My provocations are one way of saying, "I have been trying to listen to what you are telling me. I'm not sure I am understanding it completely, but here is one idea I had. What do you think?" 

We might honor it with celebration. Right now, our center is preparing for a grand celebration of the past year - our third annual Showcase - and teachers and children alike are so excited for the chance to share  our work with families and friends. Of course, celebrations do not always have to be on such a large scale. Just a few weeks earlier, a group of toddlers held their very own special exhibit during their Studio time, to celebrate all of the hard, focused work they have done together this year. Maddy, Max, and Jordan have been coming to the Studio together, along with their classroom teacher Cathy, since September, and they have continued to use clay as their primary medium, even when nearly all of the other Studio groups branched off into new directions. With each visit to the Studio, this group of children has continued to build on what they had worked on previously, developing a unique, complex, shared vocabulary. Together, these children moved from flattening clay by pressing and peeling if off their boards, to tossing it in the air over and over to shape it into a "baby head," to building up castles from a shared block of clay, to adding glass pebbles (which they named "peekies"), wires, and water to make their creations "more stable." The Studio now houses an entire shelf of their clay sculptures, which were part of the inspiration for our exhibit. 

While parents hear about these bi-weekly Studio sessions through Cathy's documentation, they have not had many opportunities to visit the Studio to see the work first-hand. We decided to create just such an opportunity, setting aside a Studio time for a private exhibition of the children's work, words, and process for the parents to visit. We also decided to offer the adults a chance to learn from their children, working alongside them with the clay, peekies, and wire that they know so much about. 

 The exhibit, which was attended by the mothers of all three children, proved a wonderful celebration of the trio's hard work. Maddy, Max, and Jordan were extremely excited to show their moms their creations, and even more excited to show them how to work with the clay. As conversations developed around the clay and its uses, the children were always ready to answer any questions the adults posed.

Scarlet (Max's mom): How do I take clay off, Max?
Max: You just grab it.
Maddy: I need more water. Here's a brush.
Shawna (Maddy's mom): How should I use it?
Maddy: You have to wipe it on the clay like this, then poke like this. Bump bump bump.
Leigh (Jordan's mom): Why are we adding water?
Jordan: To make it sticky. 

This special celebration gave these children a unique opportunity to share an important piece of their year at our center with some of the people who matter most to them. Watching their interactions with their moms and the clay through the lens of my camera, I was struck by how self-sufficient they were, and how easily they were able to solve any problem they ran into with minimal prompting. One moment, in particular, stood out to me, making me realize how much these children had taken on the role of the teacher in this situation. As Maddy began to rub the surface of her wet clay castle with her hand, she turned to Shawna, asking her questions that we often will ask children: "How does it feel on your hand? Do you like how it feels?" 

This process of exhibiting the long-term work of these three children is what prompted me to think about all of the different ways we can honor children's work through our practice. I felt as though this particular even allowed for a very special form of honoring that I was able to share with the children and their parents on a more personal level. The fact that the children later suggested having a "dad's day" at the Studio too makes me think that this must have been a powerful experience for Maddy, Max, and Jordan, as well.

How do you see yourself honoring children's work?
What great feats have you celebrated with your loved ones or with the people you work with? 
What do these celebrations mean to you?

Questions, Spaces and Stories; How We Illustrated Our Image of the Child This Year

This month our weekly provocations are opportunities for teachers to tell us about their team's innovations. We are hoping to share practices that other teams may want to try, and the methods of innovation - how we come to new ideas and fold them into our work. 

Our annual intention is to reflect upon our "Image of The Child" and how it appears in our environments, documentation and curriculum. This week, all three innovations demonstrated our trust in children and our eagerness to know more about what they are playing, working and thinking about.

The Question of the Day 

Erin shared with us the way that her preschool class uses the“Question of the Day.” She and a colleague learned this technique from a teacher at the Advent School . Each day in Preschool 1, kids and their families stop at a clipboard. The adult reads the question and the child answers it.  The question ranges from "How are you feeling?" or "How did you get to school today?" to "How do trucks work?" or "What happens when you go to the doctor?"

The Question of the Day offers:

• A ritual at the entrance to the classroom. A daily and immediate reminder that school is a place where we stop to think and where our voice is heard.
• A way to model for families how we honor children’s words by writing them down without comment or correction. This can be a struggle for some parents who have developed a habit of helping their child figure out a correct answer. This question is one where teachers always want to hear children’s unedited thinking. 
• An engine for curriculum, putting children's theories about the world onto paper where they can be looked at together, extended, challenged and fleshed out. 
• Another way to know children more deeply. As Erin told us "It helps you see how each child thinks over time. Somebody always has this fantastical, long poetic answer, and somebody else has this clear cut answer you would find in a book." 

Teachers asked some great questions. Tracy asked "What would you do, if someone didn't speak English?" Erin assured her that they invite families to translate the question into another language and to write their answers in that language, with or without translation. They also sometimes draw pictures. 

Transforming a Classroom Environment. 

Over the last year a lot of construction has been happening around us. As a result, all of our classrooms moved into a modular building for six months or so and then moved out again into their own spaces.This was a chore, of course, but it was also a great opportunity to look at our permanent spaces when they were empty and to learn from living in a different space. This experience profoundly affected Tracy, Monica and Miwako, and they used what they learned to shift the space in their room to everyone's benefit.

There were some changes that the teaching team made in their modular room that were based on necessity.

• Because their new space was so open,  each area of the room flowed into another.  "It was this vast square." Tracy said. Teachers observed that with less divisions, children moved their play fluidly from one area to the next.
• The only tiled area of the classroom was near the entrance, so this is where they put the mini-atelier. Our first impression when entering the room was filled with beauty and focused work.

When the class returned to their old space, the teachers kept these serendipitous changes with great results. 

• This classroom structure had been static for many years, and teaching teams sometimes found traffic jams, or had problems when many children wanted to work or play together. Taking some inspiration from the more open classroom in the modular, the teachers created space for dramatic play and blocks to share one large space. Tracy told us that the space contributed to more intricate, collaborative play.
• The more centralized atelier attracted children to creating their props for their play. It's old location, in the back corner of the classroom usually attracted children who wanted a quiet experience, but the new space is usually occupied by children in the throes of some dramatic adventure, or intense recreation.

It's clear that children, teachers and family all feel at home in the new arrangement. The team used their observations to reflect on what was working in one environment and then adapted it to another. Surprise! The same process that helps us plan curriculum can help us plan our environments too!

Image credit below.

Infant South adopted the Learning Story convention and stream-lined their documentation.

At our center, teachers have a great deal of agency in deciding how they want to make the life of their classroom visible through documentation. Lise's team was ready for a change. She said "It felt like the old format was quite a long process of busy work, sifting through several weeks of photos, feeling compelled to put as many photos as possible because they were there, and feeling like there was not enough time to go in-depth. I wanted to think in-depth about children. I wanted to highlight our role as researchers, rather than summarizers. I'd heard of Ben Mardell's idea of writing Zooms.  It's a way of looking closely, but they didn't feel quite right. We talked to Kendra, and said 'Here's what we want: Photos and observations go to families, we invite families to respond, we as teachers keep learning from our documentation'. Kendra said, it sounds like Learning Stories might be just what you're looking for." 

As soon as Infant South started using this method, they adapted it to suit their specific team. 

• They chose to address their writing to the families of the babies instead of to the babies themselves.
• Danielle, Lise's teammate, started using the "See/Think/Wonder" protocol to guide her reflections, and her team followed suit. "See is the observation, Think is our own thinking that includes knowing ourselves, our knowledge of development, and of an individual child. Wonder is questions we write at the end. I started writing those questions directly to parents. This has felt really successful and manageable....We've gotten a similar depth from parents. We send them out once a month and people write back. " 
• The team worked over the first few months to balance "coverage" with just following their curiosity about their observations. Now they each write a few stories each month (so each child gets at least one monthly) post them all at the same time.

I really admired the bold, long-term, reflective process this team took to figuring out how to best document their classroom in a way that served the needs of children, families and the team.

Improving Our Practice Without Adding More.

As our teachers take on more and more depth in their work, it can feel overwhelming because it feels like adding to what we already do. Learning stories, a more open classroom, and the Question of the Day have helped these teams go deeper into their research, their curriculum and in their relationships with children and their families without feeling overwhelmed. Rather than adding another thing, these innovations made space and smoothed out old ways of doing things.

Here were some of the ways these teams worked to bring in these new practices to their classrooms:

• They looked outside of themselves; Erin visited the Advent school, the Preschool 2 team moved to the modular, and the Infant South team asked me if I had any idea.
• All three teams discussed the change before it happened and then reflected on how things were going, making changes in some cases.
• They connected this one aspect of their work to the broader themes in their classroom and the center.
• They communicated with families about the new aspect of their work through email, signs and documentation. All three classrooms have heard from families that they are excited about these innovations.

If you're a part of our center, what's your take on Learning Stories, Preschool 2's environment and the Question of the Day? If you're not, do you have any advice to share about innovating at work?

yours truly,
Kendra

Cycle of Reflection Graphic from: http://www.fahcsia.gov.au/our-responsibilities/housing-support/publications-articles/homelessness-youth/on-par-using-participatory-action-research-to-improve-early-intervention-0?HTML

More posts are coming...

Hello everyone,

Please consider this blog post a space holder. Katie and I each have posts in the works, but because we're being super careful about checking with folks before we post about them, we don't have anything to share with you just yet.

This whole process is still feeling new and exciting to us.

Please feel free to leave a comment on this (or any) post to let us know what you think of the blog, and how we're using it.

See you next week with more stories of children, teachers, families and what we're learning.

-Kendra

Working with an Installation

Our older preschool classroom had a wonderful opportunity to work with the artist Zoë Blatt, a student in the Arts in Education program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and one of three current artists in residence at Project Zero down the road. Zoë created a beautiful installation for the children to interact with. With its combination of flowing threads, colorful blocks, woven nests, and flowering shapes, the children all found something wondrous to explore.

The children came in three small groups, and I was struck by how differently each group worked with the materials at hand. The first group was particularly interested in the hanging yarn - some combination of children was always walking through the pieces, exclaiming at how soft and funny they felt.

The second group nearly all became involved in building an elaborate creation using the blocks, woven nests, eggs, and twirly shapes they called "octopuses" and "spiders." Ian said, "The eggs are all people.... this [nest] is a house hat - it looks like a real hat." 

The third group were particularly interested in the eggs and nests. They noticed that the eggs felt strange to the touch - not like a real egg. Gaia dedided, "I'm gonna take the nest... I'm gonna put it in the tree." When some of the eggs fell out, a game was sparked. "Oh no," Gaia said, laughing as she and her friends gathered up more eggs into the nests, "The eggs are gonna break! I'm gonna hide it. I'm gonna hide it somewhere in a tree." 

The next day, Zoë joined six of the children in the Studio, where they had access to the same materials she had used. Zoë's provocation was for the children to create something they wished to add to the installation.

Ariv and Ian each decided to make a rainbow attached to the top of a stick. The rainbows were made of pipe cleaners curved and taped together.

Ian: This is for spin. I'm gonna put this rainbow on the tree so someone cant touch and spin it. 
Ariv: This is my rainbow and there's a button and pipecleaners. The button makes the rainbow even better. 

Susan and L. both worked on different climbing structures. L. first drew and colored a plan of a slide, then taped down pipe cleaners over her drawing, using the same colors of tape that she had colored with. Susan's popsicle-stick, tape, and pipe cleaner creation included many sides for climbing on and a pole to slide down.

A. decided to make a nest, taking a moment to examine a photo of the nests Zoë had made before beginning. "Hey, those nests are made out of string! I can do that. The pom poms can be the eggs." 

B. found that carrying out his plan to make a block was tricky to accomplish, given that so many of the materials available were malleable things like string and tape. At last, he used paper and popsicle sticks to create a "block-shaped" rectangle that he could hold up.

These creations will be added to the installation, which has been relocated to Project Zero. We are hoping to organize a field trip for the preschoolers to visit the new site and see their pieces on display.

This was such an exciting experience, not only for the children, but also for me. As an alumni of the Arts in Education program, I was happy to be able to help Zoë to set up and carry out her installation project. Much in the way that the children were pleased and enlivened by the opportunity to share their work at the end of their Studio visit, I was also proud to be able to share a bit of my work here at PTCC with Zoë and other people involved at Project Zero, including my former professor, Shari Tishman, who joined us in the Studio.

Part of what makes moments like this - work that brings us into contact with our greater community - so important is that they allow us all the chance to share parts of ourselves - our questions, our ideas, our art, our jobs - that are important to us. We offer them up to people who we may not know very well at all, and we ask them to honor, respect, and answer. It is a very powerful feeling, to commence such a relationship. I am so curious to see what will happen when we take the next step and the children see their work displayed in a slightly more public place.

Innovate!

As many teachers around the country are getting ready for weeks of vacation, the teachers at our year-round center are still in the thick of things, but starting to look to our transition in August. During the last week of July, we'll have a week of professional development, and hard work on our physical environments, and then at the start of August, we'll be ready to welcome children to their new classrooms. This is a wonderful moment to pause, reflect on the year that is drawing to a close, and begin planning for what we'll do next year.

Each year, our teachers collect new ideas from outside our community, in books, articles or at trainings and conferences and adapt them to our context. For instance: 

• The symbols that many classrooms  use as tools for building identity, community and pre-literacy skills came from my experience at Hilltop Children's Center in Seattle. However, we've never heard of anyone using symbol curriculum in an infant room the way that Jen, Sasha and Mari did.
• Our focus on loose parts and recyclable materials was inspired by the book "Beautiful Stuff" by Cathy Wiesman Topol and Lella Gandini.
• Our implementation of anti-bias curriculum was grounded in  Louise Derman-Spark's classic book.
• The work of Magda Gerber really transformed our ideas about respect for babies.
• Teachers meeting together for professional development is a common practice in centers that use the Reggio Emilia approach, however our weekly provocations are unusual in their scope, variety of topics, attendees (one teacher from each classrooms and our non-teacher staff) and flexible format.

Our weekly teacher provocations in June will feature teachers talking about innovations they've made this year. This is different from our annual Showcase which will take place in a few weeks, which invites teachers to show off what they are most proud of. Instead, I'm asking teachers to talk about specific innovations that I think other teachers may want to try. My focus is not just on the practice, but on the teachers' process of innovation.

I've been learning over the last few years about "organizational knowledge"; how an organization can learn and hold information and ideas. In Reggio Emilia, all processes are collaborative. Ideas always involve the collective rather than the individual. This reflective, community-minded approach combined with an emphasis on documentation leads to organizations rich in historical memory that can hold a lot of knowledge. This month's provocations are opportunities for us to share and for me to document some of the innovation taking place at our center, and contribute to our center's store of knowledge. Over the next month, I'll be describing our conversations here. 

Teasing Curricular Threads Out of the Fabric of Children's Play; or What's In a Metaphor?

Our curriculum is built by teachers around the interests we see in children’s play.

Lately we’ve been thinking about how to find children’s interests and questions in our observations, extend children’s learning over a longer time, and connect it to more fundamental questions, rather than staying on the surface of their learning. We often call these underlying questions, interests or themes “curricular threads.” 

Each week, a teacher from each classroom comes together at our center for professional development we call "weekly provocation". I often plan these mini-workshops with the admin team or with Katie. Today we came together today to practice finding these threads.

Thinking about threads… real threads.

The metaphors we choose tell us something important about what we are thinking. Why do we think of persistent questions or themes as “threads”? Our table was decorated with fabric and other examples of “threads” for us to consider as we entered. We spent some time describing thread together:

·        We use threads for some of the oldest human activities, it’s ancient.

·       We use thread for … practical things; baskets and fishing nets … across cultures.

·        It doesn't come to an end unless you cut it, it seems like it could go on and on.

·        There are many pieces to one piece of thread…intertwined.

·        You might add to it and make a knot.

·        Thread can be very orderly; the spools of thread in my sewing room are very orderly and they're all wrapped up, but if they're on the floor they're a mess and they are impossible to take apart.

·        Two weak, little threads can make a very strong seam.

·        Thread has a curved and windy journey in fabric.

·        Something so simple goes into something so big and meaningful. [When you hem shorts] something so little as a thread can make such a change in something big.

·        You can use different materials... but one thread can [bring them together].

·        They make connections that can hold things together. Small pieces can build upon each other and make something larger.

Next we looked at old notes and pictures about children who examined machines over four months. As we read, teachers hypothesized about possible curricular threads that may have been woven into the work. Throughout this conversation we differentiated between the content (the superficial, visible interest) and the curricular thread (the developmental struggle, big question, underlying theme), often with gestures signifying the surface, or the depth. 

I told about two different three year old classrooms (in two different centers and two different years) who were doing a lot of fire-fighter play (content). One group was so interested in fire; what it was, why it was scary, why it was so important for fire fighters to put it out. Another group was interested in the feeling of reunion, of rescue. They were all new to group care, and focused on the moment when the fire-fighter saved the person and brought them back to their family. You can see how this play might look the same on the surface; same props, running to get hoses and put out the fire, saving moms and dads and cats, but how children's interests are quite different. We all referred back to this example as we spoke. It was not easy, to identify the threads and we sometimes missed.

Some of the interesting details that we noticed that were probably not curricular threads were:

·        Color, size or other visual aspects of the machines

·        Wheels

·        Things that turn on and off

·        Chains

      These details or interests are meaningful to the children, but they are different from what we can pursue over months of curriculum. They are useful aspects of children's experience that we might include in provocations, but they're different from the curricular threads we're seeking today.

The curricular threads we identified were:

·        How do mechanical things work?

·        How can we keep one another and ourselves safe in unfamiliar situations?

·        What is the relationship between the function of the whole machine, and functions of the parts?

·        Names, labels, categorizing or taxonomy

·        Cause and effect

·        Finding ways to control things; making them stop and go

·        How do machines connect us to the adults who use them?

·        Wondering about and trying on “real” things, adult things

·        Making connections between bigger grown up machines and children's own things

·        Finding a new, more intimate relationship with everyday things

Pilar, Danielle, Tracy and Sarah looking for threads in the stories of children's work.

Finally, we looked at our own documentation over the last year and tried to identify curricular threads that children pursued over time.

We guessed that it was easier to find the threads in the collected documentation because it was already gathered together around a shared theme. We wondered together if it's easier to find curricular threads in children's work when looking back at what's already happened, rather than looking at curriculum that's still in process. Since our documentation process is always inviting us to look backward and forward, we have a unique tool to assist us in finding these threads. We also talked about how once we are following a thread, smaller moments that may have been ignored before stand out as we see children integrating their every day play into whatever theme they are working on in the moment.