What Adults Can Learn From Kids

Watched this very inspiring and thought provoking TED talk, given by a "kid" herself on the value of listening to and trusting children. I think it is vital that every educator (and adult for that matter) hear what she has to say on the need for more reciprocity in the adult-child and especially teacher-student relationship. It would also be a great resource for students who are older who can use the ideas in the video to start a conversation where they have the opportunity to create a community where all can benefit, be trusted, share in the creation of rules and class structure, express their ideas and opinions, and feel valued. Adora Svitak makes some very good points throughout her presentation starting with the connotations behind the word "childish". She makes the connection between using that term as an admonishment for those acting irrational or irresponsible. However, as she points out, there are a great deal of examples of adults acting irrational and irresponsible and many children who have inspired others, created wonderful things, and done great work for their community and even the world. She explains that it is in a way unfair for this "age-discriminatory" word to be used to describe those actions and behaviors which go beyond the age of a person.
Then again, she moves onto the point that not all "childish" behaviors are as awful as they are made out to be. Yes, irrational thinking may not be useful much of the time, but there are many situations where it can actually be beneficial. Children still have the ability to think beyond reality and ignore the reasons why something shouldn't or couldn't make sense. By the time most people are adults they are "burdened" by what they have learned and so are more hesitant to take chances and embrace their imagination without holding back because of perceived limitations.
As teachers, this is important to keep in mind. We should take the time to listen to the ideas that out students have and to develop and nurture the creativity and innovation that comes with it. Taking the time to listen to our student can make all the difference.

Earth Day

Today we celebrated Earth Day at our school. I was really excited because I think it's important to share these ideas with children at an early age, and even more importantly because I got to read them one of my favorite books ever, The Lorax, and wear my Lorax tree hugger shirt.

We started off after lunch by just talking about Earth Day-what it is, what it means, why we celebrate it. I was pleasantly surprised by all the information that the students already knew about Earth day, protecting the earth and our environment, and why it is important. They understood that we were wearing green and blue because it represents the plants and water which are important things to keep clean and safe because we need them. This was really good because we've been learning about plants, what plants need to live and how people use plants so they had a lot of background to connect to. Most importantly we need to "keep our earth pretty and clean!"

We did a little comparison of earth and our houses because we all live on the earth so it's like one gigantic house. The students were sharing what they thought about a house that had trash all over the floor, "yucky stuff" in the water and air (they didn't like the idea of showering or taking baths even more than they normally do), and other problems that are happening to the earth. It was so funny to see how excited and grossed out they got by all of this, and that a lot of the really got the connection between a house we live in and the earth as a really big version of that.

We read the book The Lorax together, and though many of them have seen the new movie, they didn't know the original book. As I was reading we spent a lot of time stopping to talk about what was happening, how the environment was changing in the pictures and the descriptions, why it was changing, what that meant, and more. It had such great visuals of how the same piece of land looked before the Once-ler arrived and the slow transition to dark and gray and dirty after he had made his factory. They were so engrossed in the story even though it took a much longer time to read than normally holds their attention. At times the students were so excited about wanting to make a comment about something in the story or a connection to Earth day and the story they looked as if they would explode. We also spent some time talking about the Once-ler, how he was treating the animals, the Lorax, the trees, and the land around him. We focused so much on what the Once-ler did, how it affected the land, air, and water, and how that affected the animals so they could see the connections. I was surprised by how well they were able to understand what was happening and that they were so disgusted by what was going on, they were yelling at the Once-ler and saying how he was so bad and they don't like him. 

After we talked about why we read the Lorax for Earth day. The students came up with great connections and understood that it's important to keep the earth clean, to plant plants, to not litter, etc. They even started comparing what was happening in the book to our own earth unprompted, saying that it's like when we leave trash on the ground it's bad for the earth and the animals might eat it and die! (They all got very into the birds dying thing and kept coming up with ways to help the earth so that our birds don't die and "real" stories of when they saw birds eat trash on the ground and die or the bird flew into dirty air and died- hey, at least they're concerned about the birds and see a connection between actions of people and the effect on animals!)

We finished by talking about what the Lorax would want us to do or not want to do, like he would not want us to litter, make the earth messy. He would want us to pick up trash, plant new plants, and take care of our earth. I asked them if they wanted to help our earth just like the Lorax and they were SO excited to go outside and pick up the trash from our playground. I was a little worried because I figured they were just excited to go out and play (even though that wasn't the point) but not a single one of them was playing on the playground or running around. They were all almost fighting over the pieces of trash to collect as many as they could. They all wanted to show off how much they picked up and didn't want to come in when the day was over because "there's still trash to clean up!" They were also frustrated when they looked outside of our playground area at the front of the school or other playground and couldn't go there to get the trash. A few of them even asked if we could do this every single day!

We came in and talked about how we want to be like the Lorax and protect our earth, so their job was go home and talk to family and friends about what they do to help our earth so the next day we can come up with some ideas to help the Lorax even more the next day.

Will post pics of their Lorax craft where they are drawing/writing about how to save the earth and share some of the ideas we came up with!

Addressing Tragedy in Schools

The recent tragedy that took place in Boston has brought me back to thinking, not for the first time this year unfortunately, how to deal with devastating events happening in the world with your students. This time I am in a kindergarten classroom, and it doesn't seem that any of my students are aware that anything has happened and we have not talked about it in class at all. They do appear to have some knowledge of bad things that have happened in the world though. When we had a lockdown drill back in February and had to hide in the bathroom to wait for the police to come let us out we had a short conversation about it to prepare them and give the reassurances that it is just a drill to practice keeping them safe. While we were talking we tried to avoid any mention of situations that would lead to a lockdown other than if a bad guy came to our school. However a few of the students did bring up things that might happen like if a person had a gun or wanted to hurt them, though they didn't really seem to understand what it meant or make any connection to it. I think at the age of 5 or 6 the students have a hard time processing these events or things that don't happen directly to them. Especially as they are just starting to venture out into the world and begin school I don't know if it is a good idea to overexpose them to these tragedies and scare them, and parents are more likely to want a say in how aware or not their students are kept of these things.

However, I think back to last semester when I was student teaching in a 5th grade classroom when the school shooting at Sandy Hook happened. I was actually teaching in the classroom as it was happening and did not find out until lunch time. We chose not to talk to the students about it after lunch since, being a minimum day, there was not much time to have a conversation and we thought it best to give students the opportunity to talk with their parents first. The following Monday we had a short staff meeting before school, but we talked more about how to make our school more safe and address concerns in that area than how or if to talk to our students about it. We still did not initiate a discussion about Sandy Hook with our students, it seemed like most teachers, including my master teacher, took the stance of allowing conversation about it from the students if they brought it up, but to initiating the conversation ourselves. It did end up coming up later as we started a previously planned activity where students were making wishing trees for the holidays. The idea was that students were to write a wish for the holidays beyond just what they wanted for presents, but to send good thoughts and positive energy out into the world, and then tie these messages around the school. Many of the students suggested writing wishes for the people of Sandy Hook to help them heal and deal with what had happened. It was so great to see the students being aware and compassionate about what had happened, and it felt more natural and appropriate that they were the ones who brought it up and led the conversation.

I do still wonder what the best approach (if there is one) might be as teachers to dealing with these national tragedies which are unfortunately a part of our lives. It does not seem as if there is one definite answer, and that so much of this depends on the students' ages, awareness, trust in the classroom and with there teacher, the comfort level of all involved, and more. My hope is that in my own teaching career there are not too many instances in which I will have to figure this out.


Here is a link to an article on sharemylesson.com (also a good resource on its own for teachers) about helping children to cope with these events, along with a number of other links on related topics which I found to be interesting and useful- http://www.sharemylesson.com/article.aspx?storyCode=50007527