Theory in Practice: Becoming a Guide and Learning to Map

School children holding alphabet cards, Hartlepool, GB c. 1900
Image source: Hartlepool Cultural Services via Flickr

As I look back on my highs and lows, it's interesting to note the themes and topics that reoccur, which I was not aware of during the actual unfolding of events. One of the major themes I notice is my preoccupation with relationships. I spend a lot of time thinking about relationships in my school life, from my relationship with individual students to their relationships with each other. I seem to not be able to pull apart my relationship with a child and teaching that child. For me, the two rely on each other, and one cannot exist without the other. Many of my reflections involve thinking of ways to connect with different students, gain their trust, and build an understanding between us as student and teacher.

I also put a lot of mental and emotional energy into supporting these young people in relating to each other in positive ways, and equipping them with tools to handle the conflict and misunderstanding that life invariably throws at them. One of the struggles in our class this year has been building empathy and tolerance in young people when dealing with the challenging behavior of a few of their peers. As adults, of course we can step back and look critically at a child's behavior and say "okay, he/she may be acting this way because of XYZ outside factors" but such removal from interactions is much more difficult for younger students. They are very much "in" the social interactions, and it's hard for them to think critically about a friend's behavior and tease out the difference between "being mean" and genuinely being unable to help their impulses or understand and respond appropriately to social cues. We have employed the Bucket Filler books, a metaphor for kids about the way our words and actions impact each other by envisioning our emotions as a bucket of good feelings that can either be filled or dipped from. Metaphors can be challenging for even adults to absorb and apply to their own concrete actions, so naturally the children are still working on relating their actions and words to the bucket filling and bucket dipping they talk about occurring. In our class we have a physical plastic bucket with cards they can fill out when they feel a classmate has done or said something that has filled their buckets. I hope that reviewing these bucket filling moments with the students next week will be a community building moment that celebrates the growth they have made in becoming conscientious bucket-fillers, as well as underscore the concrete things we can do or say to get along and be friendly towards others.

I think this reflects that my theory towards teaching is very much a social one. It relies on a healthy and supportive community for authentic learning to take place, and I work hard to help the children build such a place. THis is why many of my lows center on dealing with behavior that either disrupts the calm of such an environment, or disrupts the harmony through negative social interactions. We're confronting these challenges with solutions such as an increase in small group work over whole group, which has proven very successful thus far.

Another HUGE theme that I see in my reflections has to do with my own organization abilities (or lack thereof). This is an area in which I have struggled since childhood. As an adult with ADD, I continue to search for ways to cope with my constant "scatter-brained" feeling that also impacts my self-esteem and brings with it great waves of self-doubt. Sometimes I wonder what kind of a role model I can be to kids as I support them in developing their own organizational and self-regulation skills, when mine seem so deficient. I berate myself with abusive thoughts and language. This has been increasingly difficult now that I myself am a student again. While children have the opportunity to have their learning differentiated to their needs, as an adult student, you have to conform to the learning structure presented to you, whether it fits your learning style or not. You have to "deal" if you want to succeed. Sometimes I feel inadequate, even sad, when I encounter students who remind me of myself. I think, how can I meet your needs as a learner in the here and now while also equipping you for a much harsher future? How can I protect you from feelings of not fitting in or inferiority when comparing yourself to the learners around you, when I myself have not been able to conquer these feelings and personal flaws? I feel like a fraud, and my greatest fear is that my learning shortcomings will result in massive failure as a grad student and as a teacher, and I will be "found out" as a phony and be laughed out of town. I want to protect my students from developing these negative feelings about themselves, I want them to feel as capable and full of potential as I see them. But I know that first I have to come to terms with my own self-actualizing in this department. And self-actualizing can be painful, especially when you've been making do for so many years of adulthood. I truly believe the major link that is missing that will make me feel in control and capable is organization. I have to find a way to put myself through a kind of organizer's boot camp, perhaps using resources like pinterest for tools that will assist me in my goal to improve in this area.

Obviously, planning and being goal oriented is necessary, even required for this profession. But there is also something to be said for throwing the plan out of the window and pursuing more interesting avenues that pop up organically when students take charge of their own learning. I recorded many highs that involved meaningful moments that came from just going with a student's suggestion. Acting and thinking on my feet in this manner, when the classroom is abuzz with excitement and activity as a brand new idea is set in motion, is an area of strength for me and it fills me with a kind of exhilaration as it unfolds before my very eyes. Perhaps it's the opposite side of the organization coin, the half where I am not deficient but in fact naturally well equipped to excel. That place where spontaneity and openness to change on the fly can lead to deeper student involvement and ownership of their learning is a kind of sweet spot, and I want more control of getting to that place while still holding on to the goals of our learning. I want so badly to learn planning, real planning, goal-oriented planning that sees weeks into the future the way my scatter-brain nature does not. Following the lead of the kids is magical and powerful, but if I am going to be an effective guide, I obviously need a real map and one I know how to navigate. I need to know where our destination is so that we can all get there, together, even if we don't take the route originally mapped. Here my theory is beginning to emerge from the mist of all-over-the-place thoughts. Learning should be child-driven, but the teacher needs the skills to know where the destination is, and how to shepherd the kids in the right direction.

My mission is to harness my natural ability in kid-centered projects by balancing my spontaneous abilities with clean, clear, organized plans. I want to learn to create goal based, systematic, plans. I want to build routines and habits for my own self-management. But to do these things without forcing myself to be something I am not, which I would never in a million years wish upon a child.

Mirror Neurons

Image source: flickr commons Smoking chimpanzee in Artis zoo. The Netherlands, Amsterdam, 1958. 

 Remember the Mirror Neurons from that youtube clip in class?

If you're not in my class, Mirror Neurons are this new discovery that seem to reveal the location of "empathy" nerves in the brain. These Italian ape researchers discovered the mirror neurons on accident. They had been studying which part of the brain fires when a monkey reaches for a peanut, and one day realized the exact same synapses fire when the monkey watches someone else grab a peanut. That is, in this part of the brain, the reaction to seeing is equivalent to the act of doing it oneself. Further studies with humans reveal the same goes for witnessing other people's emotions. Seeing them is the same as feeling them. Capiche?

Well a quick search turned up the original 14 minute video on the PBS website, and it was really fascinating and worth watching! They get into what this means for autism research, which some of us were wondering about in class after having watched Part 1. Watch the whole thing on the NOVA website here, or just watch them on youtube below and pick up at Part 2 for autism discussion :)

Part 1:
 

Part 2:

Once Upon a Time: Emergent Literacy Caught on Film

The brilliant Pre-K teachers at my school had a literacy routine that involved children dictating their own stories, then later acting them out with their classmates. I was lucky enough to get the job of editing all of this cute footage and helping their stories reach the next level. You can really see their emergent literacy at work here as they structure their tales in familiar ways using familiar story-telling language.

Critical Lenses

Image source: Wildflower Preservation Society, Illinois Chapter circa 1920 

Confession: I've been watching a certain Japanese Anime (Girls Bravo, 2004, Mario Kandeda), in my spare time. It's a vapid show, mostly about these alien chicks from a planet with no men who keep finding themselves in unintentionally titillating and sexy situations. I recognize how sexist, objectifying to women, ridiculous, inappropriate, etc, it all is. In one episode, an innocent alien girl (probably high school age), winds up through various shenanigans on Earth in a sexy panda outfit, with a very cartoony stampede of men groping and photographing her against her will saying "will you wear a maid suit for me?" I mean, we're talking serious presque-rape, but slapsticky, as if these situations are hilarious. It's horrible. But I still love it. I guess because it's entertaining and goofy, and just a good story.

I could say the same for books like Falling for Rapunzel by Leah Wilcox, where it's all too easy to deconstruct it into a "what do you know, another woman as an object which a man has to go and retrieve because she has no will of her own" sort of thing. I could tell some of my classmates were pretty bummed after we had enjoyed the cute cleverness of it together one moment, then were picking apart its message about gender the next. I would like to cheer my classmates up and tell them how I feel about such layered pieces of literature: that just because it can be looked at critically in this way, doesn't mean I can't also think it's adorable, love the rhyme scheme, and find it to be SMACK on the interest level of some of my kiddos. Books come from a time and a place, which is why antiquated ideas like in Mark Twain novels can make us blush, yet we still read them in schools today. I think we continue to enjoy these stories because they are fascinating slivers of life from a time past, and often because they are just good stories. Our own literature that we produce now can be viewed in the same way, but they're slivers of OUR lives, which is probably even MORE important to understand than Huckleberry Finn's life. Falling for Rapunzel might be said to propel gender stereotypes that I disagree with, but so do lots of Shakespeare plays, and I would still value their artistic value. Being able to recognize the secret, unofficial messages lurking in stories by putting on my critical lenses, I can choose books with full intention. Maybe we'll talk about what this book assumes about women this time, and maybe we'll stick to funny words that rhyme with "my dear". Knowledge is power, right? Having different lenses to put on when looking at literature or picking out classroom books is totally a form of power.

Sometimes I worry that every little thing I say or do is somehow warping girls of the future. Better not compliment their looks, put down my own looks in front of them, or encourage too much Disney Princess fever. But then I remind myself that I used to love all that stuff, too. Which means, eventually, if their teachers have done their jobs, these girls should have their own pair of critical lenses just like mine! And they can put them on when they need to be smart about messages they're being fed, and take them off when they just want to relax with a good story, just like I do.

Globes

Image Source: Flickr Commons. Rural school children, San Augustine County, Texas. April, 1943. (Vachon, John, 1914-1975, photographer)

This photograph from 1943 reminded me of a globe-related moment I shared with the K-1 kiddos today. We were having a quiet spell after a lesson full of flying around the room as papillons and avions, drawing pictures to add to our French dictionary. M was drawing le monde, the world. He commented that the edge of the Earth was probably far away, and other children agreed, prompting me to grab the globe I had noticed by the teacher's chair earlier. "Check this out. See any edges?" Illustrating that the Earth was round, I had intended to do. Causing a swarm of children to hover around me and this simple round object, I had not. But soon, sticky fingers were pointing out colorful continents, wanting to know what they were all called and what language was spoken there. "What's this one called? Nambia? I want to go there." They found the USA and they found France. They returned to their drawings of stylos and la Guerre des Etoiles just a little more thoughtful.

I loved this moment, and was continuing to think about it this afternoon when I found this old photograph of school children in Texas, engaged in a similar globe exploration, in a distant time and place. I like to picture these little imaginations whirring with a spin of this globe, traveling to worlds far beyond their rural lives through this magical rotating ball. Amazing how such a simple device has the power to blow open minds and travel through time, all the way to my classroom in 2013.