A Good Teacher

A Good Teacher
January 31, 2011, if; font-size: small;”>ExchangeEveryDay

What makes you happy makes you rich.
-Russian proverb

“I think a good teacher of young children should try to be all-seeing, rather than all-knowing;  a good listener, rather than a constant talker.  The emphasis should be on observation and interpretation, rather than relying on past experience for solving every problem that arises.”

This insight comes from Carol Hillman in her Exchange book, Teaching Four-Year-Olds: A Personal Journey. She adds, in part:

“I think a good teacher of young children should look at the children’s interests in planning the curriculum, rather than relying on last year’s lesson plans.  The emphasis should be on the expressed needs of each child, rather than on preconceived notions of what is good for young children in general…

“A good teacher needs to take great pleasure in setting up a classroom that allows children to explore, to question, to work alone or in a group or with an adult.  A good teacher of young children needs to be wiling to be the same kind of learner that she expects each child in her class to be.

“The most important thing about being a teacher of young children is a willingness to learn about a child by being with a child and responding to a child.”

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Children with Challenging Behavior

April 21, 2009 , ExchangeEveryday

Children with challenging behavior is far and away the leading training priority for teachers identified in our current Exchange Insta Poll. And, this has been true for over five years of doing this survey. [If you want to share your views on Teacher Training Needs, you still have 16 hours to participate in the Exchange Insta Poll.] A number of reasons have been proposed for this phenomenon:

• Cultural: Children today, from the earliest ages, are exposed to enormous amounts of violence on television, videos, and computer games and are given the message that you solve problems with aggression.
• Societal: This theory points the finger at parents whose lives are so hectic and stressful that they are not spending enough time nurturing their children and helping them develop self control.
• Environmental: Contaminants and additives in the air we breathe, the fast food we consume, and water we drink are polluting and impacting our children’s health and dispositions.
• Professional: In classrooms of highly functioning teachers, there is little misbehavior to manage — children are engaged. The prevalence of misbehavior in programs is attributable to low pay and low skills of our workforce.

We hesitate to select any one of these theories as the answer. But, it is clear that children’s challenging behavior is an issue our field needs to address in order for children to have positive, nurturing experiences in our programs.

Serious Need for Play

Serious Need for Play

February 18, 2009

“Free, imaginative play is crucial for normal social, emotional, and cognitive development. It makes us better adjusted, smarter, and less stressed.” This bold statement comes not from the latest issue of Young Children, or a keynoter at the annual meeting of the Chicago Metro AEYC, but from the Scientific American MIND magazine (February 2009).

The article, “The Serious Need for Play” by Melinda Wenner, provides a strong, research-based case for the value of play in the lives of children. Every early childhood program should hand out copies of the article to parents, politicians, and funders. Here ar e some points Wenner makes… “[Researcher Stuart Brown] has interviewed some 6,000 people about their childhoods, and his data suggest that a lack of opportunities for unstructured, imaginative play can keep children from growing into happy, well-adjusted adults.

Free play…is critical for becoming socially adept, coping with stress, and building cognitive skills such as problem solving.” “Studies show that children use more sophisticated language when playing with other children than when playing with adults. In pretend play, for instance, they have to communicate about something that’s not physically present, so they have to use complicated language in such a way that they can communicate to their peer what it is that they’re trying to say.”

“Researchers at the University of Washington gave a box of toy blocks to children from middle- and low-income families aged 18 months to two and a half years. Par ents of these kids, as well as parents of a similar group of kids who had no blocks, kept track of how often the children played. After six months, the kids who had played with blocks scored significantly higher on language tests than the others did.”

~ taken from ExchangeEveryDay is a free service of Exchange Magazine.