Beards, Masks and Racism

Its been a while since I sat here to write. I have had ideas of what to write... but no energy to sit and write them... not sure how this post will be but it has been on my mind for a week now and I need to get it down and let the thoughts start musing about other things too! lol

Two years ago I was working as a head teacher at a bilingual preschool and a situation arose where one of the staff came in and exclaimed her horror at the fact she had seen three other staff make a child cry and the frustration that she had done nothing to prevent it.

The scenario was this. A just turned two year old child was scared of one of the assistants, who was at the time the only pedagogue of African American descent. The three assistants involved said the child was a racist and wanted to cure the child by forcing the child on the knee of the very adult he was afaid of. He cried, naturally.

The three staff came into my office so that we could talk through and understand the situation and discuss whether small children could  be racist (and I am not even going to the place where children are fed racism and hate - because the children, I feel, are not understanding what they are doing, the are merely mimicking what others do).

I pointed out that this assistant was in fact very different on the outside than the rest of the teachers and the rest of the child's family - and that fear of the unkown is common in young children - it is just to look at how many children cry of fear when they see Santa with his face hidden behind a big beard - or when masks are being used. It does not mean that children hate santa and will go round and say and do mean things about santa and bearded people. It just means that this child has not been given the chance to get to know the real santa - and by watching and observing the kind behaviour of santa and other bearded people they will learn that it is not something to fear!

In the same way the forcing a child to sit on someones knee to get over a fear is not going to work - instead the child needs to be given the opportunity to watch and observe this adults interactions with others to learn that this person is no different than anyone else - and allowed to come to terms with what is different and scary does not need to be...

The reason why this has come up again is because on the last two Fridays we have had song-time with the whole preschool where teachers have dressed in costumes from the book "Mamma Mu" and sang songs inspired from the book (they are very catchy) watch here to see a trailer of the film it's actually quite hard to listen to that music without singing the words in my head!!

Anyway - despite getting dresssed up as characters from children's books three of the children were totally terrified and could only cry - so instead of forcing them to be in the room with something that scary (even though the head/mask had been removed and the teachers revealed and the situation explained - the fear was still too strong) I took them to be in another room... sad I got to miss song time, but much better for those three children to be able to calm down and play on their own terms... and maybe next time it won't be so scary - or the time after or the time after...

So this fear of the unknown I see it as a survival mechanism - until you know what it is you kind of keep your distance. As teachers we need to explore HOW to create opportunities for these children to understand their fears - to work out which ones are there for safety (like not playing with fire) and which ones are hindering the child's play and exploration.

Our exploration of the dark and of heights was our attempt to help the children to understand WHAT it is they are scared of - and I am not saying we have cured the children of their fear of the dark or heights - but they have been given the opportunity to see them in a new way - to laugh and have fun in the dark makes the dark a lot less scary - and our light experiments in the dark was that kind of opportunity - and the first time round there were children that were scared and had to leave the room - the second time round no-one needed to leave the room (although that time the child with the greatest fear of the dark was at home sick). The days are getting shorter here in Sweden, so dealing with the dark is something we have to come to terms with - in midwinter it will be pitch black by 3pm!

I am going to keep it at that... I would like this to be a start of a dialogue about fear - and I would appreciate if you could share experiences as comments - so that I can learn more - and also so that others reading this post have the opportunity to learn more and deepen their own thoughts about fear, beards, masks and racism...

Self-portraits

I have seen that some of the children are showing an interest in drawing people - this is a big step forward from all the "experiencing the pen move across tha paper" art that has dominated this little group of eleven children. So I thought the time was ripe to introduce the idea of drawing a self-portrait.
On Mondays the children choose if they are going to be doing an indoor or outdoor activity in the morning - we had 10 children present today and it was a 5-5 divide (it isn't always). Funnily enough the child I thought would be the most interested in drawing a self portrait as she has been sitting drawing lots of people suddenly recently, practising, practising chose to go outside - and two children who I thought would not be in the least interested in drawing self portraits (as they have only made drawings of rapid circles and lines) decided to stay inside to draw - but that is the way it works...

One of the two who I thought would not choose to draw suddenly expressed concern... "I can't draw people". I felt slightly under pressure - as this is a child who seems to feel the need to get things just so. Would I be able to support him during this?
I put the camera down and decided to give him full focus. We looked in the mirror - what could we see. He said his name. I asked what shape was his face. It was round. So I asked if he could draw a big round circle on his paper.
He did that.
We looked in the mirror again. Where are your eyes? He pointed to his own eyes. Where in the circle of your face are your eyes? He looked again in the mirror. What shape are they? Back to the reflection and then he draw one circle and then another - I helped him hold his pencil closer to the point as he was having a hard time controlling his pencil letting him know that know it would be easier to direct the pencil.
Can you see that your nose is under your eyes - can you draw that too? He did.
Now look for your mouth - where on your face is your mouth? Under my nose he said. Yes, can you draw your mouth under the nose. He did.
He then looked at his picture and smile and exclaimed "I can draw myself". (1)

The next child positively bounced over in excitement - and even though I did not think this would be an activity that he would be interested in, he proved me wrong. he showed enthusiasm and excitement throughout - exploring his face in the mirror and drawing - with the same sort of guidance.  He started his drawing sideways, by accident or not - but once he drew his eyes on top of each other in the circle, he paused and then turned the paper round to continue. He needed a little help to hold the pencil more firmly, although this did little to affect his drawing technique that was VERY light.(2)

As this was the first time to draw portraits for three of the children I felt it was best that each child got one to one attention - when not drawing the children were in the adjoining room playing with animals, small story figures and fairies - the positive sound of imagination filtering through the whole time... By supporting the children in this way, not only could I aid them with their own observations of themselves but it was also a great language opportunity, boosting our use of prepositions, shapes, body parts etc

The next two children have done portraits with me last term - and they are both a year or more older than the other three as well.
(3) We discussed about where the eyes should be positioned as she was about to place them at the very top of her head - so I asked How high up on your face are your eyes? She looked at the mirror and adjusted the positioning of the eyes and from then on used the mirror to guide her. She was very thorough about the number of bands in each of her mnay pony-tails - counting 1,2,3,4 as she made lines across each pony-tail representing the bands tying her hair.

(4) This child really enjoyed the use of the mirror - smiling back at herself often and notcing the lines at the side of her mouth when she smiled which she incorporated in the drawing. She wanted to include her teeth - and so she opened her mouth to have a look at how her teeth looked. It was also important or her to draw the enitre body. We talked about the fact that she could see her ears and yet her hair still went over them - and how could this be represented on the paper... but frawing over the ears was not something that she could do, and so drew her hair around her ears.

(5) I encouraged the youngest of the group to use the mirror - and even though shelistend and looked in the mirror she chose not to draw what she saw but chose to draw what she knew was a herself, a person. I understood this from the fact that we could talk about eyes and she would draw the mouth. What was fascinating was that her drawing was created sideways and when she was finished she turned it around to admire it. She drew long long legs and long arms. I helped her with her pencil grip to hold it closer to the point so that she would have a more control of the pencil.

I left the portrait things out on the table with the idea that maybe some of the children would like another go... and the two older children did return dressed as fairies and they also brought out the coloured pens to add some colour... check out this post to find out more

Fairy Portraits

After our morning session of drawing self-portraits there was time for free-play - I left the table prepared for more self-portraits just in case some of the children would like to have anorher go - and two of the children did - although this time they were dressed up as fairies...

They also got the coloured pens out - as this time they did not just want to draw in pencil, but in colour too - and who can blame them with such colour-happy clothes...

The children wrote in fairy language - and that is why I cannot recognise it (and also because they realise that this is writing, but not quite writing as they see me write in the notebooks - or how their names look either)

I asked if they could translate their fairy language so that I could write down what they had written in human langiage...

The top picture
Dear Fairies,
Can you come here? We so want to see if you are real. How can you come here? And where is the fairy letter? is the fairy letter with you? What do you eat? I would really like to have a fairy in my home. I have seen Tinkerbell and friends on the TV - but are they for real?

Lower picture
Why don't you come back? Where is the fairy letter? Who has taken it? (that's it for now I need to think)
Fairies - why have you gone? We have written a letter - have you got it?

It is very clear that there are many questions about where have the fairies gone - and the fairy letter we wrote last week, has now disappeared from where we left it - where has THAT gone? AND very interesting - ARE fairies real?

These will be questions we will take up in the philosophical dialogues this week...

Mothers of the world...

Leigh Ann Yuen from Garden Gate Early Childhood Development Center said, in response to my anger about how the evaluation of my son is progressing,  that "Truly it is the mothers of the world who will make a difference and make change."

It made me think back to the 1940's to when the Reggio Emilia preschools first started -  coming together with the hope that their children would never just accept but would have the strength to think and make their own decisions, as they salvaged tanks and other remnants of the Second World War to create and fund preschools "a demanding task - not for the lack of determination but rather a lack of experience. We were breaking traditional patterns" (p.51 The Hundred Languages of Children 2nd edition)


I rather like my own personal links with the whole Reggio Emilia philosophy...
my grandfather had started the war in northern Africa and had worked his way up Italy, being in the middle of some horrendous battles - Monte Cassino for one. BUT as the war ended he was marching on his way to Austria to be debriefed (and to meet my grandmother - but that is another story) and on his way he marched through Reggio Emilia and saw the women, and others, rummaging for bricks and washing them to create the first preschools.

The first municipal preschool was called Robinson in 1963 - this is the year that my parents met - and Robinson Crusoe, Defoe's hero comes from York - as do I.

Silly little connections in life - but sometimes these connections feel like a circle completed somehow. 

IF the mothers of Reggio Emilia could initiate preschools that have had such influence over how we think about children and respond to them just by daring to start something DIFFERENT then maybe its time for mothers to come together again and ensure that children are getting the education the NEED rather than the education that has been.

explorations on the light table - art, science, nature, mathematics...

Society is forever evolving - and there will be those that will say "the good old days" and there will be those that will look back and shudder. 

I look back at what has been said over the years about pedagogy and get so frustrated because we seem to know what children need but never actually seem to get round to providing it...

from the book "Early Childhood Education - History, Philosophy and Experience" by Nutbrown, Clough and Selbie - here are some ideas over the centuries showing that how Malaguzzi viewed the child was not new in itself - but the fact it was happening - and over a sustained perios of time WAS/IS...

Socrates 469-399BC - teaching through the learners questions, the importance of philosophy and of talking with others about life's questions (why I like working at a preschool with a philosophical profile) QUOTE "Wisdom begins in wonder"

Comenius 1592-1670 - He believed that teachers should understand how a child's mind works and promoted education that was "thorough, natural and enjoyable" and opposed to rote learning for all children regardless of gender or class


Pestalozzi 1746-1827 children should learn through activity, through things rather than words, and be free to pursue their own interests and draw their own conclusions

learning about insects

Fröbel - 1782-1852 - started a business for play and other educational materials to simulate learning through well directed play activities accomanied by song and music

Mason 1842-1923 - promoted the use of senses in learning and learning through experience and the outdoors

Dewey - 1859-1952 - a pedagogy based on ideas of democracy and child-centredness and what became known as the "project method" where teachers and children worked on ideas and found solutions to questions together. Dewey promoted ideas of child-centred education, of activity and interaction, of education as part of the social world of children and their communities. QUOTE "I believe that education ... is a process of living, not a prepapration for fututre living" (Dewey 1897)

Macmillan sisters 1860 - 1931 - learning and the outdoors

Steiner 1861-1925 - education is an art - creative, progressive, social and individual. QUOTE "the child has fantasy, and this fantasy is what we must engage"

Montessori 1870-52 - observed that learning happened through repetition, concentration, imagination, and that learners need to be independant in their actions while making their own decisions about what "work" they should do and learning how to control their own actions.

learning about sea creatures in rock pools

Isaacs 1885-1948 - individual development and joy in discovery. She argued that children need a subtle balance between explorative freedom and emotional expression and the need for mild , yet firm, supporting control to protect them from their inner anxieties and agressive impulses.

Schiller 1895-1976 - child-centred teaching and advocated the arts.

Vygotsky 1896 -1934 - learning as a social exchange, that young children learn through interaction with other children and adults.

Piaget 1896-1980 - learning as a process which evolves as the result of children interacting with the environment

learning about the sucking reflex of calves

Erikson 1902-1994 - his work supports the development of programmes in ECE which foster positive self esteem and exploratory learning through play

Tanner 1904-1988 - believed that is was essential for teachers and children to study natural things and that the arts and crafts, music and poetry should be central to primary education.

11 month old and face to face with crimson rosellas in the Dandenongs

David Hawkins 1913-2002 -  drew from his work at the Mountain View Center for his influential 1973 book, The Informed Vision.  Here, he presented theories, such as “I, Thou, It,” “Eolithism,” and “Messing About” that attracted attention internationally.  Loris Malaguzzi, architect of the world-renowned schools for young children in Reggio Emilia, Italy, deemed The Informed Vision essential reading for all teachers.
I am going to be doing some posts about my interpretation of Hawkins during these last weeks of 2013. And I will be focussing on "The Informed Vision".

So really, what is happening in education? For centuries we seem to have been saying the same thing that children need to learn through play, interaction, with joy and with interest. And yet they continue to sit behind desks and be forced to be treated like empty vessels that need to be filled. The system seems to continually forget that children are not empy - they are filled with wonder and ideas that they need support to explore and learn... why not harness that power?

Mothers of the world - is it not time we stood together and demanded that our children receieve the opportunity to LEARN and not to be force fed an education?
We have enough research over the years to back up our demand we just need to all shout out together to be heard!

Angry...

I am positively fuming about the meeting we had at BUP (Barn och Ungdoms Psykiatriker - Child and Youth Psychiatrists) as I felt it was so wrong - I was so unprepared and angry with myself for letting it happen.

Today was the day we met the doctor - its not been that easy meeting the pyschiatrist, but Michael has managed - but going to the doctor was more nerve-wracking for him as he REALLY does not like doctors. I had been told that he would be meeting with the doctor so she could do a few tests - blood-pressure, height, weight and balance and motor skills... what I was NOT prepared for - either myself or for Michael's sake was that we would be sitting and talking ABOUT Michael's difficulties in front of him.

Of course this was boring but also completely out of line. Working at preschool we know we do not talk about the children in front of them - we talk with them. So here I was sitting in the "expert's" room watching my son shrink smaller and smaller - which I pointed out to the doctor and then sugar coated and focused on his skills... but I feel so disappointed with myself for not saying "no, I won't talk about my son in front of him"...

There is this trust in the "experts" that they know what they are doing - as preschool teachers we are told over and over again that we are not experts and that we should not express any opinions about diagnosis - which has kind of elevated their status - and of course this feels very scary now when they have done this - why on earth would they want his negative history from his whole life while he is there listening? Is there a real valid point for him listening to all of that?

AND there was also the talk about coming back to find out about medication... errm - sorry... WHAT?
NO NO NO!
My son will not be medicated - there is NOTHING wrong with my child - BUT there is something wrong with the school system that does not allow all children to learn the way they need and instead force them into an accepted language of learning...
I mean what is the point with working in a preschool to encourage the child to discover their hundred languages if when they get to school they just slap a gag on all those wonderous languages...
Why bother make these children competent learners when they get to school they are being instructed and not trusted in their learning. Why bother support learning based on the child's individual development of the whole child, when they get to school they all need to be the same and sit behind desks.
If we are supporting children to take any shape they want to be in preschool what is the point of sending them to a school that wants to create squares... and what about the children who no matter how hard they try they just cannot make themselves fit that square cookie-cutter, what abut the children who CAN fit themselves in that cookie-cutter but feel absolutely terrible being there, what about the children who just fall through...?

I am doing all of this for/with Michael not because I want to change HIM - but because I want to have the right to try and influence the system - for his sake - and the sake of others... I want a school that is more flexible and sees the gifts of each child rather than viewing the child as silly putty that they need to mould and knead into a shape THEY want.
Why are we in preschool scaffolding children to build their own learning - only to have it knocked down and rebuilt for them in school...?

Its why I won't work in a school - because I think teachers don't get the chance to help each child learn they way they know is right for the child and group - but have to follow a path chosen for them - and even though they can tweak it - it is not the same as being able to create it specifically for the class you are working with...

If you are wondering what I am writing about - read this post... where I talk from the heart about my son...

Back to the fairies...

During our philosphical dialogue yesterday about darkness - and whether we can see things in the dark the topic of fairies re-surfaced again (it keeps popping up) - but this time the energy and enthusiasm surrounding the fairies indicated to us as teachers that we need to return to our fairy project of August and September... the children had questions... lots in fact... for example...


where did the fairy door go?
Where are the fairies now?
were the fairies dead?

So I asked if the children would like to write a letter to the fairies to see if we would get an answer - the children got excited at this idea and we left a letter for the fairies attached to the fairy lights in the hope that they would read the letter...

we voted on the colour of the paper and the colour of the pen - and then discussed which questions should be put in the letter. Dear Fairies, Can you come and live at preschool Filosofiska again? Are you dead? We don't want you to leave again. Why did you go away and where did you go? Where is the fairy door? the children then all signed their names. One child looked at me and said "but I can't write my name" so I wrote his name down on a piece of paper for him to try and copy and used words of encouragement that the fairies would probably understand all symbols. His first two letters were perfect, although done with ENORMOUS concentration, and his last two letter were placed randomly on the paper and randomly formed. He looked at them and then looked at me and said with a wrinkled nose "but that's not my name, those are not my letters". I looked back and said "but this is just your first time, it takes many many practices before we can write our letters and make words". He looked back at me and seemed satisfied with the answer - and now i look forward to next time he tries to write his name...

Today Ellen and I had out planning/reflection time together - it was a busy half hour throwing around ideas and developing the potential project of a penfriend relationship with the fairies that were trapped in fairyland and needed the children's help... but I am not going to reveal more than that... as the children do not yet know anything - and we still have to see if the children will be interested in following this idea (but I have my suspicions they will...)

The letter we wrote was still there... and I asked the children why they thought it was still there - we hadn't posted it! Do we need to post it to reach fairies... no-one was sure, but maybe we needed some kind of stamp - so a stamp made of glitter was decided upon and was then left high up in the hope that the fairies would find it...

Tomorrow it will not be there...

Tomorrow it will be gone...

But there will be no letter in return... we want a pause in communication until next week - as in real life the post takes a day or two.

BUT - I do have some special paper, glitter pens and some small wings ready for the answer... and next week they will get to find out the first step in their quest...

I am soooo excited - and its not easy to sit here and not share... because its totally bubbling away with ideas and it covers so much of the curriculum that I am positively singing with playful joy - I just love it when learning and play weave so perfectly together ...

So more fairies will be coming your way....

and if you are wondering how exploring fear and the dark could end up in fairies - well it is just to return to the original fairy dialogues... the children said that fairies came out in the dark of night... a perfect logical connection!

Return to the dark... to play!

The value of repeating activities should never be underestimated.
Today we returned to playing in the dark with various light sources - with a few new ones added... and we could really see that this time the children were able to focus on experimenting more as they settled down from the buzz of the excitement - last week it was a scream-fest, it was high energy and it was running around and there was for the most part not a great deal of exploration (even though of course they WERE exploring and experiencing the newness of playing with lights in the dark) but by returning to the dark today the children were able to deepen their experience by testing things out - and using the camera as a source of creativity was very apparent - partly as they have seen the photo images from last week and also because as the children were exploring so did Ellen and I - in true Hawkins style we had a good mess about too - which inspired the children to try making light pictures too. Also testing if lights could shine through material and their own clothes as well as what happened when several light sources cam together.

Afterwards we talked about if they felt the dark was scary when they had played and laughed in the dark - and there was a resounding - no, the dark was not so scary when we were playing together.

using torches on the fibre-optics - there were torches and small coloured finger torches.

a new effect appeared when using a light source under a chiffon scarf

art in the air... like magic - this was a snail!

so many different kinds of light play and exploration - it was hard to try and capture everything and there were many discoveries that I simply did not capture on camera - for instance light colour mixing on the white walls.

creating scary monsters with fleece blankets and light eyes shining through...

fibre-optic exploration

the great thing with the fibre optics is that you did not need the camera to see the special effects - it actually looked like this - flowing, moving - was it fairies?

tummies glowing as one of the light globes was stuffed up a top