I have been thinking about this question for a while. Are we teaching our teacher-students to make their traditional learning activities more creative? Or are we integrating the teaching of the arts and other curricular areas into a seamless whole?
I did a two year program at the Kennedy Center's CETA Program (Changing Education through the Arts). In it I was taught to include the learning standards from both arts disciplines and other content areas. In the Virginia Foundation Blocks there are standards for all of these, arts included. My final project was to do two projects that addressed arts and curricular areas. The CETA trainers (National Board certified teachers and teaching artists) emphasized documentation as a way to make learning visible, to make process accessible to everyone involved in the education of children.
Since then I have added these ideas to the course I teach: Art, Music and Movement for Young Children. The final project is an integrated learning unit that addresses two content areas related to one theme that is taught through two arts activities. The students do these with children (or child) and document the process. Many of my students come out of the course with more of an understanding of how the arts (music, movement, dramatic play) can allow children to learn content without making a big deal about what the children are supposed to learn ("now we are learning about the letter F. Can you be a FOX?"--dramatic play and language arts--check!)
Still, many students are not able to wrap their minds around this approach. One student came to me after class saying that since she wanted children to make caterpillars out of egg cartons for a life-cycles theme, she couldn't figure out how to let them be creative . "Maybe I can let them choose the colors", she said. I suggested giving the children materials and allowing them to create and then explain their caterpillars; to use an open-ended, three-D project to address language arts and science objectives. This was tough for her to swallow. Why is this so hard to understand?
Part of the problem is that many students have received most of their training from directors, and older teachers who do not accept the more organic, integrated approach to teaching young children that is part of best practices. In the NAEYC book, The New Early Childhood Professional: A Step by Step Guide to Overcoming Goliath, the authors discuss the gap between what we as a profession know, and what we do. Those directors and teachers who train our students, and the centers who employ them, reflect how our profession is a patchwork, hodge-podge mish-mash of practices.These practices don't always reflect what we actually know in the profession. Hence the egg-carton caterpillars supposedly teaching about actual caterpillars, or art. Habits are hard to break!
When I begin teaching the course, Art, Music and Movement for Young Children, I start with this video: Music and Dance Drive Academic Achievement on Edutopia. When my students see this, it elicits comments such as, "Why couldn't my child have been in that kind of program?", and, "I want this for all children." The subject of money inevitably comes up. Where would it come from? That one program is sponsored by a rich man. What about everyone else? So I tell them about resources right in the D.C. area--The Wolf Trap Institute of Early Learning Through the Arts, or CETA, at the Kennedy Center (Changing Education Through the Arts. These programs not only come into schools, but educate teachers to include arts integration. Teachers who work in CETA or Wolf Trap schools say that the children are passionate and eager to learn by taking part in arts activities (dance, drama, music, dance, visual art) that lead them through learning the materials that their teachers are required to teach. It is a two-fer. You get art education and the content as well.
So let’s teach our teachers of young children
that learning the alphabet, colors, numbers and shapes doesn’t need to be
onerous drudgery. Let’s teach them to view every curricular requirement as a
challenge to their capacity to integrate the world of the arts. Everyone will
benefit.
I presented two workshops yesterday, one on challenging behavior, at the 15th Annual Regional Child Care and Early Childhood Conference at Germanna Community College yesterday morning (early morning!). I didn't call it Challenging Behavior, but "Keeping Kids in School". It was my response to two facts. One: I have worked in preschools and child care for over twenty-five years (after singing opera and concerts for many more years). There was always at least one child who pushed the boundaries of civilized behavior in an already uncivilized environment (from the average adult's point of view). Four year olds, bless 'em, are notorious for both bottomless joy and rowdy behavior, but even among them, there are standouts for aggression, dangerous behavior, and being generally ungovernable. Two: Finally, there is some recognition of the awful fact that four year olds, especially boys, and particularly minority boys, are expelled at an alarming rate. They are the most expelled of all ages. I kid you not! The federal government has issued a policy statement spelling this out, and making recommendations for reversing this trend. Dr. Walter Gilliam has written extensively about it, and I used this article for part of my presentation.
Here is what I told this group of childcare professionals, in a nutshell.
I included references here so that you may, at your leisure, read the reasons for my statements. I defer to the experts!
What I emphasized was my own experience working in a center that supports a team approach, and with a supportive, involved director. I asked people to discuss how they can work towards a team approach, where all stakeholders interact with a child with problems in the same, informed way: Structure that is firm and therefore safe for everyone; Uniform interaction with that child, using the same strategies, filling the child up with love and attention when he or she is doing what you want! What I heard was this:
"In my center we have a boy who is out of control a lot. I try to work with him in a calm, non-threatening way, but when I'm on break, A sub comes in and yells at him, blaming him for everything that happens, even when it isn't his fault. When other children tattle on him, the subs take their sides, without learning the details. Then when I come back to the classroom, my director says she heard that this boy was out of control, and she blames me."
I asked if the center staff had training in behavior management. Her answer was this:
"We all did Conscious Discipline Training. But most people don't do it. They forgot what they learned."
Here we have the crux of an ongoing problem! In most programs, training is for fulfilling state-mandated training hours. This director actually sent her staff to training together, but there was no follow-up. The center director should have worked with her staff to implement what they learned. She should have asked for feedback on how the teachers were using the strategies. She did not. Training is time and money wasted if there is no follow-up. The child continues to ambush his own learning, and no one knows what to do about it.
What I liked about the Child Care Connection conference was that all participants could earn extra training hours, beyond those they earned by attending, just by implementing something they learned, writing it up, and submitting it. Voila! This is what the director mentioned earlier should have done! "Tell me how you are using that training I paid for (lol)!" Show me! I will give you extra training hours for that. You will be recognized for learning, then applying your learning.
How much more confident and motivated caregivers would be, if their learning were taken seriously.
