Kindergarten: A Teacher, Her Students, and a Year of Learning

by Diamond, Julie

  One day, I noticed him—when he thought no one was looking—under the easel, loosening the nuts and bolts that held the easel together. I’d found them loosened on other days too. This was different from the scribbling; it required more effort. I was impressed by the effort, intrigued by how purposeful his actions were. But what was the purpose? What was the meaning of his behavior to him, what could this indirect, nonconfrontational behavior tell me about him? How does it in some way function for him? My assumption is that behavior is caused; if this had been the only thing of this sort he’d done, I might have taken it as evidence of strong curiosity and persistence, which it certainly was, but there was also the scribbling on the floor, which couldn’t have been motivated by curiosity. The defiance of social norms in indirect ways, when adults aren’t looking, makes sense in classrooms where adult controls are continually imposed, where children lack legitimate means of expression. How did it make sense in a classroom that devoted time and space to expressive activities?

  My observation that day reframed what I had termed his sneakiness: he liked doing things in secret. That way of putting it helped me fashion a strategy: moving him away from secrecy by focusing on his work; building a relationship with him and helping him form ties to others in the class through the work he was doing, the products he was making. It was a strategy I arrived at intuitively: at the time, I didn’t put it in words in this way. But when I found him working so intently that day, I was able to see his behavior from his point of view; I found something I could identify with. It made it possible for me to take into account the force of his desire to make an impact upon the world.

  Teacher and Parents, I

  From the parent information form: Henry is “shy”—no mention of defiance, resistance, though I’ve seen him, often, ignore his father’s requests. His parents appear to set no limits for either him or his sister; both children do whatever they want.

  There are teachers for whom the classroom is a separate world: as far as they’re concerned, children leave their home selves behind when they step through the classroom door. These teachers may intend, in this way, to avoid the trap of accepting lower expectations for children whose lives may be especially difficult or impoverished. Other teachers are motivated by the wish to protect children whose home circumstances are unhappy. These are valid motives, but I believe that children invariably bring the rest of their lives, and their feelings, with them into the classroom. I find that knowing something about a child’s life at home may help me see who the child is in school, may help me perceive motivation I hadn’t considered, and give me insights about how to work with that child. Yet a danger exists that on the basis of information about children’s lives, teachers may draw oversimplified conclusions about the causes of children’s behavior. This, I believe, is what I did with Henry. It is all too easy for teachers to blame parents—just as it is for parents to blame teachers—and this is especially the case when parents and teachers don’t start out with the same goals and values.

  I send home a parent information form at the beginning of the year. I ask about the names and ages of the children’s siblings, about their previous school experiences, about any health problems. I ask parents what they wish to see children accomplish during their kindergarten year. I also ask, “What do you see as your child’s strengths? Do you have any concerns about your child? What are your child’s interests? Is there anything else you think I should know about?” Answers to these questions vary enormously. One parent’s analysis of her child’s interests fills a page; another parent answers the question in four words: “Sam likes to draw.” In addition to my careful reading of the information forms, when a child is especially challenging, I will usually seek other reliable sources of information. With the parents’ permission, I’ll speak to teachers at the child’s previous school. I also observe children and parents as they separate in the mornings.

  When Henry began school, I already knew him and family. His older sister, Lisette, had been in my class two years previously. She, too, had been a silent, watchful child, isolated and uncommunicative; she, too, had been quick to complain about other children. In the notes I made for her spring parent conference, I wrote: “pattern of her not wanting to play with other children.” But while I’d been concerned, there were many children that year whose social and educational needs were more pressing. I had discussed my concerns with her parents, who seemed to me to dismiss the matter. However, at the end of the year, they told me they felt Lisette had gained confidence. A year later, they requested that Henry be placed in my class. For the most part, I enjoy teaching the siblings of children I’ve already taught, seeing similarities and differences. I know I can depend on these parents, on the basis of trust that’s already established. With Henry’s parents, the opposite was true. They began the year—without knowing it—with a history: I had already characterized them as hard to reach.

  When I taught Lisette, her mother would drop her off, and Henry, then three years old, would be with them. He would wander unsupervised around the room, grabbing and scattering whatever he could reach. His mother made no attempt to run interference, and I would have to ask her to stop him from knocking over tubs of construction materials. When they entered the classroom in the mornings, a frowning, pouting Lisette would often ignore everything going on around her—other children, the room’s activities, the teachers—as she sought to gain her mother’s attention, usually complaining about something Henry had done. There seemed to be another side to this sibling relationship: I was told by Lisette’s after-school teacher of Lisette’s daily meanness toward her little brother when their father and Henry came to pick her up. Again, the parent did not intervene. While this information came to me informally, I paid attention. Teachers are professionally obligated to respect parents’ privacy. However, over the years, I’ve occasionally discovered pertinent information that parents had deliberately withheld, and so I’ve learned to listen—warily—to reports that come in a roundabout way. I try to balance caution and responsibility. I’d wondered at the time if Lisette’s parents had chosen to let the two children work things out on their own. I wondered about the connection between Lisette’s school behavior and what I saw as her parents’ failure to protect the two, and to set limits.

  When Henry started school, it was his father who dropped him off. Like Lisette, Henry would often start the morning complaining to his father. But for the most part, he would ignore his father. He would stand at a shelf and play with some material, paying no attention when his father would ask him to put away his coat and backpack. There was sometimes a little dance between them, of his father’s requests, and Henry’s mute defiance. When his father said good-bye, Henry would never look up or reply, and his father would make no effort to gain Henry’s compliance in acknowledging his departure. I remembered how Henry’s mother didn’t stop him when, as a three-year-old, he’d moved rambunctiously around the room; I remembered the earlier reports that their father had not gotten involved when Lisette teased or was rough with Henry. As I observed Henry’s disengagement from others, his reluctance to participate in the give-and-take of group life, I quickly drew a conclusion: I blamed his parents for not stepping in to protect both children from impulsive behavior, for failing to set limits. Now, looking back, without negating what I’d noticed—the siblings’ competition to get their parents on their side, Henry’s defiance of his father, his isolation from classmates—I believe I would have done better to have left open the question of the connection between his behavior in school and his home life.

  Making a snap judgment, I focused on what I saw as his parents’ shortcomings. The conclusion I drew about the causes of his behavior was simplistic and highly speculative, and didn’t help me work with his family. Just as I’d initially seen him as a difficult child, I saw them as difficult parents. What also strikes me is the gap between my reading of Henry—as passively defiant and isolated—and his parents’ description of him as shy. It was essential that I
work with them; at the same time, the judgment I made, and the gap between our readings of him, would make it harder to find a basis for agreement. Just as it was a stretch for me to find a path to work with him, it would prove to be a stretch for me to find common cause with them.

  Departments of education, principals, and education-school professors all speak of the value of teachers “making parents their partners.” I agree that teachers should try to involve parents in a variety of ways, all year. My experience is that when teachers and parents have values and goals in common and make the effort to work together and share information, they can support each other even when a child’s problems are severe. What matters is the tone of the exchange. When children know teachers and parents agree, things are (relatively) easy. I taught one child who, on his worst days, threatened to kill other children and had to be watched around the class pets. His parents had asked to meet with me before school began; they were forthright and hid no information. Their trust in me—and mine in them, because of their honesty—was rewarded: the child had a good year, despite his serious difficulties. The tone his parents set with him—they were not judgmental, punitive, or permissive—helped me take similar responsibility in the classroom, and we worked together all year. But when there isn’t a match between parents’ and teachers’ goals, views of children, or values, partnership remains an elusive ideal.

  In November, I met with Henry’s father for the fall parent conference. I described Henry’s behavior in school and asked about his behavior at home. I started with what was positive: I talked about his great ability to concentrate, to focus on his drawings and construction. Then I talked about his struggle to write letters and numbers, and his isolation from other children. Since this was our first conference, and his father seemed ill at ease, I made the decision not to bring up Henry’s small antisocial acts. I may have been wrong to do so, but I tailored what I said to what I felt his father was prepared to hear. His father listened attentively; he said he hoped he would make friends. I suggested they encourage playdates, but he said this was difficult, because Henry was in the school’s after-school program every weekday afternoon. I described the way he turned away from people when he talked to them. His father acknowledged that he did this at home, too, and said he would talk to Henry about it.

  Our conference was friendly but formal. It confirmed for me what I had imagined to be true, that we looked at Henry very differently. I could say that we wanted the same thing for Henry—a successful kindergarten year—but it meant different things to each of us. I wanted us to develop a more complex understanding of Henry, to develop a common ground for thinking about him, to agree that we didn’t understand him, that we had questions. In my eyes, the change that his father hoped to effect in his behavior was a surface change: he would talk to him about not turning away from people when he spoke with them. He didn’t seem to be asking what impelled Henry to turn away.

  When I look back on the conference and my feelings about it, something else seems evident that I didn’t recognize at the time. I defined the gap between us as a failure on his father’s part: he wasn’t acknowledging—not perceiving—Henry’s social and emotional difficulties. I should have tried to take his father’s point of view, but I just couldn’t do it. I was too committed to my own point of view. In fact, his father was aware of a problem, but in his own terms. If I’d cared more about teacher-parent partnership, would I have focused on the goal as he stated it, of helping Henry make friends? My one suggestion, planning playdates, was turned down. Couldn’t I have come up with other ideas? Within the classroom, I might have frequently paired Henry with a socially engaged child, and occasionally invited the two to stay in from recess with me to work on projects. Whether or not that would have worked, we would have had a plan connected with his father’s stated concern. But focused as I was on my goal, I didn’t see that it was an important step for his father to ask Henry to look at people when he talked to them. Imperfect as the conference was, because we put Henry’s social development at the center of the discussion, it had served a valuable function. Yet I may have been mistaken in not speaking more frankly. I concluded that his father and I saw his behavior differently. I ended the conference feeling I was on my own to find a way to engage him with others in the class.

  Henry at Work

  Henry was working on another stick collage in A.M., which he talked about to me. The “snow” was two balled up bits of paper doily. He wanted to use watercolor on them, as I suggested—but no time. He used the sticks to make “monsters”—popsicle sticks and coffee stirrers, pointed out aggressively . . . but for all that, he seemed more open, more communicative.

  The afternoon when I’d observed Henry taking off the easel’s bolts, I felt that the pieces were beginning to fit together. I was beginning to grasp who he was, and this would make it possible for me to teach him. As I wrote earlier, I see teaching as mediated by relationships. The better I knew Henry, the better I could take into account his individual capacities, strengths and weaknesses, preferences and interests. But my purpose wasn’t only to make possible better planning. By knowing him, apprehending and appreciating his uniqueness, insisting on his individuality, attending to what distinguished him from everyone else, I would forge a relationship, through which teaching and learning could occur. Overall, my goal was not to make him conform, but to find openings in the classroom for his pursuit of knowledge, ways for him to be himself and also a member of the group.

  Not all teachers see this as a goal; for many, teaching means finding what’s the same, not what’s different. At some point every fall, I check in with the first-grade teachers, to see how “my” children are doing. As we talk about these children, one of the newer, younger teachers will invariably say, “Oh, he’s a Brian,” referring to a child she’d taught in a previous year, who displayed similar traits. This view of children—as if they come in generic brands—can have negative consequences. It restricts the resources that we imagine in children and limits the meanings we can help them make. When teachers see children in categories rather than as individuals, we are more likely to make snap judgments and label behavior. I did this with Henry, in the early fall, and I know I am likely to do it when a child’s behavior seems to be preventing me from getting things done. Most of the time, as was true with Henry, I become aware of my frustration and can step back, but for many teachers, the labels—“sneaky” or “lazy” or “defiant”—stick, and explain behavior. Then, because “bad” behavior is expected, it’s more likely to be noticed. A cycle sets in, precluding teachers from seeking causes for behavior and obstructing a view of children’s positive traits. As teachers find themselves increasingly frustrated, they may compound the problem by speaking to these children in demeaning ways, or speaking about them to other adults, in their presence, as if they weren’t there. Fortunately, watching Henry work away at the easel’s nuts and bolts sparked my interest. With a different child, it might have been something else—a joke, a thoughtful act—something that, however small, would allow me to see the child in a positive way, and would permit the building of a relationship based on some identification and interest, rather than on disapproval and annoyance. Just as different teachers find different behaviors off-putting—one teacher’s expressive child is another teacher’s fresh child—teachers find different connections. What is necessary is that teachers pay attention so that they are prepared to notice when a child’s action offers the possibility of a changed relationship.

  The work of seeing children as unique individuals requires from teachers an attitude of inquiry and openness, as well as techniques of observation, recording, and reflection. When I was a student at Bank Street College, the core course Assessing and Interpreting Child Behavior, taught by Dorothy Cohen, trained us to observe children. Cohen pushed us to develop the capacity to observe precisely and objectively, to place behavior in a context, to be aware of our biases, to avoid moral judgments. She asked us to look and listen and record, to catch
the quality of children’s actions and interactions. We had to attend not only to what children did, but to how they did it, the emotive quality of movement and voice. The belief that we can best understand children’s learning by observing them in action was integrally tied to the belief that children learn through active engagement with the world. Teachers also have to be able to see what children are doing when they seem to be doing nothing. In Encouraging Children to Learn, Don Dinkmeyer and Rudolf Dreikurs recount a teacher’s story of reading poetry aloud to the class and noticing a look of concentration and pleasure on the face of a difficult child.3 The observation helped the teacher find a way to work with the child.4

  To the proposition that observation should be a central task for teachers, I would add a corollary, that the degree to which children can be known depends on the curricular richness of the classroom. The more scope that classrooms allow for children’s individual choice and involvement—the more active children are, the greater their freedom in pursuing activities—the more we can learn about who they are. In the spring, I wrote: as the months have passed, I can see the way certain themes recur with each child, because I have allowed them space in the classroom, public space. Dewey commented on this relationship: a teacher gains “knowledge of the individuals with whom he is concerned” when he moves away from methods that stress “passivity and receptivity” and broadens the range of activities viewed as educational—that is, when schools give children “outward freedom.” 5 The classroom gave Henry creative freedom to work on his own projects and represent real things in his own way. In the course of the year, it became the context for his remarkable drawings and constructions: in the fall, when he worked on a group collage showing squirrels’ nests, and in the spring, when the class studied undersea life.