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

by Diamond, Julie

  In recent years, educators have carefully examined children’s work in order to illuminate their thinking and learning styles. In the 1990s, when the “whole language” approach to literacy was more popular, teachers were encouraged to collect student work in portfolios and to record children’s reading strategies. I’d always saved work, but I began in those years to save work in a more systematic way. I saved work that reflected children’s beginning writing efforts, and also work that displayed some aspect of how a student looked at the world: drawings that incorporated pattern or symmetry, or, for example, a representation by one child of herself, her mother, and stepfather—labeled “Kate, Mom, Ken”—which captured the meaning to her of her family.

  The educator Patricia Carini, co-founder of the Prospect School, devised specific protocols for looking at children and their work.6 For her, the study of children’s work is more than a means of gaining information about children. By describing children’s work and children themselves in concrete detail, teachers educate themselves as reflective thinkers and place individual children at the center of educational practice. Thus, teachers’ study of children affects how they teach, a process that assumes some reciprocity of relationship between teachers and children.

  The educational philosophy governing the Reggio Emilia municipal preschools takes educational processes to be inherently reciprocal. Learning is defined as occurring through dialogue (among children, as well as between teacher and child). In Reggio, documentation of children’s work and of teachers’ thinking is the visible form of that dialogue, and is viewed as essential to the process.7 In this formulation of the educational process, children take “paths” that teachers both facilitate and monitor; the teacher’s documentation of these paths creates a context 8 that permits children’s “search for meaning” as well as teachers’ search for “the meaning of school.” 9 One way to sum up the approach is to say that in traditional classrooms, teaching is believed to lead to learning while in the classrooms in Reggio Emilia, learning—as teachers document and analyze it—leads to teaching.

  In the schools in Reggio, documentation of work is a necessary part of study itself. When I was first introduced to the approach, I saw documentation as a powerful tool, and one that fit my earlier training in observational techniques, although my documentation of work and my use of documentation for planning is limited compared with the work done in Reggio schools. In my classroom, children talk about their work; I take photographs and dictation. Work becomes the content of wall displays, with dictated or written text, and photographs. I make notes and use them to plan. In these ways, children’s work is the center of the classroom.

  With Henry, the loop began with his work and continued as I looked at his work, aware of its density and mix of materials. I have been focusing on him, concentrating on him. Thinking about him and spending time looking at what he is doing. It was clear I could only connect with him through his work, would only be given a role in his life to the extent that I allied myself with his creative endeavors. As a result of this insight, I concentrated on playing an especially active role in relation to his productions; I would stop by at intervals as he was working.

  In the winter and early spring, Henry’s love of making things continued to dominate his school life, despite his poor coordination and weak grip. The area where he worked would become littered with paper scraps, scissors, markers, open glue sticks. Soon, he needed more than one day to finish a project, and I found a place on the back counter for him to leave unfinished work. I would remind him to write his name on his work. To save materials he was using, he would dutifully write his name on them, too: a scrap of paper or a lone popsicle stick would have his name. At some point, I gave him a little plastic box in which to save scraps. As he used more materials, his projects became thicker, more and more three-dimensional: he built up and out, rolling and taping paper, using cardboard, pen tops, popsicle sticks; the levels multiplied as he used everything that would add density and height.

  Throughout this period, besides taking the time to look at his work and talk to him about it, and making space for him to save it, I ensured that his work was shared at meetings. I wrote down his words, photographed his work, and displayed the photos. As he saw teacher and kids valuing him and his work, his secretiveness became, to an extent, transformed. He still didn’t talk much to others at the table, but he seemed to pay more attention to others as they worked alongside him, cutting, gluing, taping. His works in progress were saved next to those of others; the photos of his work went up on the wall next to photos of others’ work. He became—again, to a limited extent—what he hadn’t been before, a member of a group.

  Certain group activities appealed to him. Despite having refused to pick anything up when we’d gone on our first squirrel trip, he worked enthusiastically with the student teacher and other children on the squirrel collage. The activity suited him perfectly; it utilized his strengths, his preference for working with paper and his interest in representing things in forms he could physically manage. He also liked David, the student teacher. One day, after working with David, Henry went off on his own, cutting up big pieces of construction paper, then taping the cut shapes together to make a huge squirrel. “Could we put it up on the wall?” I asked—and he agreed, if somewhat reluctantly.

  As the year progressed, although Henry’s work had become a link in his relationship with me, and to a lesser extent, with the other children, he continued to pursue activities in a solitary way (one exception was his pairing up with Amina to measure the rug); he still seemed not fully present in the room, not quite to belong. He continued to dislike assigned activities, did not yet participate in meetings, and disliked being required to produce a piece of work. When we made self-portraits in a session of Studio in the Schools, Henry was frustrated and threw away each drawing he began. At one of our last Studio in the Schools sessions, Andrea, our resident artist, asked everyone to say what they had especially liked doing. When it was his turn, Henry shouted out (which was unusual for him), “Nothing!” There were still things he did behind the backs of adults. One day, at lunch, unprovoked, he’d spit on the food of the child sitting next to him. For me, it wasn’t a question of “bad behavior” but of wondering what to do next. Was it possible for him to become more actively involved with the other children? How could I help make it happen?

  One morning late in the fall term, Betsy Grob, David’s supervisor from Bank Street, had noticed Henry at the turtle tank, peering at the fish that we’d put into the tank. She went over and talked to him. He’d seen that when he put his finger on the tank wall, the fish swam over; when he moved his finger, the fish followed. He led them around the tank, creating a path for them with his moving finger. He hadn’t told anyone. It was Betsy’s interest in his interest that led him to reveal the phenomenon, to bring it to the attention of the rest of the class. That he’d discovered this trick said something about Henry—his ability to observe and concentrate, to experiment; but the fact that he hadn’t communicated his discovery until an adult asked him what he was doing revealed something else about him. Few five-year-olds would have kept such exciting news to themselves. I can picture him at the turtle tank, standing alone, intrigued by the game he’d invented. A few months later, by early spring, his world seemed to have opened up a bit, yet he didn’t seem decisively different. Parent conferences were coming up in March, the last official conference of the year. I decided to recommend to his parents that they seek an evaluation by a psychologist.

  Teacher and Parents, II

  A danger of speaking of my concerns to children’s parents is that they may only hear there’s a problem, may focus solely on behavior, may not see causes, and may then merely issue a command: “Behave yourself in school! Listen to the teacher!”

  In March, before my conference with Henry’s parents, I asked myself if I was overreacting. Looking over my notes, I concluded that Henry’s social isolation was different enough from the range of behavior of
fives and sixes for my concern to be justified. I don’t want to decree that development follow one “normal” path; I don’t want to stigmatize children for whom solitary activity is essential—the passionate builders or painters who prefer working alone, who don’t want to compromise their clear ideas about what they are constructing, the children who sit and study books intently, well before they can actually read. Many children this age have the capacity to work on their own with intensity and commitment. However, most of these children also team up with others at other times of the day. It was this urge for companionship that I failed to see in Henry.

  By this point in the year, I would have expected to see Henry beginning to develop friendships, to join groups. There was also the incident in the cafeteria, his spitting on another child’s food. He continued to look away when talking to people. What worried me was the degree of separation that characterized him throughout the school day. I see children’s emotional well-being, their comfort and ease with others, as very much part of my legitimate interest as their teacher. Yet these are difficult issues to take up with parents.

  With few exceptions, the parents of the children I teach are caring, involved, thoughtful. Conferences are taken up with children’s progress, examination of their work, and discussions of their social relationships and ability to manage the ups and downs of group life. Often parents use conferences as an opportunity to think aloud about who they are as parents: Sandra, Nia’s mother, has struggled to know exactly what being a mother is all about. My role is to listen, acknowledge, reassure, returning again and again to the child’s strengths and their strengths as parents. I share a mantra learned from my own experience as a parent as well as from teaching: Children teach us to be the kind of parents they need us to be. I do my best to listen: to concentrate on what’s being said, to find ways to make my points relevant, and to be prepared if something completely unexpected comes up, as it often does.

  In some conferences, I have to bring up difficulties a child is having, problems whose origins are connected to parental actions or assumptions. When this is the case, I seek an alliance with parents’ interests, an alliance based on genuine respect for the challenges parents face. Emily, one of the oldest children in the class, is socially immature and lacks confidence; and I’ve noticed, when I see them together, how critical her mother is—a layer of anxious carping and nagging sits on top of a layer of love and affection. The issue comes up in the course of the conference: When her mother comes for the conference, Emily comes too, in tears, but her mother says she must sit on the chair outside, and can’t play or draw. Her mother explains: Emily is “on punishment.” What had she done? Wet her pants. Her mother and I talked about getting children’s compliance. I said, You have to be her ally, she wants to be grown up, you can use that. Her mother looked skeptical. It’s clear to me that it’s Emily’s body, and I said that, but it’s equally obvious to me that, when I talk to her mother, I can’t just be on Emily’s side.

  In these conferences, I depend on parents’ goodwill and the trust I’ve established with them. The challenge for me is to talk in a way that isn’t judgmental. To develop goals with parents, rather than impose my own. It’s often the main issue: How to help people empathize with their children—as someone like Billy’s mother does, automatically, as a matter of course—when it isn’t something they do naturally? I want to extend their understanding, so parents see they have options beyond simply telling their child, “Listen to the teacher!”

  I know I am judgmental at times, without consciously intending to be. I want more influence than I actually have; with some parents, I do want to impose my values. I can be rash, a missionary. There are parents who’ve thought me interfering, accused me of stepping beyond my legitimate role. It’s ultimately counterproductive, because when parents—who are, rightly, highly invested in who they are as parents—perceive themselves under attack, they inevitably become defensive and close up. This judging on my part is more likely to happen with children I am more worried about, whose parents, not surprisingly, seem to me most unaware of the profound impact they have on their children’s lives.

  In the vast majority of families whose children I’ve taught, the parents recognize and take into account their children’s feelings, much of the time, either consciously or instinctively. However, even in otherwise loving and caring families, these connections can break down. One fall, John had trouble separating from his mother. Every morning, there were not simply tears, but clinging sobs, and his mother and I had to pry him loose so she could leave. He could not be comforted, and would have to sit for a while, shaken; the rest of the day, however, he was competent, involved. When the pattern persisted for two weeks, with no lessening of his terror when his mother left, I met with her. I asked about any changes in his life in the recent past. She mentioned—in passing—that her father had moved in with them the previous spring because he’d been very ill. I asked what happened, and she told me her father had died that summer, in their living room. But, she assured me, John had been fine, he wasn’t affected by it. Did John’s parents assume that because he was a child (and additionally, because he was a boy?) he was insulated from feelings about this death? That he didn’t feel sadness or fear if he didn’t express his feelings in words, and if they didn’t talk about the death? Since they didn’t see him as affected by the death, they were unable to help him feel better. When he entered school, his anguish at separation from his mother spoke loudly, but his parents hadn’t connected the loss of life he’d just witnessed in his living room with his response to the temporary loss of his mother every morning. Had I known about his experience of death, I might have worked with his parents to ease the morning separation and to make his transition to a new school smoother.

  This child’s distress was temporary, but it points to problems that, for some children, are not short-term. Children’s feelings—of loss and pain, fear and suspicion, love and shame and hate—are intense and real, even when the causes seem trivial to adults, or irrational and unfounded, or when children lack the words for them. When parents are insensitive to children’s feelings or lack a vocabulary for them, they are unable to help them make sense of difficult experiences. These parents may be unable to manage their own emotions and therefore unable to discipline children in ways that support the children’s development of inner controls and self-knowledge. Their emotional blindness may have been inherited from their parents, and they pass on to the next generation a limited capacity for self-awareness and empathy. I’m not concerned here with adults who act decisively and strictly in situations that call for that. Nor am I concerned about the variety of faults for which every parent could be held accountable if everything were recorded somewhere: reasonably good parents are still guilty of short tempers, unjust decisions, and ill-considered rebukes. Parents, like teachers, learn on the job as children develop, and they cope with their own feelings and lives.

  Nor am I describing here children who have been physically abused, although child abuse and neglect are terribly serious problems. My concern here is with family problems that are less recognized. In some families, the problem is adult permissiveness: the parents who lack a sense of their authority as parents, who find it impossible to set limits, don’t protect children from siblings, or give in to children’s every expressed need. In these households, parents and children may continually jockey for power; faced with a child’s intransigence, these parents may respond at the child’s level. The children in these families are often anxious, because they have no ally against the power of their own emotions. Anxiety at having the upper hand may make them especially demanding, and they may come to feel entitled to dominate social situations.

  With some parents, I’ve become aware of repeated verbal abuse, as damaging in the long run to a child’s development of inner resources and trust as physical abuse. The mother of one child I taught was unfailingly sarcastic toward her child. Noticing one morning that other children were arriving with homework pa
pers, she publicly disparaged her daughter for not having told her about the homework, then turned and walked out of the room. The child sat on the rug, slouched forward, face hidden by her hair, as if hoping to disappear entirely. When parents are consistently controlling and harsh, when they routinely threaten and punish or criticize, they engender in children either fear or an intense desire to please. Parents who belittle or humiliate may sabotage children’s belief in themselves. Parents who tease may excuse it as “only a joke,” but these “jokes,” by taking advantage of children’s weakness, emphasize to them their vulnerability.

  The children who, in the daily give-and-take of classroom life, demonstrate little emotional resilience and few inner controls are those who have been routinely treated in arbitrary and hostile ways, those whose development was shaped by the adults’ misuse of power and their own weakness. One parent, incensed when his child had talked back to him in a “fresh” way, locked the child out of their apartment. The mere threat of such punishment is destructive of a child’s sense of safety and ability to trust adults. Without a sense of safety, and trust in adults, children are more likely to misbehave in exactly the ways that parents so strongly wish to prevent. I sometimes face a difficult choice. In the nonpunitive atmosphere of my classroom, children who have been treated harshly at home, who obey their parents out of fear, are more likely than other children to be physically aggressive or testing. With these acting-out children, a partnership with parents is problematic: I am reluctant to keep parents fully informed if I believe they will physically punish children. I am slow to turn for help to parents who I know depend entirely on threats and material bribes (“No visit from Santa unless the teacher says you’re behaving!”).