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

by Diamond, Julie

  Teaching depends upon more than sympathy and identification, however. We are adults, and children depend upon us to be adults. The emotional distance we’re capable of makes it possible for them to trust us; it permits us to help them manage distressing emotions. For me, achieving that maturity was not automatic. There were many days when I “lost it,” blamed myself, felt awful, and wanted to quit; there were hard years. Slowly, I learned to manage my own feelings when things went wrong. The struggle brought hard-won confidence in my own powers. Throughout the school day, I communicate—not perfectly, but well enough—a presence that they and I can count on. Teachers’ predictability and flexibility, emotional resilience and resourcefulness, the ability to share children’s sense of humor and to demonstrate firm intent—these create a classroom in which children feel respected, safe, and able to learn.

  The activity of classrooms

  Photo by David Vitale-Wolff

  I have found in the classroom a place for intellectual engagement, a place to exercise my curiosity about the meanings of things. Like students, teachers should have, in Eleanor Duckworth’s words, “wonderful ideas.” The words emphasize the intellectual and emotional dimensions of a teacher’s involvement. The possibility of intellectual engagement has been, for me, another reward of teaching.

  My favorite books about teaching, the ones I grab off the shelf when I want to lend something to a new teacher, take as their subject a teacher’s curiosity about particular children and their actions. Frances Hawkins’s The Logic of Action describes her weekly visits to a class of six deaf four-year-olds; she includes her wrong turns and puzzlement, intuitions and successes, her “beliefs, and mode of operating.” 2 She conveys the texture of her search for the logic of children’s actions.

  Curiosity motivates the teacher-writers I’ve quoted in these chapters. They are students of children’s choices, insisting on children’s intentionality and seeking to understand what that intentionality demands from them. This book constitutes an account of what happens in that space between children’s actions and the teacher’s wanting to know; a description of the back-and-forth that permits children’s curiosity to be tapped. Our intelligence about the children we teach—our thoughts, questions, and informed guesses—defines our ability to make room for their intelligence. We don’t have to be smarter than the children we teach, but we have to honor their intelligence.

  The richness of our scrutiny—the layers of associations and multiplicity of possible responses—adds to good teaching. This calls for teachers to be people with lively imaginations and lively intelligence. Our curiosity should concern itself not only with children and their actions, but with content—books, bugs, music, math. Adult knowledge and curiosity together lead teachers toward useful inferences. The link between them is made explicit by Reggio educators. Loris Malaguzzi, the educator who provided the intellectual base for the Reggio approach, speaks of the central educational importance of “the act of interpretation,” which implies not only that teachers listen with attention, but also that they have “a basic knowledge about different content areas of teaching.” 3

  Thus, teachers must be—or become—people with their own passions, who get carried away by enthusiasm and can honestly say to a child, “I never thought of that!” When I bring my own interests to the classroom—collecting honey-locust pods for the science table, introducing the class to printmaking—what I add is not a particular pursuit but the quality of personal involvement that becomes a norm. The classroom offers us, as teachers, additional meanings at the same time that it offers children a context for their own pursuits and honest appraisals of their achievements. When we are successful, the children’s educational motives—their wanting to know, their desire to do things well and to communicate—take over a classroom.

  Staying in the Classroom

  An experimental attitude—what does that mean? What does it require? What are the resources that I bring to the classroom?

  What allowed me to stay in the classroom, what lent me the requisite sense of purpose and stamina? The attributes that benefited me have both positive and negative sides. I have had to contend with their problematic consequences, but at times they’ve served me well.

  I have a stubborn streak. When I was growing up, the adults in my family had strong opinions; I took it for granted that people were opinionated. Annoying as my stubbornness can be to others, it has stood me in good stead as a teacher. It kept me going through periods of utter exhaustion, through periods when I felt I was a terrible teacher.

  My oppositional nature helped me to develop intellectual independence. This trait has been particularly useful recently, as education has become increasingly inhospitable to children’s play, and educational goals have narrowed. I could accept being the only kindergarten teacher who insisted on a daily work time during which children could build in the blocks, paint, make constructions, draw, work together, argue; who resisted overly academic practices. I have tried to judge things in terms of their underlying principles and their impact on children, and to adopt what I considered valuable. On occasion, I have closed my classroom door and gone my own way. I am willing to balk, to take unpopular points of view, either privately in conversations in classroom doorways, or publicly at teachers’ meetings. I believe in my autonomy. As educational goals have become more regressive, I have become more committed to the values I began with, more compelled to have my classroom demonstrate my beliefs.

  Despite a strong commitment to these beliefs, I have had to work at gaining confidence in my teaching and in the capacities of the children I taught. I have a critical disposition; developing trust in myself and in children demanded an effort. Bank Street College provided me with a theoretical framework for trust in children’s growth, but I started out far from understanding how to apply these principles in practice. Frequently, my student teachers pushed me: I remember student teachers who had more trust in children’s abilities than I did, who led class discussions and let moments of silence go by until someone had something to say. I’d be uneasy and doubtful, certain the children couldn’t handle what was being asked. Always, the children surprised me. Over time, in small steps, I gave up some of my control to children and made room for their ideas and goals. At the same time, I’ve come to recognize and appreciate my own strengths.

  The capacity for self-criticism, when tempered by a sense of self-worth, is a necessary trait. It makes intellectual honesty possible, permits us to look back at what we said or did and examine our own actions and motives. Teachers need to make a habit of, in Deborah Meier’s words, a “self-conscious reflectiveness about how they themselves learn and (maybe even more) about how and when they don’t learn.” 4

  I’ve come to see mistakes as essential to learning. Uncertainty, not knowing, is part of the territory of the profession at every point in a teacher’s life. It makes possible the flexibility we need when we examine and interpret children’s actions and formulations. If we want students to take risks and be compassionate toward others’ mistakes, we have to accept being vulnerable in relation to our own mistakes. Charney speaks of “the courage to admit failure,” as essential to our being “accountable to ourselves.” 5 Thus, it’s imperative that when experienced teachers train student teachers or mentor new teachers, they are candid about questions and doubts, and demonstrate how good teaching often arises from uncertainty.

  The Teaching Environment

  How free are we to use what we know? What do we actually control? What sustains us?

  Years ago, in late August, I walked to school in paint-stained work clothes, prepared to spend the day among dusty boxes, pushing chairs and tables around. Approaching the school, I noticed a small hill of school furniture on the sidewalk, waiting to be picked up as garbage. I recognized a set of shelves that had been made by a carpenter parent and a low bench that I’d used in the meeting area. I went to the principal’s office: what was going on? He made it clear that I had no say in the matter; he and the cu
stodian had decided over the summer that only standard-issue Board of Education furniture would be allowed in classrooms. There was no money to replace the shelf unit and bench.

  Young teachers are almost invariably idealistic, but as this incident illustrates, a school environment can create obstacles and make teaching harder. The principal felt that the school was his.

  His use of his power—without consultation—undercut my autonomy, the sense that I could make decisions about my classroom. There must, of course, be a balance of accountability and autonomy. Here, the principal’s authority was absolute. Soon afterward, I became involved in starting an alternative school.

  The context of the story is the material reality of urban public schools, which has been much documented.6 The scarcity of furniture, equipment, and supplies produces a culture of deprivation: I notice the veneer peeling off the block shelf. It will do for one more year. I’m a child of this system. Scarcity turns teachers into scavengers, and making do becomes second nature.

  Teachers take pride in their ability to scrounge and recycle. But the impact of inadequate funding is not only material. Chronic deficiencies color our perception of ourselves and the job we do. The result of schools’ material deficits is neither material nor measurable; it is a spiritual loss, a decrease in the hopefulness and sense of purpose that should be at the heart of any school. It’s not just that poor schools are “underprivileged.” It would be more correct to describe a process of deprivileging. The discrepancies between what individual schools offer students send messages to students about their worth and expectations. The deprivileging of schools is a deprivileging of our students and of ourselves.

  When we as a society accept these gaps between schools, the rich possibilities that some children are offered are seen as belonging only to them, not to all children. Behind the demoralization of teachers in poor schools is the knowledge that inequities in the schools could be addressed if powerful elements in the society cared to do so.

  Teachers are also affected by the predominant ethos of the schools, one that grades children according to test scores, and grades teachers and schools relative to children’s grades. When kindergarten children are tested, they don’t yet know they’re not supposed to peek at others’ answers. They ask me, “Is that right?” A fuzzy red apple puppet, included in the kindergarten literacy test kit, can ask the test questions, but the children are not fooled, and their feet jiggle with nervousness.

  As the testing ethos has taken hold, school systems have increasingly pushed for instruction aimed at children’s test success. Teachers, handed lists of “standards” and given scripted programs, are less and less present in classrooms as individuals. Our development of elasticity and responsiveness toward students, of feeling for their purposes, is cramped and diminished. We aren’t encouraged to find diverse ways in to subjects, to make curriculum alive for students, to integrate cognitive and affective dimensions of growth.7 These aims are sabotaged by the need to “meet” standards. A strong motivation for teaching—our active engagement with children’s learning—is undermined. Ironically, at the same time that educational processes are being robbed of all that genuinely motivates students and teachers, those in charge of school systems are offering students, teachers, and principals monetary rewards for increases in test scores.

  Standardization also buttresses hierarchical decision making within schools, as well as requirements that teachers follow inane rules. Decades ago, when I was beginning to teach, we were evaluated on whether our window shades were aligned. Now, in many schools, when student work is displayed, teachers are expected to label work with relevant “standards.” In another school, I would have been reprimanded for failing to post, next to children’s fish drawings, a caption such as “Students begin to observe and describe how specific animal and plant parts enable the plant or animal to survive. Kindergarten Standard for Life Sciences Concepts.” New teachers may follow these directives to avoid battles with supervisors, but the result is a classroom environment in which the words that accompany children’s work don’t make sense to the children themselves. Such demands have no educational purpose; they function to remind teachers of the limits of their autonomy.

  Standardized testing has been justified by demands for accountability. But to assure accountability by relying on standardized testing assumes that quantitative measurement is neutral and objective, which it is not. As the British educator Susan Isaacs wrote, “The act of selection is itself an act of judgment. . . .” 8 Numerous factors influence children’s functioning as students: their relationship to content and to peers, their feelings for the adults they come in contact with, their feelings about themselves, and their belief that the entire business of school makes sense. Standardized tests don’t reflect these vital aspects of who a student is. Scores also screen out the social and economic realities that mediate children’s development of school selves: their access to health care and housing, and job opportunities and economic well-being in the communities that schools serve. Scores deny the role these factors play in achievement, in school and beyond.

  Despite the fact that standardized tests distort our picture of student functioning and of the factors that affect it, school systems continue to depend on them. The result is that the culture of testing has fundamentally and adversely altered the educational environment. It has, I believe, contributed to the decision of many new young teachers to leave the classroom.9

  While school environments may make teaching more difficult, they may also provide resources for teachers. The alternative school that I was involved with in the early 1990s didn’t last, but the collaboration with colleagues Hollee Freeman, Ginger Hanlon, and Gwyn Kellam influenced me throughout my teaching life.10 Teaching is generally an isolated endeavor. But we were the school, and we gave ourselves the opportunity to meet every week; we knew the children in each other’s classes; we were in and out of one another’s rooms. Our meetings focused on the day-to-day life of our classes. We looked for the points of contact between threads of activity, the “logic” of children’s actions. We brought a wealth of ideas to each others’ curriculum plans, and because of our different histories and personalities, we were forced to spell out assumptions. We could talk openly with colleagues we trusted about children’s behavior, map out options of response, and explore the implications of decisions. Our meetings kept us intellectually engaged, and nurtured flexibility and tolerance of uncertainty. Talking together helped us know what we knew. Working together increased our sense of autonomy.

  Collaborative processes are central to the functioning of many alternative schools.11 In Reggio Emilia, too, collaboration is critical, providing “not only a set of professional tools, but also a work ethic.” 12 In the Reggio preschools, teacher development is described as a right: “Professional development is a right of each individual teacher and of all those who work in the school. [It includes] the right to think, plan, work and interpret together in a collegial way.” 13 The documentation that forms such an important part of children’s learning in Reggio is the basis for detailed investigations, with colleagues, of teaching and learning.

  When teachers collaborate, the qualities of good teachers aren’t viewed as inherent but as traits that can develop with effort, over time.14 In schools built on collaboration, leadership is characterized by an active receptivity toward others’ thinking and purposes, which is similar to the receptivity that characterizes classroom teachers but radically different from the authoritarian stance of the principal who threw out classroom furniture. In many schools, the possibility of collaboration doesn’t exist. Teachers may, however, be able to find colleagues in other schools, and build networks of teachers committed to working together.

  Collaboration both demands and engenders a high level of openness and intellectual autonomy. It redefines who we are as teachers and as people. Teachers who participate in these processes gain a greater ability to articulate their thinking; they gain intellectual confidence. Histori
cally, preschool and elementary-school teachers have had a low status: they are mostly women, and the profession has been viewed as a women’s field, an extension of mothering, in which “caring” counts more than thinking. We tend to be former “good girls,” girls who liked doing the right thing. We tend to be conciliators, which is not entirely a bad thing, but puts us in the position of being like children who ask permission and may be refused. The sexual division of employment—the fact that school administrators tended to be male—reinforced women teachers’ lack of confidence and sense of low status. Collaborating, teachers learn to speak with conviction. As we make claims for our knowledge and capacities, there is an additional invaluable result: we are more likely to defend our own interests and the interests of the children we teach, to press for a more human and encompassing conception of teaching.

  Parents, too, are resources for teachers. Teachers, however, must work to develop trust, because differences between home and school are potentially thorny—gaps of language, culture, values, and norms. When these are overcome, children are the first beneficiaries, since they move every day between what may be separate cultures. Yet teachers, too, benefit from these relationships. Over the years, parents’ warmth, talents, humor, and hard work have added immeasurably to my classroom, often in unexpected ways. Their appreciation of their children’s efforts and accomplishments and their appreciation of my efforts have been a significant reward.