Inspiration often comes from our children!

Inspiration comes from many sources. Sometimes it's a teacher teaching a young child, and sometimes it's the other way around. The child teaches the teacher! Same with parenting.

As a former elementary and early childhood teacher, I took my job of teaching young children to read, write, and basic skills as a very serious responsibility. If a child doesn't learn to read, it impacts their opportunities in life, prevents them from completing job applications, it prevents them from learning about the beauty of our world, as well as being able to read about the issues that we must face and overcome to make our world a better place to live.

I love literacy. I love reading, researching, and writing. Most authors do.

But the great thing about teaching young beginning or early readers the skills to read is that it can be so much fun! Because children learn through play and hands on discoveries, it allows teachers of those young children to also have fun, play, and get messy with all the clay, paints, mud, and 'educational things' that actually are of great value.

When a child plays with clay, it strengthens their little hands and build muscles and control that is needed to hold a pencil. When a child plays ball with another child (or a teacher:), it helps hand-and-eye coordination skills. When a child learns to run, skip rope, or jump, they improve their balance and coordination skills. Even when they scream and yell outside on the playground helps their little lungs develop...who knew? The play that seems so simple to us actually are the building blocks for a child's heathy development, physically, mentally, and emotionally. As a kindergarten teacher, I knew students who were having fun at school would want to come back and 'play' and learn more. I knew they'd be joyful every day and their excitement would be contagious and encouraging to other children. It was truly a blessing to be part of those experiences.

I was in an 'open-concept' classroom (44 children made up of 2 classes with 22 children in each class sharing a huge classroom). Oh, and did I mention it was 44 children in the afternoon, and 44 fresh little active bodies excited to be there in the afternoon? I taught with another teacher, who became a dear friend. We learned early on that we had to work together, even while monitoring and reteaching our own students if they hadn't yet 'grasped' the concept we were teaching. We had fun teaching those little children and we also had fun challenging each other. I remember calling out across the room that, "My class is smarter than your class, Mrs. Dicus! They know how to use exclamation points when they write stories! She would respond, "No my class is smarter than even first graders, Mrs. Fuller! And they're great writers!" We'd laugh when we'd see writing by our little kindergarteners that was full of exclamation marks the next day:) And they knew what that mark meant. We knew because of the excited way they'd 'read' to us when they came to those marks. We believed in teaching phonics, whole language, and developing literacy...taking every type of teaching skills from other countries that worked. We knew not every child learned in the same way. Some learned through phonics; others didn't. Some learned through whole language, others didn't. We wanted them all to learn and the effort was worth it as we built classes of readers and writers (that we found out later the first-grade teachers would fight over to get in their classrooms.)

We had a message, "Living to Learn, and Learning to Live". We wanted our students to understand that learning was fun. We wanted them to understand their power and that they could settle conflicts, especially in the centers where free play time was open to learning, but also disagreements. With young children, that tends to occur over the most popular toys and activities. Initially, we monitored the conflicts, asking children what was 'fair to everyone'. If it was fair, we'd praise them for their problem-solving skills. If it wasn't fair, we'd turn the tables, so the 'decider' was the child who had last choice.

For example, I recall one time when a very popular set of 4 foam trucks caused a conflict for 3 children in a learning center. The three little children plopped down in front of us (we, as teachers, were in the middle of the classroom in order to monitor the entire large classroom's activities), little arms crossed across their chests, pouty faces, as they energetically discussed how to solve the problem of who would get to play with the extra truck.

One (very bright) boy said they'd take turns. We praised that solution. He then said, "I'll play with two trucks first, then he can, and then she can" as he pointed to each child in the group. They all rose to go back to their center as we said we loved that idea, but why not let girl go first, and then the other child who was closest to the center go next? That meant the boy who had come up with the great idea would go last. It was hilarious to see the 3 children plop back down on the carpet again and re-discuss the solution to their problem.

Their solution was that they would each get a truck and all three play with the 3rd truck together... and they did. They went back to their center with a plan in mind, and proud of themselves for 'figuring it out' and still being friends.

If we watch children, as many great leaders in the field of education do, such as Piaget and Montessori, we learn more from them than we can ever imagine.

So today, as you play games, share jokes, do something together, remember to turn it into a shared, fun activity. Take time to relax and slow things down, as you observe those around you and share the joy of discovery with them.

Those moments may become the sweet memories you will remember.

Jeanne