Orig­i­nally posted on iPads in Edu­ca­tion net­work web­site - http://ipadeducators.ning.com/profiles/blogs/kindergarten

Authored by Sam Gliksman, Twitter: @samgliksman

I had some­what of an epiphany while doing a work­shop at a local ele­men­tary school recently. Walk­ing around and speak­ing to teach­ers and chil­dren it sud­denly dawned on me that many of the “rev­o­lu­tion­ary” edu­ca­tional changes that many of us have been call­ing for have already been around for quite a while — just talk a stroll down to the Kinder­garten classes.

If only the rest of school looked a lit­tle more like those class­rooms. In fact, eight impor­tant pil­lars of a 21st cen­tury edu­ca­tion can be found in most Kinder­garten class­rooms every day of the week:

1. PLAY

The first rule of Kinder­garten is to have fun. Our youngest stu­dents love com­ing to school, and if any child doesn’t seem happy then we make it a high pri­or­ity to find and rem­edy the prob­lem. Play is a highly effec­tive method of infor­mal learn­ing that requires imag­i­na­tion and cre­ativ­ity. Happy, play­ful chil­dren are not day­dream­ing and clock watch­ing — they are engaged and absorbed in their activ­i­ties. As chil­dren get older how­ever, play starts tak­ing a back seat to “aca­d­e­mics” … which are usu­ally pri­or­i­ties deter­mined by peo­ple in offices far away from the stu­dents’ actual class­room environment.

2. CREATE

Cre­ativ­ity is becom­ing lost in the shuf­fle of the cur­rent “back to basics” school move­ment. While cer­tainly required in any artis­tic endeavor, cre­ativ­ity is also a highly essen­tial cop­ing skill for our rapidly chang­ing lives in the 21st cen­tury. Our tod­dlers are con­stantly being encour­aged to think and play cre­atively. We even struc­ture the class­room phys­i­cally in an attempt to stim­u­late cre­ativ­ity — using bright col­ors, infor­mal seat­ing and allow­ing chil­dren ample room to move. Con­trast that to the staid col­ors and fixed rows of desks found in most upper school classes where “fol­low the norm” has replaced “think out of the box”.

A cou­ple of years ago I attended a lec­ture by Amer­i­can artist, Erik Wahl. As part of his pre­sen­ta­tion he splashed paint around a can­vas while cre­at­ing a por­trait on stage. After­wards he turned to the audi­ence and asked, “How many of you con­sider your­selves artists?”. Out of an audi­ence of sev­eral hun­dred peo­ple only a cou­ple of hands were raised. He then related how he often goes into pre-school classes and asks the very same ques­tion. The dif­fer­ence is that almost every hand in the room imme­di­ately shoots up. The sad fact is that school squashes our inner sense of cre­ativ­ity as we get older. Instead of inspir­ing our stu­dents to be imag­i­na­tive and cre­ate we tell them to fol­low the rules — “Do what I tell you to do … and make sure do it exactly the way I asked you to do it”.

3. SOCIALIZE

We under­stand that young chil­dren are social by nature and encour­age them to min­gle. We don’t seat them alone in fixed desks fac­ing the front of the room. Instead we allow them appro­pri­ate time to roam and social­ize. Impor­tantly, we rec­og­nize the value of get­ting them to work together in small groups. When they get older and try to work together we often label the activ­ity “cheat­ing”. They’re usu­ally told to sit alone, face the front and work qui­etly on their own. Social­iz­ing is con­sid­ered an extra-curricular activ­ity that has no place in seri­ous aca­d­e­mics … well, not until you get out into the workplace!

4. DISCOVER

Chil­dren are curi­ous and love to explore the world around them. They nat­u­rally observe, ask ques­tions and demand answers. Kinder­garten class might be spent explor­ing a bug brought in from the play­ground or lis­ten­ing to a story from a par­ent with an inter­est­ing pro­fes­sion. Their world is a play­ground that they con­stantly explore.

As they get older we tell them that their world is divided into nicely delin­eated courses with pre­de­ter­mined content. Important ques­tions and issues that would nor­mally require dis­cus­sion and expla­na­tion are shelved because they don’t fit into some arbi­trary course cur­ricu­lum. How many times do you hear “we don’t have time for that today”? If course­work is com­pleted then there might pos­si­bly be some time left to explore a topic of inter­est. In the mean­time, explo­ration is put on hold.

5. EXPERIENCE

Effec­tive learn­ing occurs when chil­dren build new under­stand­ings based on expe­ri­ences that help them con­struct new knowl­edge. Kinder­garten teach­ers help pro­vide a myr­iad of expe­ri­ences for their stu­dents. We don’t read about ham­sters — we keep a pet in class and observe how they eat. We might even allow each child to take the pet home for an evening. We encour­age chil­dren to bring things into class so that oth­ers can feel, taste, expe­ri­ence and learn from them. Their expe­ri­ences pro­vide a scaf­fold­ing for the chil­dren to build upon and extend what they already know. We under­stand that chil­dren learn most deeply and effec­tively through experience.

How­ever, con­tent is king when they get to the older grades. It seems that the only valid expe­ri­ence for learn­ing is read­ing from a text book or lis­ten­ing to a teacher.

6. EXPRESS

Mix­ing dif­fer­ent forms of media and com­mu­ni­ca­tion is an essen­tial com­po­nent of Kinder­garten class. Chil­dren look at pho­tos, lis­ten to music, watch video, tell sto­ries and of course, read books. We under­stand that peo­ple com­mu­ni­cate in a vari­ety of man­ners and we bring them into play in our classrooms.

In upper grades our entire world is expressed through text. For what­ever rea­son, it seems that the only valid form of express­ing knowl­edge is through text. Out of class they con­stantly inter­act and cre­ate video, music and more. In class, we have stu­dents read from text­books and almost exclu­sively require them to respond in writing.

7. MOVE

Chil­dren need to move. We all need to move. It’s healthy for both body and mind. We under­stand that in Kinder­garten. The fur­ni­ture is arranged to facil­i­tate move­ment and we often have chil­dren move around to dif­fer­ent parts of the room depend­ing on the activ­ity. Out­doors, it’s essen­tial to pro­vide time and equip­ment for play.

The mantra of upper school is to sit still and face the front. Classes are designed for quiet, motion­less, obe­di­ent activ­i­ties. That can be excru­ci­at­ingly dif­fi­cult for many students.

8. RELATE

Finally, in Kinder­garten we strive to make learn­ing as mean­ing­ful as pos­si­ble. Learn­ing has mean­ing as defined by its rel­e­vance to the lives of stu­dents. If chil­dren can’t relate to it then it won’t hold their interest.

On the other hand, the vast amount of bleary eyed, day­dream­ing stu­dents in upper grades is tes­ta­ment to the fact that they don’t relate to much of what passes for learn­ing in class. It’s usu­ally a pre­de­fined pack­age of con­tent defined by an “author­ity” sit­ting far from the lives of our stu­dents — phys­i­cally and emo­tion­ally. Just as impor­tantly, this pre­de­fined con­tent pack­age is becom­ing increas­ingly inad­e­quate in prepar­ing our stu­dents for their lives after school.

So if you have a few moments I’d strongly encour­age you to take a stroll down to the lower grades in your school. In fact, the lower the bet­ter. Spend a few min­utes observ­ing the dynam­ics in class. Note the energy, laugh­ter and enthu­si­asm … the gen­uine thirst for learn­ing. Then ask your­self why it can’t be that way through­out school.

Sam Gliks­man
samgliksman@gmail.com
Twit­ter: @samgliksman
http:\\ipadeducators.ning.com