Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Blog #1: How can experience as a young child change the way we teach young children?
While I was reading chapter 7 New Possiblities for Early Childhood Education by Susan Bernheimer I found out that the author of the book talked about her past experience as a fifth grader and that teachers play a powerful role to teach their students. As she talked about making her ashtray it made me think about my past experience when I was a fourth grader. For example, I had to tear pieces of paper in the shape of the Hawaiian Islands and I picked up the wrong colored paper to tear. The teacher told me "How come your not following directions?" after that happened I felt embarrassed in front of my classmates. Now that I'm a preschool teacher it made me think about other children and how they must feel when they get embarrassed or upset in front of their classmates. In this chapter, I thought the author was well discriptive about her personal experieces as an educator when she was teaching the english language to college students and how she got her students involved with discussions and topics. This made me think about what I'm trying to teach children, When I teach children I try to come up with different activities that will help them learn and have fun, which is also developmentally age approriate.
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Hi Dawn,
ReplyDeleteThe author did an excellent job in teaching her immigrant students the required course. Hawaii is filled with so many diverse children that we need to take Susan's experience with her college students and bring it into our preschool classrooms. It is amazing, however, that we are able to take the teachings we do in preschool and bring it into a college classroom.
I do think that our experiences we had when we were young influence our teachings. Just like your experience in fourth grade, we would not want to put our preschoolers in that state and make the feel the way you felt, embarrassed. But how do we not embarrass a child who has difficult behavior??? As the teacher, we need to intervene when they are about to hurt themselves or someone, and when we remove them from the situation and they throw a big fit, is that embarrassing them? How would we handle the situation without the embarrassment, if it is?
Ashley
I agree that you could learn by going through some bad and difficult past experiences. You can reflect on them to make sure that you never do that to your children in your classroom. I can't really recall a time but I have this child in my class that used to get embarrassed when being told to stop doing that or when he was "center of attention" During circle time if he was playing around or talking, the teacher would tell him, "Do we do that during circle time? We don't want to hear you talking but listening." and all his friends were looking at him. He just curled up into a ball. Another time during circle time this one child was talking to his neighbor and the teacher told him to go sit on the table and put his head down because he was disrupting circle time. All eyes were on his as he looked at all his friends. He started to cry and didn't really talk to anyone for the rest of the day. Like he was tramatized. But as teachers, we have to learn how to execute these "embarrassments" for the child appropriately without hurting their feelings or making them ashamed. Explain to them why we are telling them to sit on the table or ask them "Do you know why I am making you go sit over there?" Let them explain to you why so they know that it's not nice to talk when someone else is talking.
ReplyDeleteHello Dawn,
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you, too! we could learn how to deal with the difficult situation through the past. When we felt embarrassed by scalding in front of others, we would not forget the incident forever!!It might be happened accidentally, but.... I work at preschool. Everyday the children let me think how to handle the situation better for the next time. Should I approach the child in another way? Should I do....? Sometime I need to talk to the children with a strong voice if it was dangerous or inappropriate manner. However, I learned from experienced teachers that children need a big hug after they made a mistake.
People in Hawaii come from multiple cultural society. We need to educate young children with being thoughtful and flexible to make young children HAPPY not disappointed.
Hi Dawn,
ReplyDeleteIt seems that your own experience as a learner has inspired all of us to think of moments in our own schooling. I remember being in the 5th grade, making Christmas ornaments. I wanted to make snow bunnies in my ornament and my teacher told me that she never heard of snow bunnies. This has always stayed with me as learner, then as a teacher, now as a college professor.
I wonder how your story will become part of your own narrative? Further, I wonder how this entry might expand with the inclusion of the Rethinking text.
Jeanne
Aloha Dawn,
ReplyDeleteIt seems we can all relate to your school experience. What are ways that help you to be more empathetic toward trying not to make children feel ashamed and belittled? I think both are powerful emotions that obviously stick with us for many years. It is amazing though, that we can turn such a bad learning experience into something more positive. To be able to recognize what you experienced and then use it to encourage and support young children is admirable.
Hi Dawn,
ReplyDeleteIt's funny how one teacher can make such a huge impact on the rest of our lives. Your teacher may have had a bad day and decided to take it out on you. She definitely doesn't remember this interaction but you will for the rest of your life. It goes to show that we as teachers need to think before we react. I'm glad that you go out of your way to make learning fun. Teaching young children is so rewarding when we have as much fun as the children...sometimes we have even more fun then them.
Teachers sometimes do not realize how much of an impact what they say to children have. One would as after such an experience how did you overcome those feelings that the made you feel? For me it took years, and it came when I finally decided that it did not matter what others thought I was fine with it and it was all that mattered. I have also learned to let things people say that was hurtful to just "flow off" and not let it bother me. It is nice to see that the experience has taught you what not do do. Sometimes it takes us going through something ourselves to help us relate to others who may go through the same situation. We become more conscious and sensitive to others. Great teachers just don't happen they learn from their mistakes and the mistakes of others!!!
ReplyDeleteHi Dawn,
ReplyDeleteI too remember my Elementary teachers embarrassing me in front of the whole class. When I think about it, I only remember negative things about Elementary School. It shows just how much impact teachers have on our lives. Do elemtary teachers have a tendency to focus on the negatives instead of the positives? I remember them only boasting about children who were really smart. Shouldn't they also compliment the children who are stuggling in school? Aren't they the ones that need it the most?
In ECE we always need to acknowledge the good in each child. No matter how terrible of a day a child has had, we need to think about atleast one thing positive that the child did that day.
Hi Dawn,
ReplyDeleteI've had never like art or any kind of art classes, even in college, I've never taken art classes, because I hate it so much because of bad experience in early childhood. Yes, bad experiences in early childhood will carry on with the rest of your life. It cannot be erased but it will help us to be cautious and to learn about how we as educator sensitive about children's needs and emotional are. We can make a difference out of them.