Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/seeing-childrens-play-through-a-kaleidoscope/5026508/
We have so many expectations for early childhood teachers, so many things we want them to understand and do. How are we to engage our educators in a way that brings forth their understandings, longings, sense of agency, and desire to offer leadership? I hope this is a question each of us responsible for teacher education, coaching, and supervision uses as an earnest point of inquiry.
Those of us engaged in the Reimagining Our Work initiative have discovered how valuable it is to probe each other’s thinking and experiences. We learn so much from finding our own questions, which unlock different perspectives. We challenge each other to ensure we always consider children’s perspectives, different cultural frameworks and funds of knowledge (Gonzalez et al., 2005). And because we have an intention of “study for action” that goes beyond just acquiring new information/inspiration, our conversations always end with reflections on some version of the question, “What will I do with what I have learned?”
In recent years, my answer to that question is focused on finding examples of what teachers already know that can both delight and provoke new learning for all of us. Thanks to Exchange Press, many of these teachers have stepped into ...