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I Don't Teach Them
May 29, 2007
The toughest thing about success is that you've got to keep on being a success.
-Irving Berlin
-Irving Berlin
In her book, Celebrating Young Children and Their Teachers (St. Paul, MN: Redleaf Press, 2007) Mimi Brodsky Chenfeld talks about her first experiences working with young children...
"[One] summer, my friend Rhoda and I were counselors at a sleepaway camp, Jekoe, an hour our of New York City. We had the baby 'bunk': our campers wer the infants and toddlers of senior counselors and other camp staff. I've always loved babies, but the summer I spent hanging out with those smart, honest, creative hilarious little ones clinched my lifelong love affair with our youngest learners. Today, with all-day, five-day-a-week programs for our newest students, I'm still totally filled with awe, delight, respect, and feelings of responsibility to preserve the sacred spirits of those youngest members of our human family. When people ask me how long I've been teaching movement, dance and rhythms to young children, I tell them, "I've never taught one child how to move or dance! My claim to fame is moving, dancing, laughing, and celebrating with them! They already know!"
Caring Spaces on Sale!
This week, Exchange's best selling guidebook, Caring Spaces, Learning Places: Children's Environments that Work, is on sale with a 20% discount. This comprehensive curriculum and design guide offers a great mix of theoretical and practical guidance on environmental characteristics, contemporary child development issues, programming factors, special issues for infants and toddlers, room arrangement, curriculum design, facility considerations, and making change happen.
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Comments (2)
Displaying All 2 CommentsUnited States
Thirty seven years ago I began a career working with preschool children. My mentor, Bob Staffieri, cautioned that we did not need teach children. They would learn, he asserted, from what we put in their environments, how we interact with them, and our respectful affirmations and corrections. The onus was on the adult to appropriately design, appoint, and behave in the child's setting.
Years later as a parent, I relearned that lesson in relationship with my daughter. Her job, it seemed, was to teach me to nurture according to her developmental needs. My job was to nurture. Parenting made much more sense when I applied that paradigm to my role as parent: she the teacher, I the student. I became and, twenty six years later, contiue to be her her eager, flawed and imperfect, student.
United States
a book by Mim is never to be missed
lynda
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