Environment as the Third Teacher

Additional Reading
Caring spaces: Some Characteristics of Space
The size and scale of buildings interiors and objects has a large influence on how we feel. Doesn’t it just make sense? When you get your first home most people dream of what color they will put on the walls and how to decorate it so that that home makes them feel wonderful. My ten year old ask the other day to paint her room her favorite color blue. Of course I said “yes”. I want her to feel good and peaceful in her space.
Having child scaled furniture and toys are critical where we expect children to become independent and competent, however children still have to function at home in mainly an adult world. Having a mixture of child-scale items with some adult is good.
Space and objects determine how we feel. I love going into certain places; Target, The Honolulu Convention Center, Japanese Learning Center, The Willows Restaurant, etc. these places make me feel welcome and peaceful. My husband if asked the same question might pick a few other places, because spaces and objects draw feelings differently from person to person. Research has determined has determined influences created by size and scale. How each person interprets those influences are very individual.
I love Maria Montessori’s teachings, her influences you see in many classrooms across America. But nothing takes the place of knowing your students individually to understand how they are receiving/feeling about the classroom they are in.

Chapter 6 Creating Quality Learning Environments
After reading this chapter I want to re-walk through each classroom, sit on the floor and pretend I’m a child. What would I feel like? Would I feel attracted to the toys/centers in the classroom? Would I understand and see division between each center? Is there a quiet place for me if I need it? The 2 year old room is looking very friendly. The three’s doesn’t have enough for me to do. The four year old room has lost the framework of the organized centers and the focused seems to be very large open spaces.
I dream of mine would be to create a school from ground zero. Working with an architect to put in everything where I wanted it. Does anyone else have this dream? Looking at page 139-141 “floor plans” inspires my creativity.
For now I will do the best with what we have and create the best environment we have.
Swine Flu Update
October 27, 2009
After reading this section on swine flu I had to reflect back to my experience with this terrible flu. This summer 2009, I was taking very intense classes at UH and trying to still keep up with preschool work. I had gone to a youth camp during the weekend and came home “sick”. I went to school on Monday but by Tuesday I couldn't move. I can't remember ever being that sick. Extreme pain invaded every part of my body. Because of the intense classes I was in, I pushed myself back to school by Wednesday. Though I made it through the summer session the flu had taken a toll on my heart and I ended up in the hospital about a month later.
I thank God my children or husband did not catch this. I’m strong and able to communicate well and still suffered greatly, what a horrible flu this would be for a child!
The article gave the following suggestions. They are important to insure that no child suffers due to ignorance of the sickness.
• Get vaccinated against the flu;
• Stay home when sick;
• Conduct daily health checks;
• Separate ill children and staff;
• Encourage hand hygiene and respiratory etiquette;
• Perform routine environmental cleaning;
• Encourage early treatment;
• Consider selective early childhood program closure

It’s important to stay abreast of the current issues and preventions.

Ninth Week: October 19

Exchange Every day
Bonnie’s New Blog Oct. 20, 2009
. . .and then the day came when the risk to remain tight inside a bud became more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
Anais Nin
As I read Bonnie’s blog the thoughts kept running through my mind, “how could any mother give up her child? How could a family opt to get an incentive over raising their own child? In the master Cohort this summer we saw a video, the title I cannot remember. It asked the question is mothering inherit or learnt? Using mice, not humans, they found that a large portion of mothering was not instinctual but learnt. Interesting, if a society chooses a practice, not beneficial to the family unit or the children of their nation, everyone follows it because everyone’s doing it. This, to me, is a scary thought. Now, we don’t live in Romania and we don’t have warehouse orphanages, but are there practices, we do in Hawaii or our nation, that don’t benefit the family unit and our children? Exacting information from the mouse study it would seem so important that communities were taught-informed-mentored-modeled practices that are good-beneficial-healthful to the family unit and children.
Early childhood center of care are often a families first experience with people who are trained in “good practices” for child.
To the question of moral dilemma, what is right? My job is so important, teacher, director, administrator your job is crucial. It is right! Even if we are not called “professionals” even if we are under paid for “this season”, we must understand, with out a doubt, that to some degree our nation, and course there of, rest on us.
Maybe you have a different opinion, what do you think?


Additional Reading:
Supporting Grandparents who raise Grandchildren by Birckmayer et al.

Our school is seeing a continual rise in grandparents raising children. We have one where parents are incarcerated, a few on drugs, and one the mother just left. My heart goes out to these grand parents literally forced into a situation of parenting again. When these grandparents come into the school we try to carter to them, offering a chair or a cup of coffee. I like these points the article made
Early Childhood educators can:
*Listen empathically to grandparents
*Encourage grandparents to avail themselves of community resources
*Provide information about where to obtain good legal services
*Gather information about community organizations or resources for children with special needs.

I would add trying to network them with people. An example would be a stay at home mom who could give the grandparents a break on the weekend to go out.
This trend seems to be a social problem, the culprit of which is drugs, alcohol use, divorce, mental and physical illness, child abuse and neglect, incarceration, even death.

As you get older you tend to look forward to years of empty nest. My eldest daughter tells me I’m not at all as hard (concerning discipline) on the youngest child as I was on her. Truth be told, she right…I’m mellowing with age and so is my husband. But this is a natural process. My heart goes out to grandparent who would prefer to be “grandparent” being forced to be parents again.


Chapter 12 “Working with Families and Communities” Planning and Administering Early Childhood Programs Ninth Edition by Decker, Decker, Freeman and Knopf

Opportunities for program, families, and communities to work together are a crucial component of quality early childhood programming (Larner, 1996; Raab & Dunst, 1997).
It’s very important that families and communities understand the important role they play in their young children. It very important that educator make parents feel welcome and important. I have seen teachers, in my 20 years of teaching that would be condescending to parents. The fact is it’s not always easy to raise your children but for the most part parents know their children a lot better than a teacher ever will. If the teacher is smart she will utilize the knowledge of the parent. To me, parent & teacher collaboration is the best method to educate a child. I always tell our parents we are partners.

Families with higher socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to be involved in their children’s schools and their children are likely to perform better academically than are children from low-income families (Lee & Burkam, 2002; Smith, Brooks-Gun, & Klebanov, 1997; Stevenson & Baker, 1987). Eleanore Fong-Severance Child Nutrition Specialist researched the location of our site and told me we are in a poverty level area. She determined this by using charts/maps to determine USDA funding for child’s lunches. I don’t think it was any “bell ringing” news to me. I work with this community everyday. I love my community and the people who live here. However, I would be untruthful not to say it comes with it’s own set of problems. Being connected with knowledgeable mentors has been my greatest resource. People who help me help people. Having strong relationships with our families helps us to understand things they value. Tension between families and center personnel can make collaboration difficult. Teachers that continually have tensions between families need to look into the mirror. Are they smiling, are they sincere, are they listening, are they avoiding being a “know it all”? Parents who truly feel the teacher cares for their children (good, bad and the ugly) will, in my opinion, receive instruction from them. A teacher or director can have a lot of knowledge but without people skills the have no way to share it. Building strong relationship during the good times helps a teacher immensely during the bad times.

See Baby Discriminate: Kids as young as 6 months judge others based on skin color. What’s a parent to do?
Hawaii is full of different colors and cultures. I realize that we want to be color blind, but we are different color. Shouldn’t we be looking at character instead of color? I don’t have very much to say about this article. According to the article, “At the Children's Research Lab at the University of Texas, a database is kept on thousands of families in the Austin area”. All the data was collected from one location, Austin Texas. How many thousand? Two, three? The picture on the cover evoked a feeling of sadness toward racism. Did anyone else get the same feeling? I’m not trying to be critical, I wish the research was taken from all over the country.

Promoting Excellence

Early Learning standards of the NAEYC are guidelines for developmentally appropriate practices and related early childhood standard are used to shape teaching practices and promote excellence in early childhood education. These guidelines emphasize the need to provide environments that support all domains of learning and development. These program standards support educators in designing effective programs for young children.
HAEYC just had its annual conference at the Hawaii Convention Center. Many classes were offered and many were based around our standards. I was able to take a class by Dr. Charles Meisgier “Type, Temperament, & Teacher perception of ideal and problem students. Since I had been in a “Castles Colluege” I had the opportunity to take the MBTI personality testing before. During this class we began to apply the principles to children in our schools. It was very good and applicable. The more knowledge we receive the better teachers and directors we’ll become. After learning Dr. Meisgier’s ideas on personality and the concept that each child comes with unique DNA, kind of like a personality thumb print. It can be applied to “developmentally appropriate practices”. The standards of create learning environments for each individual child. The more we understand the individuality of each child the better we can plan for suitable environments.
Chapter 9 of Planning and Administering Early Childhood Programs looks at Program Planning. Vision and planning is very important to any program, it’s what keeps the school going in the same direction.
Te Whāriki is the Ministry of Education's early childhood curriculum policy statement in New Zealand. Their early childhood education has a set of strands. There are five strands:
Well-being – Mana Atua
Belonging – Mana Whenua
Contribution – Mana Tangata
Communication – Mana Reo
Exploration – Mana Aotūroa
The strands are defined in terms of the goals and learning outcomes needed to achieve them, of each strand’s relationship to the principles, and of adult responsibilities associated with each strand. This would take a lot of planning and foresight. I don’t think I can compare strands to standards, but I could compare the desire to create the best environment for the child or early childhood age.
The Te Whāriki believes that learning begins at home, and early childhood programmes outside the child’s own home play a significant role in extending early learning and in laying the foundations for successful future learning.
This curriculum emphasises the critical role of socially and culturally mediated learning and of reciprocal and responsive relationships for children with people, places, and things. Children learn through collaboration with adults and peers, through guided participation and observation of others, as well as through individual exploration and reflection (Ministry of Education of New Zealand website).
I think it would be wonderful to be able to go to New Zealand and work in a program there. Being in the environment would be the best learning style for me.

Advocacy and Activism

Hello everyone, I just got back from the mainland and had a great time! We went to conferences ...also 6’s flags and horseback riding.
Looking at Sumison’s reading; she quotes “By advocacy, I mean speaking on behalf of others, often from within existing political, social, and economic frames of reference. In contrast, activism involves resisting and challenging those frames of references and the power bases that support them (Kenny, 2004).” Activism is concerned with ‘control, recognition, participation and action’.
Compensation is a concern of most people in the early childhood education field. Where will the money come from to pay the increasingly higher educated and professional people of this field? Chapter 13 of our text book says that professionals are typically rewarded with high pay and elevated social status. Relating this to the Sumison reading we could conclude that, although they are interrelated, we not just become an advocate but also become activist for change.
Training in communication will help us to give clear messages about what is needed. If an administrator were advocating this would change the way the administrator spends their time. A more global picture of childcare would become the focus.