(Analytic Essay: Summer)
Although student choice is something that is interesting to me, it wasn't until I took the time to go back to my notes from July that I saw the extent to which this theme permeated my entire experience in the Teacher Education Program. As I reflect on the past ten months, it is clear that I have seen a broad spectrum of classrooms, teachers, teaching philosophies, and approaches to incorporating student choice in the classroom.
All Choice, All the Time: Summer Placement
My first placement was with four and five year olds at the Parent Infant Center in West Philadelphia. This summer day camp program, affiliated with the Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander University of Pennsylvania Partnership School, served children mostly from the middle and/or affluent class. In our Learning Environment Vignette Observation Paper for Adolescent Development, my group stated that we, "reached this conclusion [about the families being middle or upper class] based on the price of tuition at the Parent Infant Center, at roughly $1,190/month (five days a week) for the preschool, and through the occupations of various parents" (p. 2).
I had never experienced a school or summer camp quite like the Parent Infant Center. As you will see in my notebook entry (Artifact 1) from July 2014, the children had a surprisingly high level of autonomy. I felt like I had stepped into a completely different world. The following excerpts from my field notes shows how much freedom the children were granted.
|
Artifact 1: Notebook Entry, July 2014
"Children are playing in different areas of the room while teacher works on making picture/writing papers with students. Students are allowed to go/do where and what they want." |
"During the free play time, Krista sat at a table with one student at a time. She had pictures of the children playing and was gluing them onto pieces of colored paper. She asked the children to write about what they were doing in the picture in the space next to the photograph. Krista asked, 'Calvin, do you want to come talk about your pictures?' Calvin was playing with a bunch of the wooden beads and plastic necklaces in a large bowl. He said, 'Not right now.' Krista did not push him to do the activity with her. Instead she said, 'Okay. Do you McKayla?' McKayla replied, 'After I play.' Krista did not insist that the children complete the task right now and let them continue playing like they wanted." |
"In the Road Runner room, the students are able to negotiate their clean-up time and when they want to do certain tasks and activities. The room is set up with different play areas. The most popular area is the pretend play space. When I did my observation, there were children screaming in that area. One child was kneeling on another child and yelling. The children were playing with wooden beads. Some of the beads fell out of the teapot and rolled around the floor. One student poured the teapot of wooden beads on top of another child’s head. The teacher did not tell the students to stop or to clean up the mess that was all over the floor. Instead, she said from another part of the room, 'I wonder when you should start cleaning up this area.' She then asked the children how long they thought it would take to clean up. The children said ten minutes. Time passed and Krista said, 'Road Runners. Fifteen minutes ago I said ten more minutes. So we got how much extra time?' At this point, the students have actually had close to thirty minutes to clean up." |
When it was time to write our Learning Environment Observation Vignette Paper, my group had plenty of data that led us to identify the main themes of the Parent Infant Center. Our Prezi Presentation (Artifact 2) shows that we noticed that individual responsibility, invitational opportunities, and self-direction were prominent themes. Two of the slides in our Prezi were photographs of the Parent Infant Center newsletter. It is apparent that they pride themselves on being a place where adults "acknowledge that children have the right to interact, communicate, make decisions, follow their own path, and experience interest-led learning".
Artifact 2: Prezi Presentation for Adolescent Development Course about the Parent Infant Center, July, 2014
I am grateful that I had the opportunity to observe a learning environment where many current and innovative educational practices were being carried out, but the experience also left me feeling conflicted. There were two major questions that my two weeks at the Parent Infant Center raised:
"Is there such a thing as allowing too much choice?"
I vividly remember one day when the Roadrunners were playing outside. Sam and I were playing with the students when Krista went back inside for something. Before we knew it, some of the students had climbed a nearby tree and were swinging from the branches. One child jumped off of a branch that was about five feet off of the ground. The other children saw and they started climbing the tree as well. Sam and I saw this and we were trying to decide what to do since Krista was not outside. We decided that Sam was going to ask the older woman sitting on a bench across from the tree if we should tell the children to stop. (We had seen Krista talking to her earlier and assumed that she worked at the Parent Infant Center as well.) We were worried about being held responsible if one of the kids fell from the tree and seriously injured him or herself. The woman seemed surprised that we would limit the children's play and said that they were using their gross-motor skills.
Sam and I found this interaction to be quite puzzling. Had I been at any other school, I most likely would have intervened and asked the children to play something that was a little safer at least until their teacher returned. However, Sam and I knew that we should ask before doing so because we had been asked not to intervene or assist in the children's free play on multiple occasions. Fortunately, none of the students hurt themselves and Krista returned shortly after that. This experience caused me to think about whether I would allow my students to make choices that could potentially lead to them getting hurt. Although I found the Parent Infant Center to be fascinating, I walked away thinking that I personally believe that as a teacher, it is my responsibility to keep my students safe even if that means limiting their choices under certain circumstances.
Sam and I found this interaction to be quite puzzling. Had I been at any other school, I most likely would have intervened and asked the children to play something that was a little safer at least until their teacher returned. However, Sam and I knew that we should ask before doing so because we had been asked not to intervene or assist in the children's free play on multiple occasions. Fortunately, none of the students hurt themselves and Krista returned shortly after that. This experience caused me to think about whether I would allow my students to make choices that could potentially lead to them getting hurt. Although I found the Parent Infant Center to be fascinating, I walked away thinking that I personally believe that as a teacher, it is my responsibility to keep my students safe even if that means limiting their choices under certain circumstances.
"How does socio-economic status play into the type of teaching practices in a school?"
Although I mentioned some of the reservations that I had with some of the teaching practices at the Parent Infant Center, for the most part, I was fairly impressed with their ability to put research into practice. I could tell that the instruction was student-centered, inquiry-based, and full of hands-on explorations. The summer program seemed wonderful and the kids clearly enjoyed their experience, but I couldn't help but wonder how many students with lower socio-economic backgrounds were being exposed to similar learning opportunities. The Parent Infant Center website claimed to "welcome children enrolled in subsidized care", but we later learned that there is a very small percentage of families who are accepted.
The idea of who is getting what kind of instruction and being exposed to which kind of learning opportunities brought me back to an excerpt from This is Not a Test by Jose Luis Vilson. To set the scene, a group of people have just had a discussion about the man who started the "Hole-in-the-Wall" Project . (The project involves leaving a computer for rural children in India to explore. The children ended up teaching themselves how to use it without any prior instruction.) Vilson describes the conversation that followed:
One gentleman in the conversation pointed out, “Well, that might be great for some kids. But some others might need direct instruction.”
I blinked a bit; I’m not afraid of speaking my mind in these environments, but first I had to feel out the room. Before I could even let out a word, Chris responded, and I’ll do my best to quote him here:
“Well, I’d be careful with that, because when people hear that, then we start getting into whose kids should get inquiry-based school, and it means we inevitably run into issues of race, class, and gender. I know that if enough Black boys started asking the hard questions, they’d probably feel like getting a gun.”
Collective gasp. Except for two of us. Luz nodded and I smirked.
“And not so that they’d shoot another Black kid, but so they could run up to City Hall and ask ‘What’s going on?’”
After he said it, I imagined my students running up to Gracie Mansion singing Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” (Part II): " We don’t need no education."
Chris succinctly analogized the ways in which we tell certain children how they can be educated versus how others must be educated. Was inquiry-based education not good enough for inner Philly? If not, should they ask other types of questions of their government officials about their conditions? The gun reference seemed to shock an otherwise mollified audience into one that had to confront its privilege. Inquiry-based education only for the ones society felt could handle it wasn’t good enough.
Vilson, 2014, p 145-146
I believe one of the reasons why the children at the Parent Infant Center received the education that they did was because most of the students came from fairly privileged families. My experience at my summer placement reaffirmed my belief that all children should be entitled to a high-quality education where they are able to engage in hands-on learning experiences that expose them to opportunities to showcase their intelligences as well as to make choices about their own learning.