People often ask me exactly what I do at my job, and I find it difficult to explain. To sum it up, I supervise the teachers of 15 preschool classrooms. In reality, it includes so much more than that. There is a lot of paperwork, a lot of quality control, and even more surprises and minute-to-minute management.
Friday was one of my long days, meaning that I start work at 8am, which is when the teachers arrive, and I close the building at 6:30pm when the last teacher and child from the extended hours program leaves. And boy, did I plan to get a lot of paperwork done during those many hours. I planned to do so much paperwork that I decided to wear a white shirt. I decided to wear a white shirt that I had been so excited to buy and had avoided wearing for weeks because I was afraid to mess it up. I wore that beautiful, soft-wash, button-down, bright white shirt on Friday.
White Shirt Hazard #1: I joined two coworkers for chocolate chocolate chip pancakes and coffee before work.
White Shirt Hazard #2: In the reception area, I worked with the receptionist to contact each classroom to find out how many students they had in each room (an every day task). While tapping my pen on my chin as I thought about how to provide enough teacher coverage in those rooms, I wrote on my shirt a little bit.
White Shirt Hazard #3: An unusually busy morning. A staff member at another of our preschool sites passed away last week and yesterday was her memorial. Many of our staff members attended the service, and I had a team of teachers from another of our preschool sites available to substitute during those hours. I had to place them all in rooms that needed them, and take them directly there to introduce them to the other teachers. Additionally, I had two visitors from the Keystone STARS program, which is a Pennsylvania organization that reviews and rates early childhood programs. I had invited these two visitors to observe some of the classrooms to help me figure out how to improve the quality of our school. I also had to place them in classrooms and deliver them there. All of the running around caused me to sweat. In my white shirt.
White Shirt Hazard #4: Carrying my coffee cup down the stairs to my director's office to have her sign papers. Sloshed coffee out of cup. Landed on pants, not shirt. Crisis averted. However, the paperwork was also averted, as we were distracted by the receptionist looking for upcoming dates to add to May's calendar. It was at that point that I learned about a fairly large week-long fundraising/awareness raising activity that I have to help plan and carry out in two weeks. Then I was called from the office to help that team of substitutes figure how where to go and what to do next. More sweat.
White Shirt Hazard #5: My director found me again (my coffee and unsigned paperwork were still locked in her office) to tell me that one of our more rambunctious and large students had just pushed his teacher down and she was injured. We both went to the room where the children were eating lunch and the teacher was crying. She filled out an accident report and I stayed to help keep the rambunctious child under control. First, he tried to flip over the lunch cart. I had to use my entire body to make sure that the cart full of pizza and corn (a classic school combo) stayed upright. He then lifted his cot and tried to place it on top of another child who was already on his own cot. I had to put my body in between them. Eventually I was able to calm down the rambunctious child by giving him some tight squeezes on the shoulders and rubbing my hand smoothly but forcefully up and down his spine while he sat on my leg as I balanced on my other knee (we are approximately the same size), and we were able to move to his cot together. I sat on it and he laid his head down on my lap. However, he was still very restless and rubbed his face, covered in pizza sauce and boogers, all over my lap.
White Shirt Hazard #6: I finally snuck out of that classroom when the rambunctious child stopped "being a good listener," to ensure that I wasn't rewarding his bad choices with my presence (which was also a distraction for the other children who were supposed to be napping). I ate two bites of my lunch (also pizza) and I was called to another classroom. It was still naptime and the teacher needed to go on her break. The other teacher (a substitute from another room) was still going to be in the room, but there were four children awake, so they still needed two adults in the room. I was in the room for approximately ten seconds when a child emerged from the bathroom and said, "The water is coming out." He was followed by a steady flow of fast moving toilet water. Within minutes I was using a mop with rusty screws sticking through the handle to push around toilet water, and then using the press handle to squeeze the grey water from the mop into the large industrial bucket. Over and over and over. When I'd finished mopping, I had to spray bleach and crawl around the floor on my knees to wipe it with paper towels. As I was working, the adorable child who clogged the toilet kept getting up from his cot to tell me things and show me the skateboard on his shirt.
"Ms. Jill, Ms. Jill. I have a question to ask you." I squatted in front of him and asked him what he needed to ask me. He said, "Um. My mom wears make-up here (points to eyelids) and here (points to eyebrows) and here (points to lips)." I replied, "Ok. Great. Can you go back to your cot until it's time to get up. Maybe you can sing the ABCs." He answered, "Ok! I'm going to sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." And that is what he did.
White Shirt Hazard #7: I finished my lunch in ten minutes and went back to check on the rambunctious child. He was being a good listener, so I told him he was making me feel so happy. Then I went to another classroom to help fill in for a teacher who had to leave early. I entered the room as the children were finishing their snack. Six kids immediately ran up to hug me with their melon and whole grain cracker encrusted mouths.
White Shirt Hazard #8: Next week the Special Needs Department is having a Sensory Day for Autism Awareness month and I have been enlisted to help with the tactile activity. After all of the children left, I practiced making oobleck and flubber with turquoise watercolor paint.
I left work at 7:00pm, only minimally stained, but maximally aware that the only way to be completely and totally engaged with young children and all of their needs is to be completely and totally unafraid of getting messy, looking stupid, having your ego stomped, or being up close and personal with pizza and boogers.
Sunday, April 28, 2013
Monday, April 22, 2013
How Do We View and Value our Children? Or...Why we shouldn't listen to mainstream media for information about parenting.
Thank you to my sister, a new parent herself, for suggesting this topic for my blog!
Although I had been planning to keep you updated on my exhausting week celebrating the Week of the Young Child with the 250 students at my preschool, I think it's more important to delve into this subject at this point. Considering that my career has moved from an advantaged community to an under-served one, I regularly think about the differences in expectations we have for our children in diverse groups.
The article that my sister recommended describes a study done by two researchers in the field of Family Studies that explains differences between the ways that American parents view their children and the way that parents from other Western cultures view theirs. The article in The Atlantic suggests that the "differences are stark," and focused on the fact that Americans rank intelligence as a more important quality in their children than the parents from other nations.
While looking at the graphs in the article, I noticed that the percentage of American parents who ranked their children as intelligent was only 6%. Compare this with the percentage of Spanish parents who described their children as easy: 20%. With a second look, you notice that 10% of Spanish parents described their children as intelligent! I became very curious about the details of this study and why the story was so focused on the 6% of American parents who think their children are smart.
Truth be told, I was more than curious; I was a little offended. I knew that there was some sort of media slant because I am familiar with the work of the two researchers. In fact, they are one of my favorite developmental research teams because their names are Charles Super and Sara Harkness, which sounds like a comic book duo, whether they are publishing as Super and Harkness or Harkness and Super (and they do do both). This collaboration is responsible for the concept of the developmental niche, which describes that children are raised within and under the influence of their caregiver, their caregiver's culture, and the society and environment at large. You can picture these levels of influence like a nest with the little baby in the middle. First the parents' arms are wrapped around the child, and all of the experiences and beliefs those parents have are put into the child's upbringing, both consciously and subconciously. Then, around that, you see the circle of the physical space that the parent and child inhabit. Each of these levels, along with the child's own innate temperament, influence how they will develop.
Upon further investigation of the new Super and Harkness study, I came to realize that The Atlantic DID blow the story of out of proportion. First of all, yes, there were differences found in the study between values that are important to parents in different countries, but that wasn't the emphasis of their conclusion, which looks like this:
In summary, the patterns of both cross-cultural similarity and difference in parents’
descriptions of their own children suggest that these descriptions are culturally constructed in the
sense that there are locally shared ideas about what child qualities are most important, most
worthy of note. Comparing across the six cultural samples, there is evidence of commonality in
the group of descriptors that were among the most frequent in all of the samples. At the same
time, the particular ways that these are combined with other, more culture-specific profiles of
descriptors suggests that each community has its own unique perspective on the nature of the
child.
The study re-affirms the influence of the developmental niche, showing that the parents' view of their own children has strong similarities with other parents within their culture. Most importantly, it states that, "across the six cultural samples" the most frequently reported qualities were similar. The differences, which The Atlantic uses as their titillating thesis, is really sort of an interesting after-thought in this conclusion. It's almost as if Harkness and Super are saying, "All of these parents have been influenced by their culture, but the cultures support similar views of children. Isn't that cool?"
HOWEVER, I think that the most important take-away from the study is the simple fact of their sample:
In each cultural site, we recruited a sample of 60 families with target children
divided evenly into five age-groups balanced for birth order and sex: 6 months, 18 months, 3
years, 4.5 years, and 7 to 8 years. The sample families, recruited mostly through community
networks, were broadly middle-class, with one or both parents employed and no major health
problems; most of them were nuclear families with both parents present in the home; and parents
in each sample were all native-born to that culture.
The Atlantic is using this research to create a news story about how Americans are obsessed with their children's intelligence. We already discussed the numbers and the real theory behind the research, but let's also take a look at how even that information is really only based on SIXTY American families. Sixty, middle-class, two-parent, native born families. I don't even know the number of American families that fit that description, but my intuition tells me that it is not a soaring percentage. As much as I love Super and Harkness, this study tells us how the very stereotypical American family views their children, not necessarily how the real-life, widely diverse families in our country view theirs.
To conclude, it has been my experience that parents, all within our borders, have a wide range of the positive qualities that they believe their children possess. And to leave you with one cliff-hanger/conversation starter, I'll tell you that intelligence is not the one that seems to be most observable: It is obedience. It seems to me that the more privileges you have the less concerned you are with how obedient your children are, or...your idea of what obedience looks like is different from that of parents who struggle to meet their children's basic needs. Now, GO...DISCUSS.
Although I had been planning to keep you updated on my exhausting week celebrating the Week of the Young Child with the 250 students at my preschool, I think it's more important to delve into this subject at this point. Considering that my career has moved from an advantaged community to an under-served one, I regularly think about the differences in expectations we have for our children in diverse groups.
The article that my sister recommended describes a study done by two researchers in the field of Family Studies that explains differences between the ways that American parents view their children and the way that parents from other Western cultures view theirs. The article in The Atlantic suggests that the "differences are stark," and focused on the fact that Americans rank intelligence as a more important quality in their children than the parents from other nations.
While looking at the graphs in the article, I noticed that the percentage of American parents who ranked their children as intelligent was only 6%. Compare this with the percentage of Spanish parents who described their children as easy: 20%. With a second look, you notice that 10% of Spanish parents described their children as intelligent! I became very curious about the details of this study and why the story was so focused on the 6% of American parents who think their children are smart.
Truth be told, I was more than curious; I was a little offended. I knew that there was some sort of media slant because I am familiar with the work of the two researchers. In fact, they are one of my favorite developmental research teams because their names are Charles Super and Sara Harkness, which sounds like a comic book duo, whether they are publishing as Super and Harkness or Harkness and Super (and they do do both). This collaboration is responsible for the concept of the developmental niche, which describes that children are raised within and under the influence of their caregiver, their caregiver's culture, and the society and environment at large. You can picture these levels of influence like a nest with the little baby in the middle. First the parents' arms are wrapped around the child, and all of the experiences and beliefs those parents have are put into the child's upbringing, both consciously and subconciously. Then, around that, you see the circle of the physical space that the parent and child inhabit. Each of these levels, along with the child's own innate temperament, influence how they will develop.
Upon further investigation of the new Super and Harkness study, I came to realize that The Atlantic DID blow the story of out of proportion. First of all, yes, there were differences found in the study between values that are important to parents in different countries, but that wasn't the emphasis of their conclusion, which looks like this:
In summary, the patterns of both cross-cultural similarity and difference in parents’
descriptions of their own children suggest that these descriptions are culturally constructed in the
sense that there are locally shared ideas about what child qualities are most important, most
worthy of note. Comparing across the six cultural samples, there is evidence of commonality in
the group of descriptors that were among the most frequent in all of the samples. At the same
time, the particular ways that these are combined with other, more culture-specific profiles of
descriptors suggests that each community has its own unique perspective on the nature of the
child.
The study re-affirms the influence of the developmental niche, showing that the parents' view of their own children has strong similarities with other parents within their culture. Most importantly, it states that, "across the six cultural samples" the most frequently reported qualities were similar. The differences, which The Atlantic uses as their titillating thesis, is really sort of an interesting after-thought in this conclusion. It's almost as if Harkness and Super are saying, "All of these parents have been influenced by their culture, but the cultures support similar views of children. Isn't that cool?"
HOWEVER, I think that the most important take-away from the study is the simple fact of their sample:
In each cultural site, we recruited a sample of 60 families with target children
divided evenly into five age-groups balanced for birth order and sex: 6 months, 18 months, 3
years, 4.5 years, and 7 to 8 years. The sample families, recruited mostly through community
networks, were broadly middle-class, with one or both parents employed and no major health
problems; most of them were nuclear families with both parents present in the home; and parents
in each sample were all native-born to that culture.
The Atlantic is using this research to create a news story about how Americans are obsessed with their children's intelligence. We already discussed the numbers and the real theory behind the research, but let's also take a look at how even that information is really only based on SIXTY American families. Sixty, middle-class, two-parent, native born families. I don't even know the number of American families that fit that description, but my intuition tells me that it is not a soaring percentage. As much as I love Super and Harkness, this study tells us how the very stereotypical American family views their children, not necessarily how the real-life, widely diverse families in our country view theirs.
To conclude, it has been my experience that parents, all within our borders, have a wide range of the positive qualities that they believe their children possess. And to leave you with one cliff-hanger/conversation starter, I'll tell you that intelligence is not the one that seems to be most observable: It is obedience. It seems to me that the more privileges you have the less concerned you are with how obedient your children are, or...your idea of what obedience looks like is different from that of parents who struggle to meet their children's basic needs. Now, GO...DISCUSS.
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Welcome!
Happy Week of the Young Child! And welcome to my blog about the fun, fascinating, and often fearsome, field of early childhood!
As a professional goal for myself, I will be maintaining and sharing this blog by posting information, stories, and opinions regularly. And by "regularly," I intend to mean two to three times a week, but some weeks are bound to be more packed with information, stories, and opinions than others. Or, at the very least, some weeks are bound to have more time for blogging than others.
And what information, stories, and opinions will I be sharing, you may be wondering?
The answer is simple and straight forward: everything early childhood.
Although I am not a parent, I am a full-fledged member of the early childhood community. In fact, because I am not a parent, I am a far more permanent member of the community because no matter how much time goes by, I will always work with young children, whereas parents of young children eventually become parents of old children, and then teenagers, and then adults. (The social-emotional issues in these phases of childhood may be very similar, but the logistics are quite different.)
Why do I have so much information, stories, and opinions about early childhood? And why do they matter to you?
Another simple answer: I love young children and you should too!
The more thorough answer is this: I have a Masters degree from the Erikson Institute in Chicago in Early Childhood Development. This basically means that I went deeply into debt in order to know almost everything there is to know about the way we develop as humans very early in life. I have spent the last several years working with families with young children in a variety of capacities. I have been a nanny, both live-in and live-out. I worked at a wonderful non-profit organization that offered support and an indoor play space for parents and their children who were three years and under. I taught at a fabulous progressive preschool in the Chicago suburbs, and currently, I supervise a team of teachers at a Head Start preschool in a relatively underserved neighborhood in Philadelphia. I have also worked as a parent coach, helping those who feel overwhelmed or concerned about their children's challenging behaviors. Ultimately, I love working with infants, toddlers, preschoolers and their families, and I am darn good at it. It might be the only thing I'm good at (apart from making a really straight French braid and delightful chocolate chip cookies), so I like to put a lot of effort into making my practice extremely intentional and using my knowledge and skills to help families feel confident and content.
Check back soon for my next official post about early childhood!
Teaser: This week, to celebrate the Week of the Young Child, I have designed and will be running a variety of interactive programs for the 250 students at my school, including an opportunity to build with giant blocks (made from cardboard boxes that once carried our extraordinarily large shipment of paper towels). I'm sure I'll have stories and pictures to share!
*********************************************************************************
And a little food for thought: If a child wants to be called by a name that is not their own, should their parent or teacher go along with it?
As a professional goal for myself, I will be maintaining and sharing this blog by posting information, stories, and opinions regularly. And by "regularly," I intend to mean two to three times a week, but some weeks are bound to be more packed with information, stories, and opinions than others. Or, at the very least, some weeks are bound to have more time for blogging than others.
And what information, stories, and opinions will I be sharing, you may be wondering?
The answer is simple and straight forward: everything early childhood.
Although I am not a parent, I am a full-fledged member of the early childhood community. In fact, because I am not a parent, I am a far more permanent member of the community because no matter how much time goes by, I will always work with young children, whereas parents of young children eventually become parents of old children, and then teenagers, and then adults. (The social-emotional issues in these phases of childhood may be very similar, but the logistics are quite different.)
Why do I have so much information, stories, and opinions about early childhood? And why do they matter to you?
Another simple answer: I love young children and you should too!
The more thorough answer is this: I have a Masters degree from the Erikson Institute in Chicago in Early Childhood Development. This basically means that I went deeply into debt in order to know almost everything there is to know about the way we develop as humans very early in life. I have spent the last several years working with families with young children in a variety of capacities. I have been a nanny, both live-in and live-out. I worked at a wonderful non-profit organization that offered support and an indoor play space for parents and their children who were three years and under. I taught at a fabulous progressive preschool in the Chicago suburbs, and currently, I supervise a team of teachers at a Head Start preschool in a relatively underserved neighborhood in Philadelphia. I have also worked as a parent coach, helping those who feel overwhelmed or concerned about their children's challenging behaviors. Ultimately, I love working with infants, toddlers, preschoolers and their families, and I am darn good at it. It might be the only thing I'm good at (apart from making a really straight French braid and delightful chocolate chip cookies), so I like to put a lot of effort into making my practice extremely intentional and using my knowledge and skills to help families feel confident and content.
Check back soon for my next official post about early childhood!
Teaser: This week, to celebrate the Week of the Young Child, I have designed and will be running a variety of interactive programs for the 250 students at my school, including an opportunity to build with giant blocks (made from cardboard boxes that once carried our extraordinarily large shipment of paper towels). I'm sure I'll have stories and pictures to share!
*********************************************************************************
And a little food for thought: If a child wants to be called by a name that is not their own, should their parent or teacher go along with it?
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