16/10/2022
Its a hard pill to swallow, but the reality is we're a broken system in many ways, yet faulting the children for our inability to not lead with developmentally appropriate practice in mind...
I'll give a common example I've witnessed time and time again in countless classroom observations:
About 9:00am, children are served an inadequate, sugary breakfast, and expected to remain seated until all other children are done. This seems like an eternity for children who aren't even hungry/eating, or the children who are finished and need to move.
Next children, with their spiked glucose levels, are expected to go sit on their floor spots.
Not move.
Not speak.
Not touch.
Sit like a pretzel.
Eyes forward.
Then go through..
Calendar
Weather
ABC/color/shpae charts
Listen to a story, etc.
They often need to be redirected several times as they're required to be sedentary and silent way beyond what's developmentally appropriate, after sitting at the table for breakfast, before heading back to the table for a follow-up activity.
The children who struggled with this had every single right to struggle with this, yet are being labeled as "troublesome," or "challenging." They are not wrong. We are the ones setting them up for disaster.
I've noticed the rooms with the most rules are the ones ones the greatest "behavior problems."
Children need to move, touch, speak, twirl, and self regulate in their own way. Sitting like a solid, silent pretzel isn't usually it.
Prisoners are spending more time outside than children. I've seen programs give more time to "table top" activities than outdoor play. It's atrocious that this is a common thing found in early childhood education.
Now, I'll say this may often times be out of the teachers control, as they have to follow admin and/or policy makers - which makes our position SO hard and frustrating. This is why we're plagued with teachers who at their core, love teaching but hate their jobs and are fleeing the field.
As a system, we clearly do not understand how children learn and what children need. When policymakers wake up and smell the coffee, they'd be supporting optimal experiences for children, teachers, and parents!
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