June Goldstein – Important skills and abilities for a teacher

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There are lots of very important skills and abilities to help the children with. First and foremost, I think the developmental area of feeling emotionally and physically safe is the most important for all of us to inculcate in them because when you feel physically and emotionally safe it's much easier for you to learn. And whether your learning about sharing a toy or whether your learning about how to look at the expression on someone's face to see if their ok, or whether your learning that print carries a meaning, academic or social or something else, I think the basis is very much social and emotional development. For me, and this classroom, that is a big part of work that we do, and we use it as a framework for everything that we do for them and with them. For example, we really try to help them learn about emotions, recognizing labeling their own emotions, and recognizing and labeling the emotions of others. We really stress for them how you feel is absolutely fine, it's what you do about it that may not be fine. To have them feel that they are respected by us, and by their peers as much as possible, and we can make sure that they feel that there's dignity in their day, rather that their being bossed around by four grown-ups, and then their parents. This is their place, everything is their size, it's their classroom, and they belong here, and this is their home, and that helps them feel safe. So that when they're learning other things outside of social and emotional development they'll already be risk-takers in that way. I don't mean jumping off the playground, I mean trying new materials, new experiences, and so a lot of the layout in our classroom and the way the we set up materials is an invitation to come and be directors of their own learning. [56:00] In addition to the physical safety and the emotional safety, we work a lot with the children on self-help skills, not because we don't want to help them, but because we want them to feel like their able to do things, and all of their skills are tied together. For example, if you can pull a cap off a marker, if you can hold a marker tightly enough that you can make a mark on a paper. And if you can push snap cubes together or blocks it will be easier for you to pull the zipper up on you pants and snap the snap. So that a lot of the skill development that we do goes across a bunch of realms. For example, if markers aren't available and there are only pencils, the muscles in your hand need to be strong enough to be able to make a mark on the paper with the pencils. Also many of our materials are about creative expression, whether it's building with blocks, dancing, singing to a friend, making up a song, using the blocks to be musical instruments, or painting or anything else, all of those things are also tied into parts of their fine motor ability, the muscles in their hands, and also the larger muscles, for example, when they paint it's self expression, but when they're painting like this, it strengthens the muscles in their arms and their elbows and their wrists. So that later when their older and their learning how to write they'll have enough strength to plant their wrist at the table. So a lot of the things we do are fore runners for other things. For example when we are teaching them to recognize and identify shapes, it's not so necessary that they know what shapes are, it's really just that it's a for runner for being able to distinguish one letter from another, so that they'll be able to read, and helps them with their symbolic thinking. We put a lot of emphasis on literacy development, and I don't mean learning how to read, because they are very young for that. [58:00] We start off with really is the importance of what a story is. For example, on Mondays, we ask the children, "How was your weekend? Tell us about your home days." So that we're recognizing for them that each of them has a story to tell, and that we are connecting their own personal lives and experiences to their story telling. That's what their storytelling is to begin with, so that they can have a foundation on top of that to then make up a story that's about someone else. Or we might sit in a group together and make up a story together, where each person will add on another part, so that we're all communicating together and building a story together that we all own. So that's all tied into them wanting to read stories, their memories, their cognitive development, their taking turns speaking, they're creating something together, and feeling proud of what they've created. And then out on the playground they have chances to swing, climb, hang; they have lots of sensory experiences at this very young age, that's very important. The sand and the water, we paint, finger paint in the classroom, and in terms of where we take them with their abilities, we listen to what they're saying, we talk to their families about what their interested in, and we watch a lot of what their doing. Watching what they're doing, in many ways tells us more than just listening to them. So then the curriculum experiences that we offer them come out of what we see in them that they are either interested in, or that they need, For example, on year we had a group of children whose parents traveled a lot for work and it was very upsetting, we also had some children where it wasn't upsetting to them. So what we did was we put three and three of the children together in a small group with one teacher, and then we had activities that were around, they didn't know this, but they were around traveling. [01:00:00] People leave the come back. So that the people who had good emotional comfort with their parents traveling and then coming back, could be models for and help the children who had this as a difficult emotional time. So we'll also use the children's gathering and that they are part of the same community as a way to help build their skills and what those individual children need.

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