printed copies in folders at school Monday, November 3
Upcoming Events and Closings
Please contact me if you have any questions. wdolde@gmail.com; 341-5686.
Lantern Walk, Friday, November 7, 5:30pm. Please refer to the email Kim Dunkley sent; printed copies of details about the lantern walk, along with the music to "Glimmer, Lantern, Glimmer" are in your folders at school. We will strive to sing this lantern song at the 12:25 closing each day to help parents learn the song. Children and I have been working on lanterns together in class. It is inherent to the cooperative mood of our nursery class that we all make lanterns that anyone can use. Each nursery child will take home a lantern that we all had a hand in oiling.
Veteran's Day, Tuesday, November 11. No School.
Parent Evening with the Kindergarten Families, Tuesday, November 18, 5 to 8pm. Thomas Berry Hall at the Whidbey Institute. Michael Hansen will be working with us to craft a social vessel that supports our children. We will be accepting donations to cover the cost of the venue.
Thanksgiving Week, teacher in-service, parent & teacher conferences, November 24 - 28. No School. I will make conference sign-up times available soon. Early childhood families are asked to attend either a fall or a spring conference with me. You are welcome to attend both. Please let me know if you want to have a conference before Thanksgiving week. I can sometimes make space for a conference on a Monday or Tuesday early afternoon.
Children's Holiday Workshop, Saturday, December 6.
Advent Spiral, Evening, Friday, December 12.
OTHER IMPORTANT DETAILS
Mittens accomplished, perhaps. I did find a reasonable price on a host of stretch mittens--all the same color--from a skating shop. They have not arrived yet, but I expect them soon. Because the 90 - 100 minute outside time seems so nourishing for our nursery children, and because this outside time includes a snack (at which we take off our mittens), finding something easy to put on and off seems all the more important. This is an experiment, so I am not sure if it will work. At present, don't worry about seeking other school mittens yourself.
Checking cubby supplies and taking things home. The transition from inside to outside can be the most challenging one for a nursery class. Over the years I have really tried to alter the mood of this transition--we draw children outside with the possibility of playing in the sand or swings rather than forcing all children to sit inside while waiting for every child to be ready (my experience and observation is that this punishes cooperative children who get dressed quickly and then have to sit inside and sweat in their rain clothes while waiting for others). It helps this transition if Kim and the children can find the right supplies easily. Please check your child's cubby and take home treasures, extra pairs of gloves (once mittens arrive), artwork, and the like. This will help with the transition.
Mailboxes for children inside the classroom. Please check the painting paper mailboxes just inside the classroom door. Much of my work with children birth to 5 is to draw out the generosity and interest in cooperation that is already present at birth (following the wisdom of Waldorf master teachers Rena Osmer, Susan Weber and the wisdom of Emmi Pikler and Magda Gerber). I have found over the years that if I create the form (for example, mailboxes; trips to give soup to the receptionist) that makes it easier for children to give to one another and adults, the children are more likely to realize the intrinsic reward of giving. There may be weeks or month when children do not draw or make things for each other. There may be times when many children do. Both are fine. Some children may want to collect treasures or make things for classmates at home; some children won't. This culture of interest in the other makes discipline much more effective. If children are already in the habit of giving to one another, they are more likely to be willing to make amends and help restore things if they have taken a toy, pushed or hit a child, or used judgmental words with a peer. Restoration rather than punishment tends to be much more effective in bringing about a safe and inclusive classroom.
My paper mailboxes are but temporary solution. If you see something at a thrift store or feel inspired to build wooden mail cubbies for inside the classroom, please let me know. Ideally, these would have space for twelve mailboxes.
Mentoring and Evaluation While the feedback I receive from most parents seems to indicate that they are pleased with their child's experience in the nursery class, do also know that as a new teacher to this school I will be undergoing a formal evaluation this Friday and next Monday. A lot of my practices in the classroom have developed through years of observing children, reading works about Waldorf education and child development, and from meditating upon and trying what work best for the particular children in my care. I always benefit from outside insight, which I will receive a healthy dose of this weekend.
Kim Dunkley of the Golden Forest Kindergarten is my mentor. While we encourage parents to speak to teachers directly, with a teacher new to the school such as myself you do have the option of speaking to Kim if you feel you cannot speak to me or if you are not satisfied by my response.
Bulletin Board and Blog
Some parents have let me know they find the blog helpful. Although some of the pdfs may be challenging to read on some computer screens, I like that I am conserving paper and that the articles are in a place easy for you to find should you want to refer to them in the future. In my first year at the Waldorf School of Baltimore, I received some feedback that I gave parents too much to read and a wish from other parents that I would give even more. I will try to provide a balanced amount of articles with the expectation that some parents will seek more and some won't read many at all. In my parent & child classes, I try to provide a new article every week. Often these articles may be of interest to you, too. Rather than cluttering your inbox with more emails, I invite you to check out the parent & child blog from time to time (an easy way to get there is to go to my profile on our nursery blog). When possible, I will post a printed copy of short articles I write or find on the bulletin board for you to read when you have time. When possible, I will provide a printed copy of pdf articles on the window ledge outside the classroom. A copy of a conversation from Difficult Children -- There is No Such Thing is there now.
Another conversation from Difficult Children -- There is No Such Thing
At our initial parent evening, I spoke of two conversations from this book. One, a conversation about Robert, I made available about a month ago.
Here, now, is a conversation about a 7 year old named Miriam. (On some computers, the pdf can be hard to read on the screen. If you print it out, the text should be clearer. Again, there is a printed copy outside the classroom to read.) While this child is older and the parent's interactions are different than they would be with a nursery child, I find the principles very helpful, and they help clarify some of the practices I use in the classroom. A lot of what I do, for example, is to help children learn that obligation is not necessarily odious--that what the child wants to do and should do are not necessarily in conflict. Even as our school as a whole works on standards of behavior and discipline, it is important to keep in mind what the author/therapist tells us about the inherent coldness of commands and the antipathy they necessarily summon forth in our children. Parenting and teaching is challenging work: indeed, the challenge is the benefit for us. At the same time we need to be loving authorities, that we need to set limits and establish boundaries, we have to be willing to go the extra step of guiding our children with warmth and imagination and clarity. I encourage you to read this pdf and share it with parents in other classes if you think they would be interested. You could feel free to take the printed copy outside the classroom and ask Rebecca to make a copy, or check the book out yourself from the library.
As I have said before, these conversations between therapist and parent are moments of transparency in an otherwise incredible and dense and sometimes hard to read book. If anybody would like to start a reading group to study this book, please let me know and I would be willing to find time to participate. Henning Koehler's book Working with Anxious, Nervous, and Depressed Children seems easier to read, and I recommend it as well (copies in the Kathrine Dickerson library). This book provides lengthy descriptions of how to nourish the sense of touch, life (well-being), self-movement (proprioception), and balance (vestibular system) in all children, anxious or not.
Circle and the Power of Imitation
Circle time--a time when children sing or move or gesture together with the teacher--can be a time for misbehavior in the nursery class. When Bonnie Freundlich visits for eurythmy every morning (we will be invited to a parent evening about eurythmy in January), children tend to attend very well. I expect every child to be able to watch or follow along. I am prepared--as has had to happen in past years but has not been necessary this year--to have Kim remove a child from the classroom if the child is too disruptive or to create a safe space for a child to watch from a distance if the presence of another teacher in the classroom is too overwhelming. The children seem quite comfortable with Bonnie and thrilled with what she offers. They repeat Bonnie's rhymes about the cobbler later in the morning or the next day.
One of the strengths of Waldorf Early Childhood education is that we provide form in a healthy way. While other schools are imposing more and more academic form and homework in the early years (with very mixed results; see www.allianceforchildhood.org for information on work and play), form in a Waldorf School comes from the careful attention of the adults to the rhythms of the day, week, and year. In light of this, I made a very conscious decision a few years ago to offer a circle of traditional singing games ("Fiddle me up to London Town," "Jim Along Josie," and "Grand Old Duke of York" among others) outside without compelling any child to join me. The games would emerge in the right spot while children were playing, and children would come freely out of imitation and interest. While this has worked more or less over the years, I am struck by the profound enthusiasm many of our Butterfly children show for this outdoor circle time. At the beginning of the year, most children came; when they learned they did not have to come, many children played elsewhere; now, many children come running the moment I start singing, "We feed the chickens every day, singing as we go." I would have expected to have to augment the circle with new songs (which I have ready), but the children seem so nourished by and enthusiastic for the repetition. Obedience does not necessarily have to be for an adult. In this case, I think the children and I are being obedient to higher wisdoms such as the wisdom of generations that created these archetypal singing games.
As our school looks at behavior school wide, I have heard comments that some parents are concerned that because early childhood teachers allow children to sit out, this habit persists into the grades. In our parent evenings, I feel from all of you that we are in agreement that the nursery class is a very different place from first grade or fourth grade or 7th grade. Many parents like Waldorf education because it continues to recognize that children have different needs at different developmental stages. By working out of imitation and obedience to higher forms with the nursery children, my goal is to cultivate children who love to participate in circle and music in the grades because it is inherently joyful to do so; they wouldn't even think of misbehaving in a first grade circle because they can sense the gift they will get from singing and moving together. While I would support another nursery teacher who chooses to have a different place and expectations for circle, my hope is that you will support me if you hear a parent bemoaning the lack of discipline and using the example, "The nursery teacher doesn't even force the children to come to circle." People are welcome to their own opinion, of course, but please refer that parent to the blog and possibly a meeting with me so we can share where our opinions are coming from.
Dragons, Parades, Teacher's Imagination, Needs of All the Children
In my last entry, I wrote of examples where children resolved conflicts themselves. I think it fair to ask what I might do to help children when they seem stuck in play that is becoming loud or aggressive. Since Michaelmas, more than a handful of children have pretended to be dragons at one point or the other. As long as the dragons have not been aggressive toward others, Kim and I have allowed this play as a healthy and necessary way to process the Michaelmas pageant (again, one could ask whether it is appropriate for nursery children to attend the Michaelmas pageant; in some schools they do not, and I will ask myself, my colleagues, and the Parent Council this question next year). Often this play transforms itself into other games organically; dragons become dogs who have owners who seek food and rides to farms and pumpkin patches and ferries. One day five children were having a grand time pretending to be dragons breathing fire, dancing about, being loud, not really aiming their fire at anything in particular. All the same, I could see a couple of children feeling hesitant about going into that part of the room because of the vigor of the dragons. I began taking big hollow blocks and tying ropes to them and said, to no one in particular, "Dragons are often part of parades like Chinese New Year's parades, and I have also seen parades in which mountain dogs pull sleds through the town." I continued tying up sleds and began singing a New Year song and then a Kwanzaa song ("Harambee") with no expectation or requirement that anything would happen. Several children began pulling the sleds, another two children began building a fire truck for the parade, the children who had been standing back went into that part of the room and began building a house, and an occasional dragon came forth in the parade. While this approach does not always work (and indeed, we might need to redirect a child to helping with a chore or sit a child down if the child needs to collect her or himself before playing some more), situations like this happen all the time. It is not easy, but I practice and hopefully get better at redirecting play and behavior with warmth and imagination. I feel I am working toward the goals set forth in the conversation from Difficult Children - There is no Such Thing.
While I feel heartened by the cooperative and imaginative play of our nursery children and their willingness to make amends when amends need to be made, I know that as a school we are looking to clarify what we do about discipline. In your folders today, Monday, is a letter from the Children's Garden teachers about discipline. There is also
an annotated version of an article about "Loving Authority".
Thank you for reading all of this. Thank you for keeping the channels of communication open.
With warmth and light,
William Geoffrey Dolde
