Why this blog?

"... Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves ... Do not search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. The point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer." - Letters to a Young Artist, R. M. Rilke

Rooted in the promise and challenge of growth ...

these are letters from a young teacher.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Clean up, clean up, everybody clean up ...

"Alle Kinder räumen auf!" calls the teacher.

Laura mimics her tone, as if assuming the role of teacher, herself. "Alle Kinder räumen auf!" she cries, again and again, walking around to be sure that all the kids know: it's time to clean up.

"Du bist auch ein Kind," says the teacher, "You are also one of the kids. Don't shout, clean up!"

But what does it mean to clean up, anyway? Laura was just copying what her teacher does, instructing with words and then doing something different (not that what the teacher is doing isn't important, it's just not quite in line with what she is instructing the children to do).

It is painstakingly clear to me that some of our students - for one reason or the other - simply don't know yet what "cleaning up" means and entails. Luckily, I do not have to reinvent the wheel when I begin to think about how to address this, because I have a buddy, and his name is Lev Vygotsky, whose works demonstrate and philosophize on the power of what we know now as "scaffolding".

What a great word: scaffolding. You can just hear the metal bars clank into place when you say it. And in the classroom, you can already sense the guided discovery and practice that is taking place - instructive, but encouraging as much student agency as possible; teacher-led, but student-focused.

"Ok," I say to a group of boys sitting complacently around a strewn about pile of cardboard blocks, "I'm going to put away all the green blocks. What about you, Nathan? I know red is your favorite color, why don't you get the red blocks..."

"Yes, the red blocks!"

"I have the blue blocks!"

"Sounds good ..."

Together, we stack them all up in no time.


And now, onto the dress-up area ...

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