Last night I had a dream. In this dream a few colleagues and I led an Occupy Schools movement for a day in a single school. We took over the school in this dream and taught. We knew we would be arrested for teaching, so we explained it to our children. As the dream continued, we were arrested. The charge was "teaching".
There was more to the dream, but I reckon I remembered the most important parts!
A few days ago I was on public transportation here in Philly, overhearing a conversation two young children were having. The conversation went from the regular happenings in school, to who was running for president. The children must have been in the second grade or so.
What was most troubling was the fact that their mother was ostensibly weary of the conversation and promptly ordered an end to the their conversing.
When children and caregivers engage in conversations like the one these children were having, they build interpersonal skills, listening skills, schema (background knowledge), and create opportunities for authentic learning.
The children check each others' facts and perhaps learn something from the others involved in the conversation. Parents have the chance to gauge what learning has taken place in school and even set the stage for what could happen later that evening, sitting and watching the news together.
Such conversations are prime opportunities for true out of school learning.
I regret that these children on that bus that day did not have the opportunity to develop that conversation further.
....the emotional distress a child experiences when he has to leave a school where maybe for the first time in his life he felt like the staff cared...
...the moment when teachers converse about after work plans and one responds that they aren't the real social type and the eavesdropping kid says, "yeah, you just come to teach..."
...the moment when the journal topic is all about kids writing about themselves and a kid asks her teacher, "tell us about you..."
....the moment when a kid just wants to get away from the other kids for a second or two and asks to come back to the classroom at lunch and he is permitted to do so...
...the moment when a former student comes back and lets a former teacher know that he got in trouble at his new school defending that former teacher's honor and name...
...the moment when kids are running into the classroom to grab specific books to read during SSR...
...the moment when after reading silently for at least 15 minutes the teacher asks who'd like to keep going and 97% of the class raises their hands...
...the moment when a simple procedural change gets children even more excited about reading and discussion...
...the moment when a teacher goes "old school" and reads a book to the kids that their kindergarten teacher may have read and sees the excitement in those kids' eyes and the enthusiasm to lift the flaps that were on the pages of the book...
No, cameras and tests cannot adequately capture those moments...
