I’m Alive

I had been wanting to post this song for the past week, but never found time to do so. I think it is appropriate for my current situation. It is also very appropriate for today, since it is Ayn Rand’s birthday. I have been wearing this song out on my MP3 player.

I’m Alive
Disturbed

Never again will I be dishonored
And never again will I be reminded
Of living within the world of the jaded
They kill inspiration
It’s my obligation
To never again, allow this to happen
Where do I begin?
The choices are endless
Denying the sin
My art, my redemption
I carry the torch of my fathers before me

The thing I treasure most in life
Cannot be taken away
There will never be a reason why I will surrender to your advice
To change myself, I’d rather die
Though they will not understand
I won’t make the greatest sacrifice
You can’t predict where the outcome lies
You’ll never take me alive
I’m alive

Change again, cannot be considered
I rage again, dispelling my anger
Where do I begin?
The choices are endless
My art, my redemption, my only salvation
I carry the gift that I have been blessed with
My soul is adrift in oceans of madness
Repairing the rift that you have created
I am not alone, brothers, give me your arms now

The thing I treasure most in life cannot be taken away
There will be never be a reason why I will surrender to your advice
To change myself, I’d rather die
Though they will not understand
I won’t make the greatest sacrifice
You can’t predict where the outcome lies
You’ll never take me alive

I’m no slave
Are you feeling brave?
Or have you gone out of your mind?
No more games
It won’t feel the same
If I hold my anger inside
There’s no meaning
My soul is bleeding
I’ve had enough of your kind
One suggestion, use your discretion
Before you label me blind

The thing I treasure most in life cannot be taken away
There will never be a reason why I will surrender to your advice
To change myself, I’d rather die
Though they will not understand
I won’t make the greatest sacrifice
You can’t predict where the outcome lies
You’ll never take me alive
I’m alive
I’m alive

Remembering How To Play

I look back at some of my more recent posts and I feel that I owe my readers an apology. I’m not even sure that I know who that person is that wrote those posts. Someone sad and lost, I think. That is where I have been for the past six or seven months. It took me a while to figure out why, but I think that I have finally gotten myself together.

I wrote recently that the children in my class do not know how to play. I think that a more accurate assessment of the situation is that I have forgotten how to play. My philosophy of education, which I so fiercely defended when I was in my first co-teacher position, went straight out the window when I entered my second. I was so focused on the special needs issues of the classroom that I neglected the other children in the room. When I turned my attention to the other children, I began to focus more on what I wanted them to learn rather than what they wanted to learn. I began to use coercion and punishment in order to achieve circle times, bathroom times, and other activities. Discipline problems began to rise and nerves began to get frazzled – and not just mine, but the children’s as well. Making the children do what I wanted to do became the order of the day, and while we fought tooth and nail to get things done, it felt like we got nothing done. Activities lost their meaning because more time was spent on a battle of wills than on any meaningful classroom projects. And through it all, I lost the love of my job. I began to hate going to work. I haven’t picked up a book bout early childhood education in months. The workshops that I so lovingly and excitedly prepared are gathering dust because I have had no energy or desire to do anything with them.

A turn-around in my thought process began this week as I wondered where the researcher in me went. That was why I loved this job so much – the thrill of figuring out why children do the things they do, how they think about certain things and why, and how to work with them to change their thought processes. Why d they behave a certain way in certain situations? These are puzzles that my brain loves to figure out, and these puzzles are absent from a classroom where everything that is done is what the teacher wills. The children lose their individuality in that case and become part of a group, and the puzzles become meaningless. The researcher in me gets lost in the shuffle, being taken over by the dictator who plans every moment and decrees every movement.

Upon further examination of the situation, I realized that my focus had also shifted from the children to the subject matter. I longed to teach my class about houses in the same way that I had taught my previous class, but I had forgotten that the subject of houses had arisen from the interest that the children showed in them rather than a desire by me to teach them about houses. I forgot that every big project that we did stemmed from their interest first. I forgot that no activity was mandatory, but usually no decree was needed; the children usually magically gravitated toward the activities that I laid out. The classroom was wildly productive and there was mutual respect shown between the teacher and students. Classroom rules weren’t stated as arbitrary decrees, but were handed out with logical explanations that the children could understand.

I have begun interacting with the class differently, keeping in mind the amount of time I ask the children to sit; keeping in mind the use of arbitrary statements; keeping in mind that activities can flow from the children just as easily as they can flow through the lesson plan. The results have been amazing. I have seen a huge downshift in the amount of behavior problems that had flared up. The appearance of individual personalities in the classroom has led to an appearance of several social and physical behaviors that need to be worked on. A problem that seemingly had no cause is showing signs of a pattern.

The problem has been one of philosophy. I have tried to overlay my educational philosophy onto one that is counter to mine, and the results ended up being a surrender of my educational beliefs. Going forward, I will have to figure out how to reconcile this. For now, I am having fun finding my way back to a classroom that I can enjoy being in.

And I am also having fun remembering how to play.

The Nature of Man

I have been working on a training workshop for my new baby, Project: Preschool. While it is definitely still a work in progress, I have been able to work toward applying my knowledge in a concrete and productive way, which has been an amazing experience, so far.

So I’ve been working on this workshop, entitled “Learning Through Play”, and I happened to think on my own classroom this morning, in an attempt to find concrete examples of learning through play happening. I had been looking at pictures of another class in another school, smiling at the children doing constructive and meaningful tasks with water bottles full of water.

And then it hit me: The children in my class do not know how to play.

So let me give you some background here, because children in my class always know how to play. I mean, I live to play with those kids and experiment and explore with them. The knowledge that they don’t know how to play is quite a shock. But I switched classrooms a few months ago, moving up with some of the children who had aged out of my old class. It has been a decent fit so far, but some of the present routines that exist in the class have rubbed me the wrong way. The children seem most obviously bored, a fact that I brought up at one time but was instantly rejected by the co-teacher.

Did I say it was a decent fit? I have been at my wits-end.

There is one thing that I have found about being not only knowledgeable, but effective as well: people want you for your knowledge and they want you for your effectiveness, but they don’t want to hear about how you got that way. They don’t want to hear that you did it differently than they did. They don’t want to hear that maybe they were wrong. They don’t want to let go of the knowledge that they have been working off of for years and that may be outdated now. They don’t want to know what makes you effective; they just want you to go in and work your magic, even if your magic doesn’t jive with their current practices.

Because that is what it is to them: magic.

This post started out as a way for me to remark upon and think about what is going on in my classroom, but I am sorry to say that it has become a rant. Which is probably what I need right now. All of the posts that you have seen lately dealing with integrity, appreciation, and dedication – all written with a slight undercurrent of despair – they have all been leading up to this post. I have been convinced for a while that I am not an effective teacher unless I am working alone. And I knew that the main reason for that was because my classroom practices are so much different than most other teachers that I know. Unfortunately, that has led me to question my own integrity recently, as well as my own sanity. But over the holiday I pulled myself together and remembered that I have spent years studying to gain the knowledge that I have, and in that same time have applied that knowledge to test it in a classroom setting. The results have been phenomenal, and have proven to me that constructivist methods really are more engaging and effective than traditional methods. Over the holiday I had to remind myself that I am right, and to remind myself that I need to have the courage of my convictions – which is what I tell all of the participants of my workshops to have. I need to stand up for what I know to be true, and to be the most critical judge of what is not. I can’t let what I love go to waste because of this issue.

It really is a huge issue. I also realized that over the holiday. It comes down to a basic core philosophical issue: the nature of man. This issue has been struggled with and dealt with time and again, and I realized that the theories and educational philosophies that are waging war against each other in my classroom have their root in this issue. One philosophy states that children are born bad and sinful; this view is what prompts teachers to use punishment to deal with behavior and to tell me that misbehavior is probably not caused by the children being bored in the classroom. The other view states that children are good by nature, which is what prompts teachers to teach discipline and social skills instead of resorting to punishment or bribes, and to recognize that there are many different things that could be causing misbehavior in children – our task is to figure out what makes each child tick so that we can make the classroom the most effective for everyone.

Can I make a difference in a classroom that has this silent war brewing? The answer is yes, but not in the way that I would like. It is hard to influence a person’s deep philosophical beliefs, and this belief is core to a system that I believe it is not my job to target. However, I can come up with a plan to be the best teacher that I can be within the time that I am given to do it. And that is what I am looking at now. With the courage of my convictions, I can impact the children in my class and make their time a little more fulfilling. It may not be in the way that I had envisioned it when I first stepped foot in the new classroom, but it is the only way that I will be able to, knowing the nature of what I am up against as I do now.

Painting Myself Into A Corner

I have recently come to a place where I have been doing quite a lot of reflection about my career, my life, my hobbies, and other things. I reflect like this a lot, but it has been almost constant activity of mine during the past six months as I have sought to rid myself of the enormous amount of stress that has reared its ugly head during this time. I realized that I have painted myself into a corner, focusing on one aspect of my life and giving myself entirely to that aspect while neglecting other areas – some of them completely.

One of those areas has been this blog, and the research that I have done associated with it. At its inception, Uplifting Freedom was a place to celebrate the freedom of man’s mind and soul, and to muse about the philosophical foundations of this freedom/ I had a couple of interesting exchanges with a few readers that thrilled me to death, and then I decided to change focus.

Education has been the focus of this blog and my life for quite a while, but the turn that I took six months ago saw me neglecting this blog, as well as the foundational ideas represented in it. While educational freedom is one aspect of the freedom of man, it was never intended to be the sole focus of this blog. I regret the fact that, when I made the decision to change focus, I deleted quite a few inciteful and engaging posts, which I can’t get back now. While the posts themselves were controversial in nature and were deleted in order to not offend a different type of reader, the fact remains that I strayed from the original purpose of this blog and compromised my integrity by deleting the posts.

I love philosophy. I love the puzzles that philosophy presents. Just as much, I love the psychology involved in figuring out how people answer or figure out the puzzles. This blog serves as a fusion of these two loves: philosophy and psychology. To those who have begun following the blog for its dissection of educational philosophy:  this topic will not go away, because it is near and dear to my heart. But it will be joined by other philosophical topics, conversations about religion, and other aspects of a life of freedom. And to those who had read the blog for these topics in the past: It’s good to be back.

Integrity Part II

It has been a very long time since the last time I posted. I didn’t realize how long it had been, but looking at the dates on the posts, I guess it makes sense. Being somewhat of a student of philosophy in my spare time, and studying mostly the work of Ayn Rand, it would make sense that I would abhor the idea of altruism. But this weekend, after a time of reflection, I have realized that I have been practicing altruism for several months. The result has been a nightmare that I have continually tried to blame on the circumstances around me, but has ultimately been my own fault.

It started about a year ago, when a conversation with a fellow teacher about curriculum turned into a conversation about summer camp. The conversation was uplifting to me at the time because we were talking about collaborating to plan summer camp, coming up with all sorts of creative ideas and ways to keep the children engaged throughout the summer months. That conversation blossomed into me completing three different summer camp calendars on my own, booking field trips on my own, planning activities on my own, and doing everything for a class that was not my own. And since we got a new director during the summer months, I was unable to enjoy the fruits of my labor, but it was made known to me prior to the new director taking the helm that I probably wouldn’t get to enjoy them anyway. So why did I take on the challenge? At this point I really have no idea, because the collaboration never happened (I wasn’t sure that it was going to happen in the first place) and the end of summer camp fell apart with the changing of the guard. Guilt ran rampant as I tried to distance myself from the implosion, but since I felt like I was ultimately  responsible for summer camp, I felt guilty.

The guilt continued when it came to my own classroom. Since I had been so involved with putting summer camp together, a teacher that had just been hired (with no experience) was put in my classroom. I listened from the office, which was across the hall from my classroom, as my room fell apart. But there was nothing I could do. I was busy up to my neck in planning summer camp. When I was taken off of summer camp duty, there had been complaints about my classroom and I was put back into the room. I was also charged with training the teacher in the classroom, but I was so mired in guilt by that time over summer camp that I couldn’t really do a great job of it, which brought on even more guilt.

It just kept going and going. I switched classrooms and co-teachers. I was given a choice between two teachers, and chose according to altruistic reasons rather than sound, value-driven reasoning. I had talked to the teacher that I chose enough to have the impression that she’d had a hard time and been misunderstood in the past. I figured that if she worked with me, maybe that would help. Instead, it brought me down and increased my guilt as I began to feel like a failure, simply because I could not change her attitude. And when I approached my new boss and explained to her that I couldn’t lower my standards in order to work with her (after I realized my mistake), I was told that I would have to compromise.

A lot has happened since then. I am in a new classroom with a new co-teacher, after going through the needed steps to secure a transfer to another center. I have had to backtrack through my actions and figure out where all of the guilt has come from. And I have had to absolve myself of this guilt and figure out who I am and what my goals are. I have found that when you do something for altruistic reasons, you lose a part of yourself in the process. I have actually felt like I have been unraveling during the past few months, and have worked hard to try to pick up the pieces of myself and put them back together. I have been in the process of trying to start a business in the middle of all of this, and the stress of the guilt has been such that I have had to put the business on the sidelines so that I could figure myself out.

I am very glad that I went through the process of figuring this out over the weekend. I have needed to do this for quite a while, but guilt has a way of consuming you and making it hard for you to see anything else. The important thing is to wade through it and figure out the root of it. That is what integrity is about. I know that if I am feeling guilt, then I have strayed from my beliefs. Sorting through the feelings and the causes of them will help me to get on the right path again. Understanding that my actions have been altruistic in nature can help me to remember the reasons for what I started before I began dealing with life altruistically. I was going to school, and was beginning to think about the business before the summer camp issues began. Maybe I can get back to the place where those things can be a possibility again.

The Theory of Concentrated Attention: Part II

Several months ago, I posted about the Theory of Concentrated Attention. Today, I witnessed this wonder first-hand yet again. My 17 1/2 month old niece is a busy girl. She is constantly here and there, and never rests. Today I gave her two tools – a saucepan and a wooden spoon. Kiddo, my six year old, added a few more elements: two ping pong balls another saucepan, and a couple of bowls. With all of these tools, I witnessed my niece quietly and intently play for a solid 45 minutes before she began to lose interest in the activity.

One note about the amazing nature of her play is her attachment to her grandmother. She adores grandma and becomes distraught whenever grandma leaves the room. While she was playing with the saucepans, spoons, balls, and bowls, grandma left the room several times and she didn’t even notice. She was so intent on her activity that I’m not even sure that she would have noticed if a train had come through the room.

I was completely amazed by her activity and intentness, and it set me to thinking about my own classroom and the process by which I choose the toys that are made available to the children. I have always had a standard by which I have gauged the toys, but I have never really been able to articulate what that standard is. After thinking about it, I have figured it out. I only choose toys that the children have to act upon in order to achieve a desired end of their own making. Toys that have buttons and play music require the children to act upon them, but the end result is not the child’s desired end, but the toy manufacturer’s. I don’t have a single toy in my classroom that has any features like that. There were some in the room when I took the classroom, but I was very quick to pass them on to other classes. I work hard to provide a selection of toys that require active thought processes of children, as well as their physical and mental participation in achieving an end result. By selecting these kinds of toys and activities, I see the Theory of Concentrated Attention come to life several times a day, and each time I see it, it amazes me. I have many, many pictures of children in my classroom participating in engaging activities that they have chosen, some of which I hadn’t even dreamed of, but which their minds have conceived and in which they are actively using their imaginations to achieve a desired result of their own making.

The process of learning is a wonderful thing.

Integrity

“I hate incompetence. I think it’s probably the only thing I do hate. But it didn’t make me want to rule people. Nor to teach them anything. It made me want to do my own work in my own way and let myself be torn to pieces if necessary.”

- Howard Roark; The Fountainhead; Ayn Rand

I love my job. I couldn’t imagine not doing what I do for a living. I want to expand on my knowledge and continue to try to excel at what I do. Eventually, I want to be an educational psychologist. I have wanted to study psychology since I was fourteen years old. I have since found that my passion lies in how people think and how they learn. I am fascinated by the subject; I am so truly passionate about it that the idea that others in my field are not is unthinkable to me. But while it is unthinkable, it is an unfortunate reality that I deal with all of the time.

When one of my coworkers encouraged me to begin teaching others the knowledge that I have, at first I was hesitant. I know the reality that is out there: that there aren’t very many early childhood teachers out there that are as passionate as I am about my work. The last thing that I wanted was to open myself up to ridicule or other disrespect toward my chosen field. But I also found the idea of teaching others intriguing; I felt that if I could teach them what I know, then maybe they would become as passionate about it as I am.

It didn’t take long for me to figure out how it really works. Since a certain number of training hours are required per year for all early childhood educators, people came regardless of whether or not they actually wanted to be there. Most were participatory and respectful. At the last training I did, however, it was different. I saw what I had feared: blatant disrespect and mockery of what I love so much. It put me in a position of defense, when I find that I don’t have to defend myself in my work on a normal basis. It cheapened everything, and I knew that I had made a mistake.

It has taken me one long month to figure out what my mistake was. I knew the reality of the situation: that there are very few early childhood educators out there that are as passionate about what they do as I am. And yet, I thought that I could change that reality by offering my passion on a platter for anyone to partake of. I forgot that, in the process of learning anything, the passion must come first. People, just like children, must be intrinsically motivated to learn the subject that you are trying to teach them. When they are being forced to attend trainings simply to keep their job, there is no motivation to actually learn anything. And this is the part of the equation that I forgot about.

I offered my passion as a sacrifice to those who would take advantage of it, and they did. The effect has been devastating on my professional morale, as I have struggled to regain some sense of that passion. I know it is there; I didn’t sacrifice it all. But I realize that I lost some of my personal integrity through the process, and I now have to work hard to regain it. Realizing that you cast your precious pearls to those who do not appreciate their worth is a hard realization, because you have to admit to yourself that you sacrificed the most important thing to you to those who did not deserve it. But being able to admit that to yourself is the first step, and ensuring that it never happens again will help to strengthen and regain that sense of integrity that was lost.

I, for one, will ensure that it will never happen again. I have a path that I want to take and a dream that I want to realize. I will do everything that I can to make sure that I reach that dream, and I will not let the swine around me deter me from that dream ever again.

Go Forth and Be Blessed

On my way to work yesterday I heard a song that I had never heard before, and it inspired me to write this post. I actually enjoyed the song very much and it is quickly taking its spot as one of my life’s theme songs. The song talks about making choices: choosing your own path in life, taking a chance and making the tough choices and making changes. It is an anthem of individualism, encouraging people to make their own choices and go their own way in life.

When I hear songs like this, it usually causes my mind to wander. This time it wandered to people who describe others as “blessed.” Usually that word has religious connotations, suggesting that a higher power has bestowed gifts of talent or material goods on an individual. I have always been rubbed the wrong way when people tell me to have a “blessed” day, because I have worked hard for everything that I have in my life. I wake up in the morning and and decide that I am going to be happy and productive, and I decide how productive I am going to be. I make decisions every day regarding the direction that I want to take in my career, where I want to focus on my independent study, and how I want to raise my children. I do research to make decisions that affect my health and well-being. For someone to imply that I have been “blessed” with what I have, after all of the work I have done to achieve everything that I have, seems to be a huge slap in the face. Like talking about how wonderful God is after you have a surgery in which the doctor used his skills and years of training in order to save your life.

I make choices every day. Nine times out of ten, I take the road less traveled. I mean, how much fun would it be to do the same thing as everyone else? And where would I really get in life if I didn’t distinguish myself from everyone else? But that doesn’t make me “blessed”.  Having all of the knowledge and skills that I have doesn’t make me blessed, either; I have done a lot of research and application to gain the skills that I now have. It took (and still takes) hard work to find the sources that I need to accomplish what needs to be done in my classroom. And most of the material possessions that I have are those that facilitate that hard work and make it easier to do. I don’t think that makes me “blessed” either. It simply makes me smart in the choices that I have made and in the road that I have taken.

Attitude and Dedication

Since school is out and I am taking a much needed break, I have begun to resume my independent research. Since I received a gift card to Barnes & Noble for Teacher Appreciation Week, I decided to purchase a book that has long been on my wish list: The Hundred Languages of Children: The Reggio Emilia Approach – Advanced Reflections which is a collection of essays and reflections from several people involved the Reggio Emilia Approach to education. I haven’t even made it through the introductions (yes, that is plural) when I came across a quote by Howard Gardner that has made me think:

So much has been written about progressive methods in education, but so rarely are the ideals of progressive education actually realized. Perhaps one reason why is that one needs a team that is willing to work together for decades in the service of a set of energizing ideas; the team needs to evolve procedures for attaining an education of quality while still encouraging growth for all who participate. So much has been written about the powers of the young mind, and yet so rarely can they be seen in full action.

This quote has put into words a frustration of mine that, at one time, made me question my place in the field of early childhood education. This frustration has stemmed from an inability of teachers to work together for the common purpose of providing children with the best quality education. I admit, most teachers out there do work to provide children with an education, but this is where the growth and personal education come into play. Many teachers still use outdated methods that provide no intrinsic motivation or stimulation to children, have only a passing knowledge of current child development research, and make no effort to keep abreast of the latest research dealing with children and education. They expect other teachers to work with them using these methods that not only don’t work, but cause more problems than they are worth. And while they are expecting others to work with them using these methods, others are passing them by in their own personal education and knowledge, leading to friction and differing ideas when it comes to the best methods for educating children.

I haven’t done much personal research on this yet, but I have heard that many teachers and administrators have have taken bits and pieces of progressive education ideas and used them to suit their needs and have tried to fit them in the mold of education as it is today. The result has been a list of outcomes achieved by rote memorization of supposed facts revealed by textbooks and then tested by….tests. This method has resulted in quite a few generations of children who hate school, hate teachers, and ultimately have little or no knowledge of the world around them; they have been too busy reading textbooks to learn about how the world around them works. They end up with mounds of college debt that they have accrued pursuing a degree that they have been told that they need in order to work at the job that they acquired that they hate. This isn’t the way that progressive education is supposed to work. Children are supposed to learn about the world around them through acting with it and on it, and then use the skills that they have learned to pursue the knowledge that they need to do what they have discovered that they love. The job of the teacher is to guide them on this journey, not to provide textbooks and useless knowledge.

Socialism or Networking?

I have been working on a group project for one of my classes this semester, and one of the topics that I have been researching as part of the project is the impact of creative activities on the field of education. As someone who used to strongly align themselves with traditional education views, I not only got a chance to see how those views have changed, but why they have changed, as well.

Proponents of progressive education believe strongly in having children work in groups on projects geared toward increasing the knowledge of the children on the subject matter of the project. Traditionalists believe that having children work on group work is promoting the ideals of socialism -the idea that everyone must work together for the common good of all. I used to believe as traditionalists do, and scoffed very loudly at the idea of the importance of children working on group projects – until I worked on this one. The fact is, I learned a lot from my group members about effective ways to work on a group project, especially since we were all taking the class online and none of us lived anywhere close to each other. Several of the group members had ideas about how we could each contribute to the project and how to make the project a success. It was a PowerPoint project, so it was important for each of us to have control of our contributions, as well as ensuring that each of our contributions were integrated into one cohesive project. If it weren’t for a few of the group members having knowledge of different programs that we could use to achieve this goal, I’m not sure that we could have done it.

Through this experience it became clear to me that allowing children to work together in groups doesn’t necessarily teach socialism. In this day and age, people’s knowledge and skill sets are highly specialized, and we may need to seek out someone with this specialized knowledge in order to accomplish a task. If we have never learned the skills necessary to do this sort of thing, then we may get left behind by our inability to accomplish as much as the next person. In order to be effective and productive, we need to be able to network with others who may be able to teach us skills that we don’t have. And we need to know how to effectively communicate with and work with others in order to do this. Since even school-age children bring different knowledge, skill sets, and experiences to the table during group projects, these children can learn skills and knowledge by effectively networking with their peers.