Heart-Centered Teaching
August 16, 2012
Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself.
-Chinese Proverb
It would be hard to trust gardening advice from someone whose own garden was an overgrown weed patch," observes Nancy Rosenow in the opening of the newest book in the Exchange Store, Heart-Centered Teaching Inspired by Nature. Rosenow continues...
"I suspect it's also hard for children to believe that learning is exciting and worthwhile unless the adults in their lives actually value and enjoy learning themselves. Years ago, studying to be an educator, I had no idea that the most impressive lessons I'd be delivering would come from the way I lived my own life. But that turned out to be the case. Children know authenticity when they see it, and they know pretense. They undoubtedly saw some of both in me.
"Over the years I've come to believe that those of us who work with or for children have a responsibility to nurture themselves as tenderly as we nurture the children in our care. Children deserve to be taught by people who delight in the wonders of the world and are eager to share them. Children deserve to be taught by people who teach through positive example.
"Consider: How can we help children see the world is a place of goodness and unlimited possibilities if we experience it as dreary and stifling? How can children trust us about the benefits of healthy eating and exercise if they don't choose to practice what we preach? How will we help children learn the difficult art of conflict resolution if bitter conflicts in our own relationships remain unresolved? How can we help children discover nature's gifts of joy and wonder if we rarely delight in those gifts ourselves? And perhaps the hardest question of all: How will we help children experience themselves as unconditionally loved and loving beings if we don't feel unconditionally loving toward ourselves?"
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Guiding Behaviors Article
Guiding Behavior of Preschoolers
May
14, 2012 –Teaching
Exchange
Childhood is the small town
everyone came from.
-Garrison Keillor
Janet Gonzalez-Mena describes four
approaches for guiding the behavior of preschool-age children in her article,
"Lessons From My Mother-In-Law: A Story about Discipline," which is included in
the Exchange Continuing Education Unit, "Managing
Challenging Behaviors":
"Two approaches of mine have to do with helping the child connect rewards with
good behavior. They seem soft and sweet to those used to sterner discipline.
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Catch 'em being good approach.
I sometimes make a small fuss when children do what they are supposed to.
For example, I might announce to whoever is in earshot, "Jessica threw away
her napkin and cleared her dishes!"
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Appeal to child's feelings approach.
A variation of the above approach is to help the child reward himself rather
than depending on an outside reward. "Doesn't it feel good to put your toys
away when you're finished? Now you know just where they are when you want
them again." That approach is a contrast to the more common "Good boy for
cleaning your room" or "Good job on cleaning up."
Two other approaches of mine aren't so soft and sweet — instead
they are cut and dry, leaving all emotion out of the picture. They may seem
rather fake and inhuman to people used to a stern finger-shaking warning.
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If-then approach.
"If you want to finish your lunch, you have to stay in your chair." What I
mean but don't say is, "If you get down again, I'll take your lunch away."
The idea of this approach is to help the child develop the habit of sitting
at the table until the time he sees the benefit of such behavior and is
willing to abide by the social mandate it represents. I remove it from the
personal realm and make it a fact.
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Consequences approach.
"You're making too much noise to hear the story, so I can't keep reading."
This approach is related to the if-then approach. When children learn the
consequences of their acts, they can learn to predict and guide their own
behavior so they won't have to experience the consequences of mis-behavior.
Again, it's impersonal and unemotional (a typical Anglo-American approach —
leave the feelings out of it).
Children with Challenging Behaviors Article
In his article in the
Exchange Essentials, "Children
with Challenging Behavior," David Elkind compares two forms of discipline:
"instructive...which is a matter of teaching children social skills and
attitudes," and "punitive, [which is] a matter of stamping out misbehavior
through punishment."
"An example may help to make the difference between the two approaches
concrete. Suppose a child is acting up and disturbing the other children. If
we take the punishment perspective, we might use the time out technique
and put the child in another room or in an area away from the other children.
Presumably this removal will teach the child to be less disruptive in the
future. If, on the other hand, we take an instructive position, we might have a
time in . That is, we might sit with the child and try to find out why
she is upset. It might be the case that the child had a right to be angry, that
he was excluded from a playgroup, was called a name, or was pushed. Once we
have an idea of why the child was troubled, we have a much better chance of
helping him to calm down and to rejoin the group. In the time out, a
child learns that her feelings are ignored, and therefore of no value. A child
given a time in, on the other hand, learns that his feelings are
important and will be attended to. Which child is more likely to act out
again?"