Child-centred curriculum celebrated by teachers
Educators praise Aboriginal Head Start program at workshop
Andrew Livingstone
Northern News Services
Published Thursday, February 5, 2015
INUVIK
With the loss of a lucrative bingo night during the annual Muskrat Jamboree, the town has decided to step up and give additional support to the organizing committee to help it meet its financial needs.
About 40 early childhood educators with the Western Arctic Aboriginal Head Start Council from across eight NWT communities convened on Ingamo Hall from Jan. 27 to Jan. 28 for professional development and to work on improving the curriculum the organization has worked with for the last three years. - Andrew Livingstone/NNSL photo
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Storr was one of nearly 40 early childhood educators with the Western Arctic Aboriginal Head Start Council from across the territory gathered in Ingamo Hall for a three-day workshop where they built on the tools and confidence they need to provide their students with a fun and engaging learning environment that is child-centred.
"There isn't just one way to learn," said Storr during the final day of the workshop.
"There is also the emotional and social way to learn that isn't always taken care of.
"They can recite the alphabet and count, but when kids are put side by side they don't know how to interact with one another," she said, adding an example of how pushing standard education through books and memorization creates gaps in a child's development.
"Learning how to get along is so much more important in life."
For Storr, and the other educators, it's not just about cognitive development, but social and emotional development, too.
Foundation of fun
Building a child's foundation for success in elementary school at an early age isn't done by rushing them into the textbook form of education. And, for early childhood educator Lisa Murphy, that foundation-building begins with having fun.
Child-centred teaching is all about the importance of free time, being outside "and the importance of what we call controlling the environment rather than the children," said Murphy, an early childhood specialist and owner of Ooey Gooey Inc., a New York-based company focused on providing parents, educators and administrators with the knowledge, facts and research that support a child-centred educational philosophy.
"This means you don't need 49 rules posted on the wall and the space is relevant and meaningful for the kids. If the environment is boring, they'll be going crazy," said Murphy.
She equates parents and some educators beliefs of child-centred learning with the book Lord of the Flies. She said there is a myth around the concept that kids are doing whatever they want in the classroom, a far cry from how she sees the educational philosophy.
"It is truly the hardest way to be because you need to be paying attention to the children," she said.
"You have a plan for the day but you're flexible in it."
The concept of developmentally appropriate practice (DAP) targets all four domains of a child's development - social and emotional needs, physical needs, language and literacy and cognitive.
A good program, she said, will meet all four domains, rather than the current status quo in North America.
"Instead of telling kids this is what they are going to do and make them be quiet and I'm the teacher, there is a sense of presenting the ideas and activities and watching to see what happens," she said.
"My job is to make sure the areas in the classroom are rich and engaging and draw children into the space."
Validation received
Reanna Erasmus, chair of the Aboriginal Head Start in the territory, said when she heard Murphy speak over two days, she was happy to hear that the curriculum the organization has developed over the last decade, and brought into action in 2012, was similar to approaches by other education specialists.
"When I saw her presentations I knew where she was coming from," said Erasmus.
"It really validated what we were doing. We're on the cutting edge of early childhood education."
The current approach to early childhood education leaves gaps in the foundation that require teachers in elementary to fill when students reach the classroom, said Murphy. She said educators and parents alike overthink the early childhood education experience and that when children are playing none of the development in the four domains is happening.
"It's the teachers job to articulate the play in the classroom and link it back to the domains so that it doesn't just mean the kids are doing anything they want," Murphy said.
"We really focus on language and literacy and cognitive, but we were sacrificing the other domains and it's very much lopsided. My main reminder is that being play-based doesn't mean you're ignoring any parts of these domains."
"You'll have kids expected to hold a pencil but not let them run around and be kids. All of that physical development needs to happen first. It's not that we're letting them run around for the sake of it, but it's a thing they have to do to help them develop balanced."
Erasmus said the program will continue to be tweaked in the coming years through collaborative efforts between educators from the eight communities the organization is working in, and most important, the curriculum is built by communities, for communities.
"This isn't the government telling us how to teach our children," she said.
"This is what we want to be doing to teach our children."
