Journal: Roles & Power

Context

During the academic year, each class holds 2 roundtables, where parents and teachers come together to discuss prevailing themes or behaviors in the classroom.  The Little Garden class (3-4 year olds) began to identify with certain roles and genders – many of them traditional roles – and the parents and teachers discussed in depth about this identification and how to introduce other notions about roles and genders.  This journal outlines what was discussed at the roundtable, but moreover, addresses some of the more pointed questions about how to value temperament and utilize small groupings in the classroom.

March 14, 2014

Thank you to all of you who joined and participated with us for our Spring Roundtable. We would like to use this journal as an opportunity to collect reflections the group had, and also to respond to some of the questions asked and share some next steps we have planned moving forward.

Placing Value on All Temperaments

Some observations were shared during the Roundtable about the range of children's temperaments evidenced within the data shown, as well as on teaching days in the classroom. We want to reiterate how important all ways of being are, and how we strive place value on all the ways the Little Gardeners interact with the world. We see engagement as being evident not only in how people connect their ideas verbally, but also in nonverbal communication and involvement. This may mean strong eye contact, body language (positioning of a child facing another child, for example), facial expressions (laughter, smiling, mimicking of someone else's expressions). All of these are indicators of how a quieter child is still engaged in the experiences he or she is sharing with their peers.

As a connection to our small groupings (outlined more below) we often intentionally put a quieter child in small groups where their ideas and voice can be heard more readily. We also make sure to call on them at circle times, making room for everyone to have a voice in the experience.

Small Groupings

Questions were brought up about how we arrange groupings, involving and supporting different temperaments (quieter or more verbal) or social dynamics (grouping children who might not gravitate toward one another). There were also questions about how we balance children's choice in small groupings and experiences with teacher chosen groups.

We always keep an awareness of dynamics and personalities when arranging small groups, and there are many factors that we keep in perspective when doing so. Sometimes of these factors are:

• Grouping based on children who may not be gravitate toward one another for particular reasons, in order to support the children in working with children who have a different approach than they do. In addition to this, we may intentionally put children together who are are having friction - using small groups to support them in working through some of those dynamics with a teacher, and having the chance to have a successful experience. 
• On the other hand, we also sometimes create groupings based on children who have worked together on something for a little while, and need to revisit their ideas or plans. This has most often been seen within our Blueberry Committees. As we wrote a while ago in our journal about committee work, these small groups are times when children revisit ideas over an extended period of time, and build bonds within their committees based on shared experiences.
• Small groups are sometimes based around children who have not yet had the chance to experience something that we are wanting all the children in the class to have part in. For example, this was the case with our exploration of feelings and affect in the last few months. The below example is one day when Tenley, Peter, and Grace worked with me (Petra) to talk about and label some family feelings photos. 

As Tenley got out the feelings face cards (on loan from Sara Beth) she spread them out on the table to look at. Meanwhile Grace started going through and talking about the feelings of people in her pictures. Peter was very connected to what was happening in each of the photos, and Tenley bridged him to decided on what feeling he was having when surfing when she commented that he looked "proud" in his photo. This grouping involved a mix of independent work labeling photos, and collaborative work when the children were commenting on each others photos.

Thought Provoking Ideas about Power and Roles in Dramatic Play and Stories

We are continuing to be interested in how the children's constructions of power dynamics and roles are evidenced in their play and stories. In order to explore these further, we are planning to continue to document stories and anecdotes as they occur (connected in our Plan of Possibilities section below.) These stories and dramatic play scenarios are also rich examples of the children's play strategies for entering and staying embedded in play with their peers. One such moment is shown in the video below, where three children are interacting with dolls and some "family" or "home" doll house pieces we set up on a shelf in our classroom. 

In the above video, William and Harper are creating a family story, which then leads them to go to the "zoo" (on the rug, with the tigers.) James joins the zoo soon after. I observed the children exploring power in elements of the story (being the grownup who makes decisions about safety, where to go, and what to eat) and also power in deciding who gets to be part of the story (choosing roles for someone else.) When James wants to join Harper, possibly unsure of what James' entry into the game will mean, says no because they are using the materials from the house and the zoo. William offers James a character, after I suggest he might need someone to be at the zoo with, as a way to involve him in the play. It continues successfully as all characters greet each other and play for a minute at the zoo. There also is a moment when Harper and William's characters "go home" and leave James' zookeeper at the zoo - perhaps a way to continue the original storyline they had going before James joined? They have a quick moment at home as their two original characters before going back to the zoo where James is waiting. You can also observe James creating an "emergency" where he calls William's character over to what he's doing - his strategy for rejoining the play.

Plans of Possibilities - Ideas moving forward

We met with Darcy last week to discuss potential plans of possibilities coming out of the Roundtable. Some things on the horizon for the group that we plan to do, in order to support their questions and struggles around core concepts of identity, roles, power, strength, and influence are:

• Explore how these core concepts are playing out in committee work: 
• • How do we make decisions in our committees?
  • What is the identity of each committee? What are the important roles each committee plays in our Blueberry work and in our classroom community?
  • Create identity books about each committee.
• Explore self identity both alongside of and separate from group identity. What does it mean to be a Little Gardener? What does it mean to be a CHS community member? 
• Test out power in documentation and communication - explore the power of written and verbal communication.
• Document and give back children's stories to them, especially those involving roles and power. 
• • Act out stories with many assortments of gender roles from books.
  • Storyboarding or story-mapping the stories the children are already telling.
• Start having classroom jobs! This is something we normally start with in the 4/5's classes, as a way to further their identity as citizens of their community. We feel like the Little Garden is ready for this, as many of them already ask to help set up for snack or wipe down the tables at clean up time.