If You Are Happy and You Know it...
Build a Building!
This week is all about joy. We received our permit, attended a pre-construction meeting with our whole team and the county, and...
and...
and...
WE BROKE GROUND!!! We are so very, very excited!
If you drive by this weekend you will likely see our trailer, lots of utility wire and pipe, and maybe even some heavy equipment. We have waited so long for this moment that there are just no words to describe our feeling.
Add to that the beautiful weather, sprouts in our gardens, butterfly caterpillars in our tanks, and lots and lots of singing throughout the school and really, life just doesn't get a whole lot better than this.
Glimpse: Enrollment
We are sure that most of you know that we are in the heat of fall enrollment. We have had new families coming into see us daily from all over the country and all over the world. Some of our visitors have been from India, and France, and Iceland and Germany. We have met families from at least a dozen states. It has been so much fun to meet all of these folks from so many different perspectives. As we move into the summer months we do so knowing that our community is going to be richly diverse. That is also a blessing for which we have no words to express our gratitude.
If you have been waiting to complete your application our advice to you is CALL NOW!!! We are quickly filling our classrooms and we would hate to miss out on the chance to get to know your family. Mary mailed out twenty-three more enrollment packets yesterday. It won't be long now until we are full.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Week 7: We Received Our Permit!!!!!!
We received our permit and we are now ready to start. This is so very exciting. It is also another moment of immense gratitude. This week we want to tell you about some of the support that we have received along the way.
We are sure that it is true that most of the time when someone tells a story about any kind of construction project it will begin with a statement that sounds something like this: "It took us 10 years to get our permit. The folks at the county were impossible to deal with! There were a thousand mistakes made at the county level along the way and we received no assistance. If only the county could get itself together...."
We are so pleased to say that our experience was NOTHING like that. In fact, some of our greatest supporters along the way have been the town planners and managers, the county commissioners, the mayor, and the ever-so-wonderful planning director, Margaret Hauth. These folks have been there to answer questions, offer suggestions, commiserate when appropriate, and cheer us on the whole way. We have nothing but the most profound gratitude to offer to them for all of their efforts on our behalf. What a blessing to live and work in a county that is so committed to supporting its local business owners!
Glimpse: When we opened this center we made the decision to create the playground that we now have. We stood looking at it the days before we opened feeling very proud and anticipatory as we imagined all of the fun that the children would have. It was a huge surprise to us when the children arrived and the playground failed to really wow them. We quickly learned that the prepared materials were not nearly as important as the open-ended materials. Things like rocks and sand and mulch captured their imaginations and became "Mountains" and "Streams" and “Castles." The materials so carefully chosen and laid out for them became supporting materials for their incredible fantasy play and rarely were used in the manner intended by the manufacturer. It was a sweet failure for us but also an incredible lesson. Over time we have taken more and more of the prepared away and added as much of the open-ended as we can find. The children are happier and their play is so much more creative.
As we now think about the new playgrounds at the Waterstone Campus we are reconsidering our entire approach. First, we are not going to build "Playgrounds." Rather, we are going to install "Gardens." This subtle change causes a completely new vision to emerge. We are going to fill these areas with as many natural materials as we can and then observe the children's use of the materials. In the same way that we have asked the children to lead our curriculum we are going to ask them to create our gardens. We can't wait to see what they come up with.
Example: We thought it would be helpful for you to have a concrete example. See the photos below.
At our current school we acquired an additional garden about two years ago now. We filled it with boulders, and branches, and sticks of bamboo, and egg-shaped rocks. The children, being so very clever, quickly realized that their new garden area is part of a water run-off for the whole garden. Whenever it rains the water creates a natural "River" in the garden. This fascinated the children. They began to use the materials to outline the new waterway. They used the rocks to create the boundaries and the straw to damn it up. This one little area occupied MONTHS of their time as they played with their ideas and became little engineers as they created better and better methods to contain and capture their water. In the end, we asked some of the parents to donate some time to add concrete to the rock in order to create a permanent structure. When that was done they experimented with various ways to bring water to the area and in the end they asked some more parents to build a hand pump for them. Now, on any day, they are able to bring water to their garden, move it as they wish, and contain it when it better suits them. We think that this is the perfect example to share with you as it is exactly what we hope will happen with our new gardens. With the children in charge it has to be wonderful!
We are sure that it is true that most of the time when someone tells a story about any kind of construction project it will begin with a statement that sounds something like this: "It took us 10 years to get our permit. The folks at the county were impossible to deal with! There were a thousand mistakes made at the county level along the way and we received no assistance. If only the county could get itself together...."
We are so pleased to say that our experience was NOTHING like that. In fact, some of our greatest supporters along the way have been the town planners and managers, the county commissioners, the mayor, and the ever-so-wonderful planning director, Margaret Hauth. These folks have been there to answer questions, offer suggestions, commiserate when appropriate, and cheer us on the whole way. We have nothing but the most profound gratitude to offer to them for all of their efforts on our behalf. What a blessing to live and work in a county that is so committed to supporting its local business owners!
Glimpse: When we opened this center we made the decision to create the playground that we now have. We stood looking at it the days before we opened feeling very proud and anticipatory as we imagined all of the fun that the children would have. It was a huge surprise to us when the children arrived and the playground failed to really wow them. We quickly learned that the prepared materials were not nearly as important as the open-ended materials. Things like rocks and sand and mulch captured their imaginations and became "Mountains" and "Streams" and “Castles." The materials so carefully chosen and laid out for them became supporting materials for their incredible fantasy play and rarely were used in the manner intended by the manufacturer. It was a sweet failure for us but also an incredible lesson. Over time we have taken more and more of the prepared away and added as much of the open-ended as we can find. The children are happier and their play is so much more creative.
As we now think about the new playgrounds at the Waterstone Campus we are reconsidering our entire approach. First, we are not going to build "Playgrounds." Rather, we are going to install "Gardens." This subtle change causes a completely new vision to emerge. We are going to fill these areas with as many natural materials as we can and then observe the children's use of the materials. In the same way that we have asked the children to lead our curriculum we are going to ask them to create our gardens. We can't wait to see what they come up with.
Example: We thought it would be helpful for you to have a concrete example. See the photos below.
At our current school we acquired an additional garden about two years ago now. We filled it with boulders, and branches, and sticks of bamboo, and egg-shaped rocks. The children, being so very clever, quickly realized that their new garden area is part of a water run-off for the whole garden. Whenever it rains the water creates a natural "River" in the garden. This fascinated the children. They began to use the materials to outline the new waterway. They used the rocks to create the boundaries and the straw to damn it up. This one little area occupied MONTHS of their time as they played with their ideas and became little engineers as they created better and better methods to contain and capture their water. In the end, we asked some of the parents to donate some time to add concrete to the rock in order to create a permanent structure. When that was done they experimented with various ways to bring water to the area and in the end they asked some more parents to build a hand pump for them. Now, on any day, they are able to bring water to their garden, move it as they wish, and contain it when it better suits them. We think that this is the perfect example to share with you as it is exactly what we hope will happen with our new gardens. With the children in charge it has to be wonderful!
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Week 6: Sinks, Sinks and more SINKS!
We had our first lesson in construction delays this week. Before I tell you about our problem it is important to explain how we are governed.
First of all, we are licensed through the Division of Child Development in Raleigh. They have a set of codes and guidelines that we must adhere to in order to operate. The list of rules is so long that they require trainings prior to giving out the handbook. In fact, we can remember going to the training class for the Division's handbook where they handed us a five inch binder so filled to the brim with codes and laws that even the very best legal mind would struggle to untangle it all. We looked at each other with panicked expressions and wondered aloud what in the world we had gotten ourselves into. It was a brief, but very scary moment, until the trainer stumbled when explaining one of the laws and we realized that even the Division itself struggles at times to decipher it. Besides that, we are not the kind of women who quit easily!
Next we have technical assistance from Orange County Child Care Services. They don't impose any regulations upon us but they do work very closely with us to incorporate best practice in our classrooms. We have found them to be extraordinary allies and coaches. They have been particularly helpful in the area of ITERS and ECERS.
What in the world are they???
ITERS is the Infants and Toddlers Environmental RatingsScale.
The ECERS is the Early Childhood Environmental Ratings Scale.
This is a rigorous process where a representative comes to the school and randomly chooses one of our classrooms for each scale. Then they spend the day observing and rating our teachers and classroom environment. It focuses on things like the materials in the classrooms and the manner that the teachers use when speaking to the children. It is a very important but stressful process as there are many factors and the outcome heavily impacts our star rating. It is important that we incorporate all of the components in the dreaded handbook in order to score well. Orange County CCS has been incredibly helpful in preparing us for the scales. They even gave us coaching leading up to the scales, conducted a mock scale so that we could improve prior to the real thing, and then sat with each of our teachers to offer one on one coaching. They are wonderful people but this is still an incredibly overwhelming process- especially when you take into consideration that we are teaching throughout the process.
By the way...We did really well and they were very proud of us after our scores were in.
Next on the list is a series of Orange County agencies. We answer to Orange County Fire, Orange County Environmental Health,Orange County Social Services, Orange County Building and finally, Orange County Zoning. These folks visit us whenever they want (sometimes annually, sometimes more often) and each also has a whole (and often different) set of regulations that we have to follow. To make it all the more challenging, most of their rules and regulations change every so often. We are responsible to know the law but they aren't necessarily responsible for updating us.
By now you probably understand that this is all very complex. We generally are able to keep up UNTIL the regulations conflict with one another.This happens more often than you would think and it is very difficult to navigate the web of laws sometimes. So for instance... Orange County CCS recommends that we cover our walls with the children's art work. For them the more the merrier, especially on ITERS and ECERS day. We get points for having lots of art everywhere. The fire marshall says that no more than 20% of our walls can be covered in art at any one time. We gain points with the rating scales and lose points with the fire marshall all at the same time.
Here is another example: Orange County CCS and the Division love when we section off an area in the classroom with curtains to create a cozy spot for the children to retreat to. We gain points for having such spaces in every room. The fire marshall won't allow us to hang anything (curtains, barriers, screens, etc.) in the classroom and has actually made us take some things down.
After nearly five years of constantly adjusting ourselves and our environment we have learned to justsmile and go with the flow. We respect each of our inspectors and know that they and their agency are just doing their best to keep the school safe.
It would certainly be wonderful if someone, anyone, were to create one manual that addressed all of these rules. That is a whole other blog entry in itself.
Now that you have the primer, this is our most recent issue: Our incredibly gifted architect has built us a beautiful building that is schoolcode-ready as well as daycare-ready...in most counties. See what I didn't mention above is that all of the rules are subject to county authority. So what we can do in Orange County may in fact be illegal in Durham County! Unbelievable really.
TheDivision LOVES our plans as they are, but Orange County Environmental Health requires us to have more sinks in the plan. We need more sinks, but building has some strong opinions about where they need to be. If we were to place them where building wants them it would make the Division very unhappy. This is a very tricky situation all the way around.
When we first opened the Davis Road Campus we used to laugh because we have so many sinks that we could have marketed the school as having one sink per child. We would jokingly tease our Environmental Health inspector, Ron that we were the only school in the state with a 1:1 ratio- of children to sinks that is. At the time we thought it was ridiculous. In hindsight, we are so grateful for everyone of them as there are truly never enough sinks when you are dealing with young children.
We digress to mention that because going into this project we knew how many sinks were going to be required and tried to incorporate all of them into the plans. When the plans arrived we took a copy to Orange County Environmental Health just to be safe- or so we thought. We quickly learned that we were still missing several sinks. Some of the sinks were sinks that we are aware of and thought that we had planned for. Some were not. For instance, we need to add sinks that are called (among others) "The Vegetable Washing Sink," and the "Meat Preparation Sink," and the "Entrance Sink." Those were new to us and some of them are new to Orange County this year.
In truth, the logic for each sink makes complete sense once itis stated aloud. However, as some of the sinks are not in the state guidelines and others are even new to the county guidelines they just slipped through the cracks.
In the end we had to revise our plans this week in order to add some twelve new sinks. We may again be able to advertise our 1:1 ratio, but that is just fine with us as long as the school (and our many, many sinks) can please everyone.
Now that you know all of that we know that you are wondering what that does to our time frame.The answer is that this doesn't change a thing as we have plenty of time for revisions while the site work is being completed. Which brings us to the next question: When will the site work begin? It is our understanding that the permit will be issued any moment and then we will start to dig. In the end, this time of waiting for the permit has been a true blessing. The reason is that once the crews show up on site we are responsible to pay them by the day- rain or shine. With all of the rain that we have had since the beginning of the year we would have paid our crew to stay at home many many days. We think that this has all worked out to our benefit in the end.
Glimpse:
Since our opening day we have DREAMED of a HUGE room that is indestructible, with a drain in the floor, where the children can create ANYTHING that they can imagine, out of ANYTHING that they can find, and that can be rinsed clean when they are finished. In this room there must be not just A sink, but THE sink. In our imaginations it has been a long trough sink with many motion-activated faucets so that lots of friends can wash their hands together.
Our new school will bring that dream to reality. We have an enormous room that we are calling the Messy Room/Children's Dining Room that will have a concrete floor, tiled walls, our trough sink, and a drain. It is enough to make usgiddy- seriously! We plan to use that room to explore many new kinds of art. We are particularly interested in having the children experiment with clay. Work with clay is a huge component of Reggio-Emilia philosophyand programming that we have not had the space to develop. We are thrilled that our newspace will afford us the luxury to not only create more but to also expand and improve our program.
First of all, we are licensed through the Division of Child Development in Raleigh. They have a set of codes and guidelines that we must adhere to in order to operate. The list of rules is so long that they require trainings prior to giving out the handbook. In fact, we can remember going to the training class for the Division's handbook where they handed us a five inch binder so filled to the brim with codes and laws that even the very best legal mind would struggle to untangle it all. We looked at each other with panicked expressions and wondered aloud what in the world we had gotten ourselves into. It was a brief, but very scary moment, until the trainer stumbled when explaining one of the laws and we realized that even the Division itself struggles at times to decipher it. Besides that, we are not the kind of women who quit easily!
Next we have technical assistance from Orange County Child Care Services. They don't impose any regulations upon us but they do work very closely with us to incorporate best practice in our classrooms. We have found them to be extraordinary allies and coaches. They have been particularly helpful in the area of ITERS and ECERS.
What in the world are they???
ITERS is the Infants and Toddlers Environmental RatingsScale.
The ECERS is the Early Childhood Environmental Ratings Scale.
This is a rigorous process where a representative comes to the school and randomly chooses one of our classrooms for each scale. Then they spend the day observing and rating our teachers and classroom environment. It focuses on things like the materials in the classrooms and the manner that the teachers use when speaking to the children. It is a very important but stressful process as there are many factors and the outcome heavily impacts our star rating. It is important that we incorporate all of the components in the dreaded handbook in order to score well. Orange County CCS has been incredibly helpful in preparing us for the scales. They even gave us coaching leading up to the scales, conducted a mock scale so that we could improve prior to the real thing, and then sat with each of our teachers to offer one on one coaching. They are wonderful people but this is still an incredibly overwhelming process- especially when you take into consideration that we are teaching throughout the process.
By the way...We did really well and they were very proud of us after our scores were in.
Next on the list is a series of Orange County agencies. We answer to Orange County Fire, Orange County Environmental Health,Orange County Social Services, Orange County Building and finally, Orange County Zoning. These folks visit us whenever they want (sometimes annually, sometimes more often) and each also has a whole (and often different) set of regulations that we have to follow. To make it all the more challenging, most of their rules and regulations change every so often. We are responsible to know the law but they aren't necessarily responsible for updating us.
By now you probably understand that this is all very complex. We generally are able to keep up UNTIL the regulations conflict with one another.This happens more often than you would think and it is very difficult to navigate the web of laws sometimes. So for instance... Orange County CCS recommends that we cover our walls with the children's art work. For them the more the merrier, especially on ITERS and ECERS day. We get points for having lots of art everywhere. The fire marshall says that no more than 20% of our walls can be covered in art at any one time. We gain points with the rating scales and lose points with the fire marshall all at the same time.
Here is another example: Orange County CCS and the Division love when we section off an area in the classroom with curtains to create a cozy spot for the children to retreat to. We gain points for having such spaces in every room. The fire marshall won't allow us to hang anything (curtains, barriers, screens, etc.) in the classroom and has actually made us take some things down.
After nearly five years of constantly adjusting ourselves and our environment we have learned to justsmile and go with the flow. We respect each of our inspectors and know that they and their agency are just doing their best to keep the school safe.
It would certainly be wonderful if someone, anyone, were to create one manual that addressed all of these rules. That is a whole other blog entry in itself.
Now that you have the primer, this is our most recent issue: Our incredibly gifted architect has built us a beautiful building that is schoolcode-ready as well as daycare-ready...in most counties. See what I didn't mention above is that all of the rules are subject to county authority. So what we can do in Orange County may in fact be illegal in Durham County! Unbelievable really.
TheDivision LOVES our plans as they are, but Orange County Environmental Health requires us to have more sinks in the plan. We need more sinks, but building has some strong opinions about where they need to be. If we were to place them where building wants them it would make the Division very unhappy. This is a very tricky situation all the way around.
When we first opened the Davis Road Campus we used to laugh because we have so many sinks that we could have marketed the school as having one sink per child. We would jokingly tease our Environmental Health inspector, Ron that we were the only school in the state with a 1:1 ratio- of children to sinks that is. At the time we thought it was ridiculous. In hindsight, we are so grateful for everyone of them as there are truly never enough sinks when you are dealing with young children.
We digress to mention that because going into this project we knew how many sinks were going to be required and tried to incorporate all of them into the plans. When the plans arrived we took a copy to Orange County Environmental Health just to be safe- or so we thought. We quickly learned that we were still missing several sinks. Some of the sinks were sinks that we are aware of and thought that we had planned for. Some were not. For instance, we need to add sinks that are called (among others) "The Vegetable Washing Sink," and the "Meat Preparation Sink," and the "Entrance Sink." Those were new to us and some of them are new to Orange County this year.
In truth, the logic for each sink makes complete sense once itis stated aloud. However, as some of the sinks are not in the state guidelines and others are even new to the county guidelines they just slipped through the cracks.
In the end we had to revise our plans this week in order to add some twelve new sinks. We may again be able to advertise our 1:1 ratio, but that is just fine with us as long as the school (and our many, many sinks) can please everyone.
Now that you know all of that we know that you are wondering what that does to our time frame.The answer is that this doesn't change a thing as we have plenty of time for revisions while the site work is being completed. Which brings us to the next question: When will the site work begin? It is our understanding that the permit will be issued any moment and then we will start to dig. In the end, this time of waiting for the permit has been a true blessing. The reason is that once the crews show up on site we are responsible to pay them by the day- rain or shine. With all of the rain that we have had since the beginning of the year we would have paid our crew to stay at home many many days. We think that this has all worked out to our benefit in the end.
Glimpse:
Since our opening day we have DREAMED of a HUGE room that is indestructible, with a drain in the floor, where the children can create ANYTHING that they can imagine, out of ANYTHING that they can find, and that can be rinsed clean when they are finished. In this room there must be not just A sink, but THE sink. In our imaginations it has been a long trough sink with many motion-activated faucets so that lots of friends can wash their hands together.
Our new school will bring that dream to reality. We have an enormous room that we are calling the Messy Room/Children's Dining Room that will have a concrete floor, tiled walls, our trough sink, and a drain. It is enough to make usgiddy- seriously! We plan to use that room to explore many new kinds of art. We are particularly interested in having the children experiment with clay. Work with clay is a huge component of Reggio-Emilia philosophyand programming that we have not had the space to develop. We are thrilled that our newspace will afford us the luxury to not only create more but to also expand and improve our program.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Week 5 A Whole New Mind, Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future
We are reading A Whole New Mind, Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, by Daniel Pink right now. It is both enlightening and validating to us in many ways. The main point of the book is that our future generations are going to need very different skills and talents in order to be successful in this world. Pink says, "Gone is the age of left-brain dominance. The future belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind: designers, inventors, teachers, storytellers - creative and emphatic right brain thinkers..." According to Pink, in the last 150 years, we have moved through the Agricultural Age, then the Industrial Age to our current Information Age, in which logical, linear, and computer-like thinking are the essential abilities. The future is the Conceptual Age in which six sensibilities - design, story, symphony, empathy, play and meaning- will become necessary for success. This is exciting for us because we feel that these sensibilities reflect our approach with the children, as well as our approach as a business.
The fundmental ideas:
Glimpse
This week the preschoolers finished their investigation of wheels. As with most projects, it started with a question. We asked the children “What has wheels?” Answers flooded the room and we created a web of the ideas. After studying the web, it became clear that there was a great amount of interest in cars. This was different than the investigation in the middler room in which the same question was asked. The middlers’ minds pushed us to examine all kinds of wheels – wheelchairs, the color wheel, studying velocity with tires on the playground… But the preschoolers were focused on cars. They decided they wanted to make their own cars. They made a list of the materials they needed, brought items from home, and made pieces for their cars. They collected over a hundred caps for their wheels. The children worked so hard to sort them into same sizes and each chose wheels for their car, learning about balance, and stability. We trekked out to the parking lot and closely examined engines in teachers’ cars. We got to take a close look at Mr. Sean’s motorcycle and even took turns beeping his horn! Our dramatic play area became a mechanic’s shop. Each child designed his or her own car and took great care to make the cars their very own. After, the children met in small groups to collaborate on a special car. One group made a convertible, one made a double decker bus, and one made a small “smart car.” These are all on display for the families to enjoy.
Jennifer and Christa
The fundmental ideas:
- Design - in our age of abundance, it is no longer enough to merely create something functional. It must also have significance, an aesthetic, that transcends the utility. Design brings beauty and meaning to an object or space. This correlates very well with the Reggio philosophy of "the environment as the third teacher". We strive to create an atmosphere for the children that is beautiful, whimsical, and stimulating. We are purposeful in our design of the classrooms. For us, the aesthetic has always been equally important as the utility. We want the children to cross the threshhold of the front door of the school and know that they are in a place that is interesting and inviting. We also strive to create artists who are proud of their talents and see art as a form of communication. We offer the childen from infancy opportunities to explore art materials and experiences.
- Story - an integral part of the human experience that became somewhat lost in the Information Age. But now that facts are ubiquitous and literally at our fingertips via the Internet, they become less important and the emotional impact as well as the context around the facts become more important. "Stories are important cognitive events, for they encapsulate, into one compact package, information, knowledge, context, and emotion." Just spend any time with young children, and you will hear, "Tell me a story" or you will overhear them telling fanciful, wonderful stories to each other. We are our stories. We strive to encourage our children to create their own stories and we infuse their experiences with many of our own stories. Our teachers offer their own experiences freely as teaching tools as well as to enrich a child's understanding.
- Symphony - the ability to put together the pieces, to synthesize rather than analyze, to see relationships and patterns, to invent something new, to seek multiple options and blended solutions. A common response you will hear from our teachers when a children asks a question of them is, "What do YOU think?" We want the children to work to find solutions to their problems, to think about situations and experiences from different points of view, to create new ways of approaching a task. This is also reflected in our choices when hiring our teachers. We tend to gravitate towards people with varied experiences rather those who have been "traditionally trained." We would much rather find a person who is passionate about children but also has a talent, education, or interest in another area. We have had teachers with degrees in geology, fine arts, psychology, and philosophy. We also have had great success with teachers who bring with them rich life experiences and careers in other areas and who have made the decision that their true passion is working with young children. These teachers make our school deeper, richer, and more interesting for all of us.
- Empathy - the ability to imagine oneself in someone else's position and connect to how that person is feeling, not feeling for someone, but feeling with them. It allows us to see other perspectives, understand other sides to an argument, comfort someone, work together, and provides the base for our morality. It is so important to us that our children, our staff, and our families to feel connected to each other and we work to create community among all of us. This is our big picture idea and it affects much of what we do. Whether it is helping two children understand each other and work through a disagreement or planning a community event, connecting is at the base. When a child hurts another child, we do not force them to say, "I am sorry." Rather, we support the child in working to make it better with their peer by allowing them to talk about the situation and each child's feelings about it. We offer the children guidance as they talk to each other about how they can both feel better.
- Play - manifests in games, humor, and joyfulness, and makes us more productive and fulfilled. This is our DNA. "Nothing without joy" is our philosophy and is infused in all aspects of the school. We strive to encourage children's natural instincts to play and explore, and our goal is to learn alongside them. When teachers join our team, one of our most importnat points we make to them is that their happiness is crucial. We expect and require that our teachers find the joy in their profession and we make it clear that if they don't feel that joy, it is important that they make a change. We laugh, tease, play, and giggle a lot as a staff and we hope that our children and our families feel it.
- Meaning - our motivational drive that powers us is the pursuit of meaning. As we continue to live in our abundant culture and are no longer focused on survival, the search for meaning becomes even more central.Engaging in satisfying work, and feeling gratitude, forgiveness and optimism contribute to happiness and well-being. Seeing your work as "a calling" is most satisfying but "knowing your highest strengths and deploying them in the service of something larger" gives meaning to our lives. We both feel in our hearts that we have found our calling and we are accessing our strengths as we grow this school. This gives us our motivation and drive. We know everyday that this is larger than just a school. We are cognizant that we are affecting lives and forming caring, creative, inventive people and we take this responsibilty very seriously. And this also is what makes us joyful.
Glimpse
This week the preschoolers finished their investigation of wheels. As with most projects, it started with a question. We asked the children “What has wheels?” Answers flooded the room and we created a web of the ideas. After studying the web, it became clear that there was a great amount of interest in cars. This was different than the investigation in the middler room in which the same question was asked. The middlers’ minds pushed us to examine all kinds of wheels – wheelchairs, the color wheel, studying velocity with tires on the playground… But the preschoolers were focused on cars. They decided they wanted to make their own cars. They made a list of the materials they needed, brought items from home, and made pieces for their cars. They collected over a hundred caps for their wheels. The children worked so hard to sort them into same sizes and each chose wheels for their car, learning about balance, and stability. We trekked out to the parking lot and closely examined engines in teachers’ cars. We got to take a close look at Mr. Sean’s motorcycle and even took turns beeping his horn! Our dramatic play area became a mechanic’s shop. Each child designed his or her own car and took great care to make the cars their very own. After, the children met in small groups to collaborate on a special car. One group made a convertible, one made a double decker bus, and one made a small “smart car.” These are all on display for the families to enjoy.
Jennifer and Christa
