Week 12: If You are Happy and You Know it Build a Building... Part 2

We are supposed to be writing about community tonight but this was such an exciting week on our building site that we want to update you instead. We will return to community next week.

We met with our general contractor and project manager today to get an update. As of this afternoon we are a full week AHEAD of schedule and making more progress every day. The site work is going much more quickly than we anticipated AND has been much easier than anyone could have guessed. The site crew is going to begin excavating for our foundations tomorrow!!! They will install our building pads about the 1st of June.

That is all such good news!

Please stop by and see the progress happening daily. There are different heavy trucks all of the time. Even we get excited when we see some new piece of equipment.

We would love to hear your feedback. Please feel not only welcome, but invited to voice your opinions or your concerns. You can post here or write us at the school.

Glimpse:
We made a few cost-reducing changes to the plans this week. One of them is very exciting. We removed the dropped ceilings throughout the building opting instead for an open warehouse feel that exposes all of the duct work and conduits. We are very excited because we gain three feet of height in all of the class rooms and the children will be able to see the inner workings of the buildings. In our minds we will paint the parts to each system its own color (i.e.; electrical will all be red, heating and air will all be silver, water will all be blue) so that the children can follow a system throughout a whole building and into the next. It is a great educational opportunity and why shouldn't the building itself be a teaching tool? We love it.

Week 11 Community

Welcome back to our blog. The response to last week's blog has been phenomenal. Thanks so much to those of you who wrote to us. One responder is a former superintendent of schools. He forwarded our entry on to some folks involved in public education in North Carolina and beyond. Their discussion was really interesting and the feedback very affirming. How fun for our little blog to travel so far.

This week we want to talk a little about the importance of being a member of a community- our Little School community as well as the larger Hillsborough community that we are so much a part of. We would like to talk about both pieces. This week we are going to just cover our school community.

The Little School, from its inception, has existed to serve the needs of families living in the Hillsborough community. We thought very carefully about how we would define that service for ourselves. As most of you know, the Little School was created out of our need for high quality child care for our own children. When we considered what constitutes "High quality child care" we were clear that only a holistic approach that addresses the needs of the entire family within the context of the larger community would do . As we have discussed in previous blog entries, we are interested in taking a relational approach that goes beyond the superficial to a deeper level of knowing each other, a not only nutritional perspective with regard to our meal plan but also a local and organic perspective that also serves and respects our physical environment, and an ever evolving curricular perspective. This is not just something we purport on our website, it is how we live and run our business.

One way that our devotion to this principle is displayed in our school is founded in our Reggio-Emilia philosophy. The Reggio approach is a "come as you are" approach that encourages not only an acceptance of the person as they are, but also an honesty in how we translate ourselves into our environment. When we are happy at The Little School we celebrate- and LOUDLY. When we are sad we cry- and LOUDLY. This seems so fundamental, and yet, it is so very often that parents touring the school tell us that our school feels more alive than
other schools they have visited. They tell us about other environments where the children seem quiet, and even subdued. If you know children, than you know that children are not naturally subdued or quiet!

We think that it is too often that artificial emotional parameters are placed on us as people and this, unfortunately includes our children. If you are told to sit quietly in your chair all day long you learn to do so. The fact that your heart may be singing out has no impact on the outward translation. Similarly, even when we are heartbroken we learn to follow the rules and respond emotionally to the imposition of the rule. Sit quietly looks the same no matter how we feel.

We reject this approach entirely! The children at The Little School are encouraged not only to express themselves, but to also LISTEN to others as they express themselves. Go figure! The product is a louder, more emotionally authentic environment which in turn creates a more authentic school-wide community.

What a blessing!

Similarly, when parents arrive at the school we observe a transition in their demeanors as well. Parents who might at first arrive feeling like it is their responsibility to always sound intelligent and look polished and neat soon find themselves volunteering to be a lunch helpers in jeans and t-shirts. They say that they are coming to support their children (which they are, of course) but we suspect that they also volunteer so that they can be in the classroom playing, and singing, and digging in the sandbox. There is nothing better than seeing an adult play like a child.

Is there such attraction to the authenticity because it is rare in our grown-up
worlds?

One dad debated with us for three years about the benefits of a food fight at lunch in our preschool room- especially on spaghetti day. We eventually convinced him to choose a different avenue of his world where he worked as an epidemiologist, that nothing was as much fun as his drop-off time with his kids in the morning.

In fact, another dad told us today that he would wake in the morning excited to get to the school for the fifteen minutes that he got to spend in one of classrooms before going to work. He said that he knew more about the other children in his daughter's class than he did about his co-workers. He said that it was easier to get to know them because they were willing to share who they really are.

Maybe a food fight isn't such a bad idea in the greater scheme of things! We know that we feel much more alive and connected to others when we have played and laughed (or cried) together in a genuine and authentic way.

More on this topic to come...

In lieu of a Glimpse we have an opportunity:
We are inviting all of our families to help us to raise money for
the Hillsborough Police Department and their K-9 Unit. There is a demonstration on Saturday, May 30th from 10-12. There will be snacks for sale as well as opportunities to interact with the dogs. The goal for the event is to raise a total of $1,600 for body armor for two of the dogs. Any additional money will be put aside to purchase a new dog when one of the current dogs retires next year. We think that this is a great way for us to easily respond to the needs of our community. We look forward to many more in the future. Please let us know if you are interested in supporting this event. We will be collecting money at the school. I realize that these are difficult financial times but if we each give $4 we can raise this money for the Hillsborough Police Department.

Week 10 How Many Lizards is a Fish?

Carter, one of our preschoolers, asked us this morning "How many lizards is a fish?" This question may sound strange, but when considered in the context of child-led investigation, it makes perfect sense. These investigations occur when one of the children has an idea, an inspiration that they begin to think about, talk about, and work out in their minds and through their experiences. Soon, others become interested and before long there is a group of seekers working together, and engaging the staff to get involved in assisting the children until an answer is found.

Carter has spent the past couple of weeks pondering the size, weight, breadth and depth of things. He began trying to create measurement tools to capture his thoughts. Soon others were interested and beforewe knew it, the class was measuring EVERYTHING. Interject one common house lizard, or skink, into this equation. Said skink happened to wander into the school the other day and appeared in the preschool room. Carter quickly went about the task of capturing this skink. While the skink was eventually let free, along the way, he further inspired Carter.

What emerged was a yard stick of sorts that uses lizards as the unit of measure. When he asked us today, "How many lizards is a fish?" he was in fact using his lizard measuring stick to measure the fish in the fish tank. The answer he concluded? It depends upon the fish. Our largest fish in our tank today is about 3/4 of a lizard long. Carter was intrigued by this outcome and when we left the room he was going about the business of adding partial lizard measurements to the stick.

This interaction with Carter brought us to thinking about the ways that we measure a child’s progress as a school. The standard measures used by traditional centers seem inadequate to capture the depth of the child. If we were to only use, for example, the standard developmental milestones we would miss the richness that defines our kids and allows them to shine as individuals. We view child development not just as a series of landmarks to be achieved, but as richly varied experiences through which children construct their understanding of the world. In this, just as learning is an active process in which the child interacts with his or her environment, assessment is also an interactive process between the teacher and the child, in which they enter into a conversation, or exchange of ideas. The teacher gains an understanding of the child’s present level of performance and then facilitates or extends the child’s knowledge of a concept or task. The information gained through the assessment process directly affects the curriculum or experiences offered to the children. Assessment and learning are not separate experiences. Rather, they are linked in the continuous process of learning and interacting experienced by the child.

Our portfolio system is our tool for observation and assessment. Just as we utilize it as a learning tool for our children, we also use it to evaluate ourselves. Our portfolio system is also a work in progress for us as a school as just as it is for each of our children. We are constantly searching for ways that we can modify or fine-tune it to better reflect who the child is and who we are as educators. This week, we were invited to participate in a training on Creative Curriculum given by our Orange County technical assistant. The focus of the training was the importance of observing children and connecting these observations with curricular goals. This was a validating experience for us because much of what was presented to us as “best practice” by the state experts in child development directly reflects what we are doing every day in our classrooms.

This week a group of us also attended a talk on the importance of project-based learning given at the Duke School. The Duke School has been providing research-based, child-centered educational opportunities for children for over twenty-five years and we consider them our heroes and mentors. The talk was so affirming because it again talked about the importance of hearing and seeing the children- or “kid watching”- in order to encourage their growth. We must observe them in order to be able to offer them the support that they need to search further. It is critical that we encourage children in their seeking so that they may solve their own problems and find their own answers- we are just support staff in their wonderful, magical process. In this, by allowing Carter the freedom to pursue his investigation and extend his concept of measurement, we were given the privilege of witnessing the power of learning happen right before our eyes.

Week 9: Things Happening Fast!

When things start happening, they start happening FAST! If you have driven by the land, you will see great changes happening every day. Our families have walked the land each evening to see the work being done and we are all constantly amazed. The first day, the bulldozers cleared a huge path from the front of the land all the way around to the back. After many months of walking in the woods, it was a bit strange to see part of it cleared away! Our kids had an absolute ball, however. The dirt that was packed down by the treads of the bulldozer became pieces of clay that they were going to make into pottery. The slope became a snowboarding hill. And then at the end of the paths, sat the bulldozers themselves! Who-hoo! We got to sit on them, “drive” them, see all the parts…does it really get any better than that?!

Since then, much more of the woods have been cleared away, gravel has been delivered and placed for erosion control, and a driveway has even been cut into the sidewalk. It is a wonderful feeling to see what has only been in our imagination actually becoming a reality. We urge you to come take a look. It of course is better to come by in the later afternoon after the work is finished so that there is no danger of getting in the way of the big machinery. And if you come by in the early evening, you might see some cute little boys pretending that this is their construction site, kingdom, ski jump, wilderness survival course….

Glimpse:
This week we began what we hope will be a long relationship with Coon Rock Farm, a local organic farm in Hillsborough. When we were planning the meal program for the new school, we visited several local farms to investigate the possibilities of providing our chef with local, organic fruits, vegetables, and meat. We were very pleased with the philosophy, commitment, and creativity of the folks at Coon Rock Farm and we began talks with them about next year. Together, we also determined that although we were not able to cook this year in our current facility, we could offer our families access to fresh, organic food through their Community Supported Agriculture program. In this, families sign up for a weekly delivery of fresh fruits, vegetables, even honey! As is the case with most of our ideas, our families jumped on this right away. So many families agreed to join, that the farm agreed to make our school a delivery site. Now every Thursday, the farm deliveries boxes and boxes of fresh food for our families to pick up. In addition to providing our food for our chef, we hope to continue to be a part of the CSA program next year as well.

If you would like to know more about Coon Rock Farm, please feel free to visit their website at www.coonrockfarm.com. They have also been written up in the most recent Southern Living, Edible Piedmont magazine, and the News and Observer Earth Day edition.