Kindergarten: A Teacher, Her Students, and a Year of Learning by Diamond Julie

Author:Diamond, Julie [Diamond, Julie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781595586940
Publisher: New Press, The
Published: 2011-05-02T16:00:00+00:00

“Let’s Write That Down”

As the children dictated the Friday Letter to Families, someone said, Our caterpillars got bigger. Michael immediately said, Not all of them. Then Mark said, Well . . . . And so on—that back and forth . . .

This discussion, with its additions and qualifications, occurred toward the end of the year. It resulted from months of judging, on my part, when to intervene in discussions, when to comment on someone’s comment or pose a question, months of deciding when to end a discussion, or call on a child who hasn’t said anything. Now, they added to each other’s remarks, disagreed, jumped in to qualify a statement.

Children’s writing should have the same energy, verve, and vivacity as children’s speech. This is the result when we teach writing in ways that let children explore the widest range of meanings. How broadly is writing defined, how various are the uses it serves? How authentic is it, how much is it their own? Where do we see it? “Its guuowey!” writes Catherine after mixing water and cornstarch. How much personality there is in that spelling! When writing is generated by lived experience, it is exploratory, broadly constituted, rich in variety—even overwhelmingly plentiful. Thoughtful teachers make it happen through the search for connections between children’s purposes and writing. Writing resulted when Francie asked her question about leaves and trees, and I said, “Let’s write that down, and we can ask the other children what they think, later.” Writing was the result when I added a mix of writing materials to the pretend area: notebooks, pads, Post-its, pencils and pens, little calendars, tape, envelopes; the pretend area was soon papered with notes. Writing happens when teachers find the places in the room and in the day to make it happen, and trust children to write.

The teacher’s job, then, is to consider what children are striving to say—and to aid them in their efforts. Guiding children is what teachers do best, through their knowledge of what these particular children might be seeking to communicate, and their respect for the richness of children’s thinking. This is the source of teachers’ authority: their reserves of intuition about children’s thinking and concerns, about the topics and forms that matter to them.

Just as teachers must trust children to write inventively and meaningfully, teachers have to trust themselves. Teachers need faith in their own ability to judge, develop standards, ask the right questions—a faith that develops inevitably and ironically as a result of doubts, mistakes, and corrections. I keep in mind times I’d lacked faith—the time I’d looked askance at Harry’s drawing, which seemed a mess of lines, only to have him inform me it was a food fight; the times I’d doubted children’s insatiable appetite for meaning.

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