By Jennifer Winters, Director
For the past 50 years, Bing Nursery School has been steadfast in providing an exemplary early childhood educational experience that is play-based and child-centered. We have been and always will be fundamentally committed to supporting children’s growing sense of self, as they explore and discover the world around them. We are also dedicated to serving as a living laboratory for research, and for supporting and providing undergraduate education at Stanford University.
Much of our golden anniversary year has celebrated this history and reflected on its significance. Looking back at how educational theory has been put into practice at Bing provides powerful direction for our course going forward.
In 1966, with a grant from the National Science Foundation and with a matching gift from Dr. Peter Bing and his mother, Anna Bing Arnold, Bing Nursery School was founded. For both Robert Sears, then dean of Humanities and Sciences, and Edith Dowley, the founding director, this was a dream come true. Sears strongly saw the value of having a laboratory school on campus for the Department of Psychology to conduct research. Dowley was equally passionate about her vision of exactly what a laboratory school should look like and how it should be run, based on her experiences at the University of Michigan and the Kaiser Shipyards during the war and as the Director of the Stanford Village Nursery School.
Dowley saw the mission of the school as fitting together with the aforementioned integral components seamlessly. Early in her career she presciently wrote that, “Unless a nursery school is truly a good place for children, it cannot be a good place for student or parent-learning or for research.” More importantly, the classroom practice, the research, the Stanford undergraduates and the Bing parents all contribute to our understanding of child development and show us that young children learn best through play. For young children, play is learning and learning is play; they are interchangeable, and this has been a fundamental truth since our inception.
In designing the classroom environments, Dr. Dowley worked closely with the architects, making sure that every element supported a child’s cognitive, social, emotional and physical selves. She sat on the floor with architects and used unit blocks to demonstrate her vision of how the classroom should be designed with the child in mind. Everything from how the windows and doors were situated to designing the half-acre outdoor space with hills, sand pools and a multitude of trees and shrubs were an intricate part of her vision of “freedom of movement” as one of the core philosophies of the school. The materials in the classroom were to be of high quality and to be open-ended, for example, blocks, clay, paint, sand and water, to support a range of developmental needs for a mixed-aged grouping of children aged 3 to 5 years.
Not only did Dowley set the stage for the school to support children, research and undergraduates, she also set the bar for the teachers. Only teachers who were educated in early childhood education, child development and developmental psychology were recruited. Teachers also had to possess certain skills beyond their undergraduate and graduate degrees; skills such as the ability to carefully listen and observe children and follow their lead. Teachers needed to be able to ask good questions to support children’s cognitive growth, and have the skill to support their social and emotional growth in such areas as perspective-taking and problem-solving ability.
From the beginning, “treating the child as an honored guest” has always been a core philosophy and integral part of our practice. At Bing, there is always a deep respect for children and their ideas. Accordingly, we hire teachers who are caring, compassionate, imaginative, patient and have a sense of humor. As these qualities are also integral to our professional development, our hiring and training process has become a virtuous circle that truly supports our basic tenet of treating the child as an honored guest.
In order for the child to be fully immersed and engaged in play, Dowley also believed that they need uninterrupted time. Dowley fondly called this the “gift of time” because she wanted to give back to children what hectic, busy, modern living had taken away. This founding principle remains as much a part of Bing’s core philosophy and practice today as when we began, and, with the pace of life and the pace of change, it is more applicable than ever.
Today Bing continues to be a center for leading-edge research, which in turn informs our teaching practice. Our play-based program encourages children to pursue interests that they find intrinsically motivating. Every day, teachers provide feedback to children that fosters a growth mindset. They consider children’s developing theories of mind when supporting peer interactions. Our teachers listen, model and plan curriculum to support children’s language development.
We are often asked, “How has Bing changed in the past 50 years?” One of the most exciting changes has been the renovation of the Tower House, which sits adjacent to the school. The 1989 earthquake had left the building unusable for two decades. However, with a generous gift from Helen and Peter Bing and the Arrillaga family, this historic building has been renovated and brought back to its glory (early in its history it served as a schoolhouse). This has enabled us to expand our parent and educator programs as well as provide beautiful and functional work and conference spaces for our teachers. Many visitors and students who understand the philosophy of the school have recounted that they too are treated as “honored guests” when they have the opportunity to study and work at the Tower House.
A very visible change has been the increase of our staff to six teachers per teaching team, with over half of our teachers holding a master’s degree or working toward one. For perspective, when Bing opened its doors in 1966, there was an enrollment of 325 with 12 full-time staff assisted by graduate and undergraduate students. Today we have 464 children and a staff of 47, consisting of some of the most qualified, experienced and dedicated teachers in the field of early childhood education. In addition, many Stanford graduate and undergraduate students participate in the classroom through one of the courses offered at Bing or through conducting research here.
We continue to enhance our outdoor environments: In the past few years all of our outdoor areas have been renovated and upgraded. In each of our back classrooms we have added “thickets” (woven structures of willow branches) created on-site by the artist Kelly English. These unique structures have been popular with the children, inviting them to play and showing them the creative and artistic use of a natural material. And this August, with a vision and a generous donation by a Bing family, our atrium and entry walkway have been completely renovated, creating an inviting central space that includes a spectacular Japanese maple in the center and stone benches on the perimeter. In addition to being a gathering space for families before the doors of the classroom open, we envision many children’s sing-alongs and activities in this welcoming new space.
We are cognizant that being exposed to music, dance and theatre can often lead to a lifetime of appreciation or participation in the arts. As such, we have instituted the Bing Nursery School Performance Series. Each quarter we present a performance held at either Dinkelspiel Auditorium or the Bing Concert Hall, and since its inception, the performances have been well received: All have sold out. This was a dream of former Bing parent Professor Jindong Cai and some of our dedicated staff, including Beth Wise and Chia-wa Yeh, and thanks to the annual financial support of very generous parents, it has become a magnificent reality enjoyed by many in the Bing community.
What remains the same at Bing? What has not changed are the fundamental principles Dr. Dowley established 50 years ago—treating children as honored guests, giving them the gift of time and allowing them freedom of movement. These have not only stood the test of time, they’ve been shown to be exactly what is needed to best prepare young children for our rapidly changing world: to be inquisitive, confident, creative, flexible, collaborative and to develop a love of learning. These are the attributes that will be most important for our children to succeed.
What do we see for Bing in the next 50 years? None of us could have imagined 50 years ago what Bing would be like today and we can only envision the changes in the next 50 years. In a world that is ever-changing and with a pace of life that is ever-quickening, it remains our goal to continue giving young children the best possible start to their educational journey and to prepare them for the life that lies ahead.
Our first half-century has shown us that play provides young children the best opportunity to learn: It is through play that young children actually make sense of their world and develop. To give them the best possible start in life, we need to hold firm to their right to play. Bing Nursery School is a child-centered, play-based school that was founded to be a model program for young children, and we remain committed to our founding philosophy and practice.
Perhaps Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934) said it best: “In play a child always behaves beyond his average age, above his daily behavior; in play, it is as though he were a head taller than himself.”
Bing’s 50th Anniversary Events
Endowment Kickoff Breakfast • October 16, 2015
Guest Speaker: Marissa Mayer
The celebrations of Bing Nursery School’s 50th anniversary began with an endowment kickoff breakfast featuring guest speaker and Bing parent Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo. Mayer shared her thoughts about how children’s experiences at Bing relate to innovation, beginning with the idea that play-based education promotes creativity by allowing exploration of possibilities within constraints. She then examined how each of Bing’s three founding principles—treating children as honored guests, the gift of time and freedom of movement—promote innovation. Treating children as honored guests can apply to the business world by transforming into the attitude that everyone has potentially good ideas and that different perspectives are valuable. The gift of time allows for exploration of new things, working together, making mistakes and finding solutions. “When you try something that you are not really ready for,” Mayer asserted, “is when you experience the greatest growth.” Freedom of movement embodies the idea that curiosity is never finished. Recognizing the important role of research at Bing, Mayer noted that innovation often involves data-driven decisions. Innovators try to find better solutions, questioning the norm, trying out new ideas and learning from experience. Mayer ended by noting the scale of impact that innovators must consider. With great scale comes great responsibility and great opportunity to impact people’s lives. Over the last 50 years, Bing has had the responsibility and opportunity to impact thousands of lives.
Four Bing alumni reflected on how their experiences at Bing have shaped their interests. Miles Seiver, ’97, remembered that he had the freedom to fully explore and test things out at Bing, which he continues to utilize in his work on computing. Audrey Proulx, ’97, who released her debut pop album in 2015, traced her love of music and singing back to her early childhood years at Bing. Armando Martinez Machado, ’72, who attended Bing as a child, later brought his two sons to Bing when he was pursuing his doctorate at Stanford, just as his own father had. He saw that Bing fostered the same traits in them that brought him to Stanford—“the incisive mind, the need for understanding, the love for learning and ability to work with a diverse group of people.” His elder son, Armando Martinez Stone, ’02, traced his first encounter with the scientific method back to his nursery school days when “being passionate about something as simple as worms can launch a full-fledged scientific investigation.”
– Adrienne Lomangino, Head Teacher
Bing’s 50th Anniversary Events
Edith Dowley and the History of Bing School • March 2, 2016
Guest Speaker: Christine VanDeVelde
Hosted in partnership with the Stanford Historical Society, the second anniversary event was a presentation by author and former Bing parent Christine VanDeVelde—“How the Grandest Child-Care Experiment in American History Inspired Edith Dowley and Shaped Bing Nursery School.” The presentation traced the formative experiences of Bing Nursery School’s founding director, Edith Dowley: the time in history she inhabited; the influences of her family; her education at Merrill Palmer Institute and the University of Michigan; and her work at the remarkable child-care centers of the Kaiser Shipyards during World War II. Those experiences informed Dowley's vision of the ideal early childhood program, and Bing, as VanDeVelde noted, was the result—the culmination of that “carefully constructed world view.” Dowley’s thoughtful appreciation and respect for children was front and center in her story. “There was no human being who was outside her realm of caring.”
Using photographs and a deep dive into the history, VanDeVelde brought to life the remarkable child-care centers of the Kaiser Shipyards that provided care for thousands of children whose mothers were building the “bridge of ships” that supplied the American armed forces fighting on the fronts. Directed by Lois Meek Stolz (who later joined the Stanford Department of Psychology faculty in 1944), with James Hymes serving as the on-site overseer in Portland, Oregon, the centers were cutting-edge examples of early childhood education. Dowley, hired as a teacher and supervisor, took to heart the impressive attention to detail, the quest for the highest quality in every aspect of the project, the outstanding innovation and groundbreaking design of the project. She brought to Stanford that dedication to a program rooted in play, the hallmark of which was thoughtful attention to and respect for the needs of children. The result was Bing Nursery School, grounded to this day in the principles Dowley developed and cultivated: offer freedom of movement, treat the child as an honored guest and give the gift of time. – Adrienne Lomangino, Head Teacher
Video of the lecture is available at bingschool.stanford.edu/bing50video.
Bing’s 50th Anniversary Events
Research Symposium: Celebrating 50 Years of Research at Bing Nursery School
April 17, 2016
Panel Conversation
The 50th Anniversary Research Symposium began with a panel conversation with three prestigious emerti faculty, Eleanor Maccoby (Barbara Kimball Browning Professor Emerita), Mark Lepper (Albert Ray Lang Professor of Psychology Emeritus), and John Flavell, moderated by associate professor of psychology Michael Frank. Maccoby and Lepper shared their memories of Bing’s earliest days, including the effort to secure funding from the National Science Foundation and the vision for the school set out by Edith Dowley, the founding director. Lepper commented on the “ingenious way” in which Robert Sears, Eleanor Maccoby and Albert Bandura raised money from the National Science Foundation. They applied for funding intended for “infrastructure,” which typically means shared equipment. He noted that nobody anticipated anyone making the argument that a nursery school belonged in this same class of requests. But it fit the definition: It was necessary to do their work, would be used by many research scientists and would advance scientific understanding.
John Flavell, Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor Emeritus in the School of Humanities and Sciences, who joined the faculty when Bing was already founded, described the focus of his research at Bing, where he collected data for two decades with researchers Francie Green and his wife, Ellie Flavell. His work has focused on elucidating children’s metacognition, a term that he coined with psychologist Anne Brown. Metacognition, Flavell explained, pertains to one’s knowledge of the mind, “what goes on there, how it works. Not neuroscientifically, but from the experiential standpoint of the person.” Later, he explored children’s understanding of ongoing mental experiences and their ability to control their own thinking, particularly to stop or refrain from thinking. Flavell views this work, examining mental experiences and awareness, as central to answering questions about what it means to be a person and what it is like to be a person.
Eleanor Maccoby described her work with psychologist Carol Jacklin examining and questioning the extent of gender differences. She subsequently did longitudinal work, starting from early infancy, focusing on how parent and child influence each other during interaction. As the children got older, the focus switched to peer interactions and influence of peers, illuminating ways that children’s interactions differed in same-sex and mixed-sex pairings.
Bing’s 50th Anniversary Events
Research Symposium: Celebrating 50 Years of Research at Bing Nursery School
April 17, 2016
Presentations
During the second half of the symposium, four researchers gave brief presentations on work they conducted at Bing.
Eve Clark, the Richard W. Lyman Professor in the Humanities, has conducted research at Bing for over 40 years, giving her a large body of work to draw upon. As an example of how children develop conceptual categories through experiences in the world and the adult use of words, Clark outlined her study of children’s developing understanding of the prepositions in, on and under. Subsequent work focused on children’s coining of new terms, where they transform words they already know into another form: “A sweeper is someone who sweeps.” She found three rules children use when coining terms: Simplicity—they make as few changes as possible, transparency—they use words that they know as the base for new words (e.g., someone who uses a broom is a broomer) and adult usage—the word patterns in adult speech.
More recently, Clark examined how parental use of gestures and words during interactions shapes children’s learning of both parts/properties of objects and actions/functions of objects. When they talk about parts/properties, parents use indicating gestures (point, tap, touch) to show the part they are talking about (e.g., touching the stripes on a tiger). When they talk about actions/functions, parents use demonstrating gestures, manipulating the object to show how it works while describing it (e.g., making a toy alligator bite the child’s finger to show how its mouth moves).
Carol Dweck, the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology, described her work as a response to the question, “What happens between infancy and later school years that leads to loss of interest and motivation?” She has studied children’s developing beliefs about their talents and abilities. Some of them conclude that their talents and abilities are fixed traits that they have in a set amount. This view makes them afraid of taking on challenges or failing, and limits their achievement. Others view their talents and abilities as something that they can grow and develop. With this growth mindset, learners take on challenges and stick to them, because that’s how you get smarter. Through her reseach with young children, Dweck has found that they are not free and protected from self-doubts, as had previously been assumed. She also found that adults can promote a growth mindset. They can give “process praise” (for example, praising children for their strategies, focus, hard work and persistence), respond positively to their struggles or difficulties and by valuing struggles.
Associate professor of psychology Jeanne Tsai shared her investigations of cultural differences in people’s emotions, highlighting the distinction between how people want to feel (ideal affect) and how they actually feel (actual affect). Tsai conducted work at Bing to examine whether differences in ideal affect were discernible in early childhood. She found notable differences, with European-American children showing a greater preference for exciting (vs. calming) states compared to Taiwanese children, with Asian-American children responding in the middle. She also found evidence that children’s ideal affect relates to their preferred playmate. When asked if they would most like to play with another child who showed excited, calm or neutral expressions in photographs, Japanese and Asian-American children were less likely than European-American children to choose the excited child. Her findings highlight how culture influences how we want to feel and the social choices we make fairly early in life.
As the concluding presenter, associate professor Michael Frank returned the focus to children’s language acquisition, as he described the complex reasoning processes and inferential thinking involved in children’s understanding of language. His work examines how children learn from what isn’t said as much as from what is, by making pragmatic inferences. Pragmatic inferences are inferences based on what was said and the context in which it was said—not only what they did say, but what they didn’t say, given the possibilities. (As an example, Frank noted that if we hear someone say, “I ate some of the cookies,” we make the inference that the person did not eat all of the cookies.) Over the preschool period (3–4 years of age), children get increasingly good at making inferences about what a speaker is referring to, based on what information is both included and not included. They learn both new labels for objects and characteristics of objects by making inferences about what the speaker is referring to in situations presented to them. Frank concluded, “Children are learning about the world all the time this way—not only from what we explicitly tell them, but by gleaning our expectations from what we say as well.”
– Adrienne Lomangino, Head Teacher
Video of the research symposium is available at bingschool.stanford.edu/bing50video. More information about the panelists and speakers is available at bingschool.stanford.edu/events/research-symposium.
Bing’s 50th Anniversary Events
Anniversary Celebration at Bing • June 4, 2016
Bing Nursery School culminated its 50th anniversary events with a party for children, alumni, current and former parents, undergraduate students and researchers. Before the party, about 60 former Bing teachers joined with current teachers for a reunion luncheon in the Tower House.
At the party, displays arranged in the atrium and multi-purpose room highlighted the history, philosophy and curriculum of the school. Banners tracing the history of Bing ringed the atrium while posters in the atrium’s center illuminated the basic, open-ended materials—blocks, clay, paint, water and sand—used in play at Bing, the outdoor environment and the value of pretend play. In each of the game rooms, posters giving brief explanations of research were on display and a researcher was there to talk about the work with guests.
The multi-purpose room included a display of historical artifacts, including print materials about Bing and play materials. Guests could also take in an art installation created by Jung Eun Lee, a former Bing parent. The installation features a wound-up rag ball of 3,469 inches of recycled strips of Lee’s daughters’ outgrown clothes, the distance her daughter walked in one afternoon at Bing. Also available was a commemorative video including audio of Dr. Edith Dowley reflecting on the design of Bing’s environment and the school’s philosophy and a montage of archival photos from Stanford Village Nursery School through Bing’s construction to current years.
– Adrienne Lomangino, Head Teacher
The commemorative video is available at bingschool.stanford.edu/bing50video.