Fall Staff Development Day

 

The first presentation was given by Bing teachers Danielle Nakamatsu-Wong and Andrea Fewster, who shared insights gained from their experiences in the fields of early intervention and speech-language pathology, respectively. Their presentation focused on the theme of identifying and supporting children’s unique needs within the classroom, with the aim of setting in place a framework for observing children’s abilities and sharing information with families in a timely and sensitive manner. Although we recognize that children do not all share the same developmental path, we do sometimes have concerns about a child’s rate of development in a given domain. As early childhood educators, it is essential that we know how to communicate these concerns to families and to direct parents toward appropriate resources.

 

Drawing on her experience as an early interventionist, Nakamatsu-Wong explained the pathway for referral to early intervention services for children under 3 years of age. Fewster, a former speech-language pathologist in a local public school district, shed light on the referral process for speech-and-language intervention, occupational therapy and psychoeducational evaluations for children over the age of 3. This sparked a conversation among the teachers about how we can best support families during the referral process, and also what role we may play in assisting professionals in their evaluation of a child’s development. Nakamatsu-Wong and Fewster highlighted the importance of helping families gain access to early intervention services for their children and provided an overview of accommodations and adaptations that teachers can implement in the classroom to best support a child’s particular needs. 

 

Ellie Chestnut, a Stanford doctoral student in psychology (now a postdoctoral researcher at NYU), described the research on language she was doing with older children based on her prior work at Bing. That Bing research explored how children perceive expressions of similarity, such as “zebras are like horses.”  On the surface, she said, it seems as if “zebras are like horses” and “horses are like zebras” should have the same meaning, since both express similarity between horses and zebras. Yet, adults and children consistently prefer “zebras are like horses.” This is because statements with a subject-complement structure frame the subject as the less typical variant and the complement as the more typical or important reference point. When statements contain novel items, sensitivity to this asymmetry actually serves as a learning mechanism. Upon hearing a sentence with two made-up words, “Zum is like Gax,” for example, listeners infer that Gax, by virtue of being framed as the reference point, is more important or typical than Zum. 

 

Chestnut and her advisor, psychology professor Ellen Markman, went on to explore the implication of this implicit learning mechanism for gender stereotypes. In their follow-up study, children ages 7 to 10 (128 participants total) listened to statements of equality about girls and boys from another planet (e.g., “On this planet, boys are as good as girls at snapping.”). When asked who must work harder to be good at the activity, or who is naturally better at the activity, children associated greater natural ability and less effort with the gender framed as the reference point. Thus, subject-complement sentences expressing equal ability can nevertheless instill beliefs about gender differences.

 

This is especially relevant to teachers, noted Chestnut, because one common way of encouraging girls and women to enter the STEM fields—science, technology, engineering and math—is to say, for example, “Girls are as good as boys at math.” For children who do not yet know math-related gender stereotypes, however, such statements may actually suggest that boys are not only more typical or of higher status than girls in this domain, but also that they are naturally more talented.

 

Mika Asaba, a Stanford doctoral student and former lab manager of the Social Learning Lab in the Department of Psychology, shared a study on children’s understanding of time and difficulty in connection with completing physical tasks. In this project, 4- to 5-year-olds viewed several pairs of people who built block structures of different types (e.g., one member of the pair built a 10-block vertical structure, while the other member built a 10-block horizontal structure). The children were asked either “Who was done first?” (time) or “Which one is easier to make?” (difficulty). The researchers found that children performed well on all of the trials when asked the difficulty question, but children’s performance for the time question was weaker. Interestingly, they found that as children got older, they succeeded on the time questions more often. The researchers are now designing new trials to look at whether young children are sensitive to other dimensions (e.g., the agent’s competence) when assessing how much time it will take or how difficult it will be to achieve a goal. 

 

The entire staff also engaged in a school-wide exercise to articulate Bing’s mission, identify shared values and examine how these are manifested in our day-to-day practices. The mission statement:

 

 

The fourth component was added in 2009 when the school launched a new, expanded program for parents and educators. The program was made possible with the renovation of the Tower House, which adjoins the school and serves as a site for informal talks and seminars for parents and educators, as well as for teaching undergraduate classes and work space for teachers. 

 

Bing’s head teachers and administrators had participated in a similar exercise in September. At that time, they took part in a structured brainstorming exercise in which they identified principles within each of the four key components of the school’s mission. At the staff development day the next month, the entire staff repeated the brainstorming and discussion exercise, this time using the general practices outlined by the head teachers as a guide. Focusing on tangible, specific and concrete practices, Bing’s staff members articulated ways that they fulfilled the school’s mission.

 

The exercise produced dozens of ideas for each general practice and even more for each part of Bing’s overall mission “to promote understanding of child development and improve the lives of young children.” Perhaps more importantly, the experience served to help teachers and staff pinpoint what they can be doing— how they can learn from each other and improve their practices through simple behaviors that are nevertheless profoundly thoughtful. This will be an ongoing process that brings many implicit ideas to the surface, and Bing staff will continue to articulate the school’s mission through clear documentation and communications.