NAEYC Annual Conference

 

This past November, the National Association for the Education of Young Children held its annual conference at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta. The director of Bing Nursery School, Jennifer Winters, and a group of six teachers had the opportunity to represent our school at the conference and draw inspiration from the hundreds of sessions that were offered. Teacher Lars Gustafson was a panel participant and presented the research he carried out while earning a master’s degree in education at San Francisco State University.

 

The range of topics addressed at the conference was immense, but each session provided a thought-provoking discussion of an issue related to the field of early childhood education, from how to most effectively document children’s learning in the classroom to promoting the tenets of social justice among young children. The Bing teachers welcomed the opportunity to draw inspiration from our colleagues in the field, and we took time at the end of each day to come together and reflect on both the content of the discussions and our own teaching practices at Bing. Following are two highlights from the conference:

 

 

One session that related particularly well to the work that we do at Bing introduced the concept of a “complementary curriculum” and addressed the importance of teaching practices that are thoughtful and purposeful. The panel of presenters from the Henry Frost Children’s Program in Massachusetts discussed the advantages of incorporating elements from a variety of pedagogical models when developing a child-centered curriculum, including those based on Lev Vygotsky’s theories and Reggio Emilia and Montessori methods. The presenters asserted that “discovery and explicit instruction can and must co-exist” in the classroom, and that teachers should follow children’s naturally emerging interests when designing a curriculum. They highlighted the benefits of providing children with opportunities for open-ended, self-directed exploration with new materials, paired with structured moments of explicit instruction and support from teachers as children master new skills. At the heart of every effective curriculum, the presenters argued, there must be unconstrained access to “compelling materials” that children can explore in both creative and concrete ways. When arranged and organized by teachers in an engaging manner, these materials can provoke experimentation, hypothesis-testing and collaboration among children.

 

For instance, the presenters offered an example from their program in which children expressed an interest in learning about pipes after seeing one of the school’s sinks overflow. The teachers subsequently planned a curriculum around the theme of “pipes”—inviting a plumber to visit the class, introducing new tools and terminology, and providing large cardboard tubes and balls with the intention of inspiring the children to create their own pipe system in the classroom. By following the children’s emerging interests, the teachers designed an engaging curriculum that offered scope for both self-directed experimentation and direct instruction, with the goal of fostering a deeper understanding of the subject. Open-ended activities were supplemented by teachers’ instructions on how to use new tools (e.g., pliers) or materials. The presenters also stressed the importance of creating spaces for a wide variety of learners in the classroom, such as setting out thematic materials across the various play areas of the classroom and allowing opportunities for solitary and group work. By providing opportunities for choice, the teachers enable children to engage with the materials in a way that meets their level of development and learning style. This careful attention to the needs of each child in a class seems particularly relevant to Bing’s mixed-age program, where we strive to create a curriculum that will be inspiring and accessible to a wide variety of learners.

 

 

Another presentation that stood out was by former Bing teacher Sarah Felstiner, curriculum director at the Hilltop Children’s Center in Seattle, Washington, a preschool and pre-K program serving children ages 2 to 5 years old. In this insightful session, Felstiner presented how reflective practice supports playful inquiry—in other words, inquiry-based learning in a play-based environment—and emergent curriculum: curriculum planned by following the children’s interests. Reflective practice is the process in which teachers consider the children in the environment with care and take the time to reflect upon their learning and development, engage in the process of inquiry, and plan for future play experiences in the environment. Felstiner walked the group through the structured practices that have been put in place at Hilltop to support reflective practice among the staff, a practice that leads to rich and thoughtful inquiry, emergent curriculum and in-depth parent engagement.

 

Essential to this process is the children’s play environment. As at Bing, the play environment is seen as another educator in its ability to support learning and development as children engage with it, often without a teacher. The play environment is also a space that allows teachers to see how children explore. It shifts the teacher’s role, such that the teacher is able to step back and learn about children by observing them engage with the space and materials available to them. These spaces are curated to be aesthetically inviting, offer learning opportunities for children, and support exploration. Felstiner described the elements of a “reflective environment” as follows: areas that encourage group work, a “less is more” mentality, open-ended materials, natural and inventive materials, aesthetic appeal and interesting setups to spark new ideas. Their play environments showed spaces that included decorative metal trays and wicker baskets (acquired at thrift stores) to display materials, glass jars full of interesting art materials organized by color that are aesthetically pleasing and invite children in to use them, and open-ended materials such as large wooden tubes and cardboard boxes included in the space to encourage large group collaborative play and exploration. The environment offers children interesting and inviting activities that are developmentally appropriate and encourage growth and development, yet do not need a teacher to lead the activity. This allows teachers to support children who do need help, to offer guidance as needed, and also, importantly, to reflect on the children’s play and development by taking observational notes and documenting the classroom experiences. It was inspiring to hear about the thoughtfully curated and designed spaces for play at Hilltop.