Spring Staff Development Day: Supporting Children’s Unique Needs and Interests in the Classroom
By Andrea Fewster and Brianna Kirby, Teachers
Who dares to teach must never cease to learn.
—John Cotton Dana, former president of the American Library Association
One of the greatest gifts that can be passed from a parent or teacher to a child is a lifelong passion for learning. The staff of Bing Nursery School have many opportunities throughout the year to further their skills, which help foster that passion, including quarterly staff development days. This year’s spring staff development day took place April 27, and the teachers engaged in a full day of presentations and discussions on a variety of topics related to early childhood education. Although the presentations were diverse in scope, the central theme of the day was supporting a child’s optimal capacity for learning within the classroom.
The day commenced with a two-hour presentation on speech and language development led by Mayra Cramer, a former Bing parent, licensed speech-language pathologist and director of the Speachy Learning Center in Menlo Park, California, a clinic that provides speech-and-language therapy services. Her presentation focused on the development of communication skills in the preschool years, and gave special attention to early signs of speech and language delays. Cramer also addressed the topic of multilingualism: Teachers wanted to know how to best support the needs of children who speak multiple languages in their classrooms.
Cramer explained that although multilingual children may initially reach communication milestones around six months later than their monolingual peers, this developmental “gap” begins to close by around the age of 3, at which time most multilingual children have a capacity for understanding and producing language that equals or perhaps even exceeds that of their peers. In fact, multilingual children may eventually develop larger vocabularies than monolingual children.
Following Cramer’s presentation, teachers and staff heard from doctoral student Rodolfo Cortes Barragan, who shared an overview of his ongoing research in the Department of Psychology here at Stanford. In conjunction with Professor Carol Dweck, PhD, Barragan’s studies at Bing have focused on how children learn attitudes of altruism through social cues. Over the past six years, Barragan has explored the influence of how children play on altruistic tendencies. In particular, he contrasted the impact of reciprocal play interactions with that of friendly yet non-reciprocal play interactions. In reciprocal play, the play partner (researcher) engages with the child in a back-and-forth manner in the game. During friendly yet non-reciprocal play, the play partner engages in a parallel activity, offering friendly observations and gestures.
From their research, Barragan and Dweck conclude that children who engaged in reciprocal play are more likely to exhibit altruistic behavior and in return begin to expect acts of altruism from others. As a further extension of this study, the researchers argue that reciprocal interactions lead to the development of trust between the child and the play partner. This foundation of trust, then, allows for subsequent learning opportunities and, ultimately, the acquisition of cultural knowledge. The researchers published “Rethinking natural altruism: Simple reciprocal interactions trigger children’s benevolence” in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America in November 2014.
During the afternoon session, Gina Baldi of the Children’s Health Council shared some insights in her presentation, “Helping Challenging Preschoolers Succeed.” Baldi, a parent trainer at the Palo Alto-based diagnostic and treatment center for children facing developmental and behavioral challenges, spoke about maintaining age-appropriate expectations when working with children, and she offered strategies for supporting children in achieving their own success. There is a delicate balance between stepping in too often and allowing time for children to grow during these formative years, she said. At Bing, we recognize that children work tirelessly each day to make sense of the world and their unique place within it, continuously navigating the innumerable opportunities for physical, cognitive, social and emotional growth.
As the day came to a close, Bing teachers Lara Cardamone and Colin Johnson presented a photo slideshow of classroom set-ups that they had collected from various teachers and classrooms throughout the year. As Bing teachers don’t always have the luxury of touring the set-ups in other classrooms, Cardamone and Johnson offered an array of curriculum ideas in their presentation “Set-Ups: Provocations that Invite Children to Explore Materials and Ideas.” They showed photos of indoor and outdoor arrangements, from the art/design tables to the water table and sand areas. The images inspired many of us to think about set-ups in new and innovative ways. The presenters also shared a video from East Room illustrating the children engaging in a tabletop finger painting activity, and we discussed the importance of adjusting the curriculum to suit the children’s interests and experiences.
After learning from various experts throughout the day, Cardamone and Johnson’s presentation offered us the opportunity to learn from and be inspired by the work of our colleagues at Bing. The common thread that united each of the day’s presentations was the emphasis each presenter placed on identifying and supporting children’s individual needs and interests in the classroom. The staff at Bing will use the information gained from the speakers to support our recognition of children’s current levels of development, and to identify and create purposeful opportunities for growth and learning for every child.