Adventures in Learning

NAEYC: How do you explain the importance of play to parents or adults who are skeptical that play is what children need?

Paley: I have found that most parents do value play, and they do understand its importance in their children’s lives. Nothing presents a greater worry to parents than when their children come home and say, “No one likes me, they won’t play with me.” I’ve rarely heard a parent of a young child worry about phonics or writing. But families grow very sad when their children are visibly excluded from play and the teachers do not seem to know how to counteract the event.

In my experience, parents are the first to recognize that their children become more articulate and interesting when they make believe. They love to repeat their children’s words: “Did you hear what Johnny said?” They call up the relatives. They bore everyone with all these wonderful things that the children did. “He’s only 3 and look at what he said about the man in the moon.

”It is the teacher’s role to keep telling anecdotes about how clever, inventive, innovative, nice, and sweet children are in play. I would never go into a parent-teacher conference without a page of at least five brief stories highlighting the creative play and conversation of the child. I’d share these before discussing anything else. Now that parent knew I liked his or her child. If you take down their stories, you like them. If they know you’re taking down their stories, they like you. And we start with liking each other, and we see how happy children are when they play. I would invite them in to watch storytelling and story acting; it so resembles the play experience and gives it more meaning.

Many of those pioneers in education are recognized and honored in the 2012 Gazette publication by the National Women’s History Project.  Representing hundreds of women whose countless hours of work remain uncounted for, these honorees lead the way in improving education for all young women in America over the centuries.  The efforts made by these individuals changed the course of history–or more appropriate herstory.

These Honorees include:

• Emma Hart Willard (1787–1870) – Women Higher Education Pioneer

• Charlotte Forten Grimke (1837 – 1914) – Freedman Bureau Educator

• Annie Sullivan (1866 – 1936) – Disability Education Architect

• Gracia Molina de Pick (b.1929) – Feminist Educational Reformer

• Okolo Rashid (b.1949) – Community Development Activist and 
Historical Preservation Advocate

• Brenda Flyswithhawks (b. 1950) – American Indian Advocate and Educator

The majority of teachers in this country are women, their impact on the history of education is vast, but only a few are covered in textbooks on education or talked about among the major thinkers in the history of education. Their wisdom, experience and action research in and out of the classroom has helped shape the history of education.

Until the 1970′s most books about education were written by men. When Vivian Gussin Paley, an early educator at the Lab School, wrote her first book, White Teacher, her work as an author/scholar was dismissed and chastised. Her fellow teachers and academics didn’t believe that it was the teacher’s place to study the lives of children she taught.

Action research is now taught in teachers colleges, but we still often forget to celebrate the work of women educators, for example, quotes by John Dewey show up daily on social media, but Helen Parkhurst, his contemporary and a pioneer in Progressive Education who created “the Dalton Plan”, is often forgotten.

We have some of the best voices in education at the Cooperative Catalyst and I thought it would be great to celebrate some of the women educators that inspire us, and celebrate some of the texts we look to and shape our own teaching, thinking and writing.  I would like your help in creating a primer of women education philosophers and educators and/or wiki for students and new teachers.

I think we should be able to crowd source at least  50 Women educators and/or philosophers.   Also I would love to put together a paragraph or two or blog post on each of them, along with annotations of some of their best work. Please help me by submitting or blogging your contribution or/and email me at coopcatalyst@gmail.com

Here is my list so far

• Maria Montessori
• Helen Parkhurst.
• Deborah  Meier
• Vivian Gussin Paley
• Jill Ostrow
• Maxine Greene
• Eleanor Ruth Duckworth
• Adora Svitak
• Lisa Delpit
• Linda Darling-Hammond
• Ellen Key
• Sue Palmer
• Caroline Pratt (founder of City and Country School)
• Professor Gloria Ladson-Billings
• bell hooks
• Diane Levin 
• Kirsten Olson
• Zoe Weil

If you want to write about any of them feel free to and I will collect all the writing in one place.

What is democratic education?

The Institute for Democratic Education in America (IDEA) defines democratic education as “learning that equips every human being to participate fully in a healthy democracy.” This definition excites me. It is brilliant in its simplicity, yet still profound. Before unfolding what the word “learning” means in that definition, I want to address democracy and public education since it affects most of the young people in the United States. In all public schools, democracy is taught, so wouldn’t that make them all democratic by IDEA’s definition? It’s important to note that while democracy is taught, students are not given an opportunity to authentically practice democracy. This means having the opportunity to make real decisions in a community with concrete outcomes–not voting in student council on recommendations that are then given to an adult authority figure to say yes or no to. As Shilpa Jain pointed out to me, “If we don’t experience democracy in our schools, how could we ever expect to end up with democracy in the ‘real’ world?”

We must balance our intellectual and historical understanding of democracy with opportunities for practice and spaces to learn about the nuances that take place when you must collectively come to a decision that affects your entire community. Ira Shor was very clear in explaining to me that “Democracy is not a speech given by an official to reassure us that we live in a democracy. Democracy is an everyday practice.” Bill Ayers reiterated this point when he went on to express the importance of “learning from democracy, not about democracy” which reminds me of a great scene in a documentary called Democratic Schools. In the documentary students are learning about butterflies through a chalk diagram on the board when a butterfly flies by the window. One student stops paying attention and is consumed with watching the butterfly’s every motion. The teacher pulls the shade down, scolds the student and reminds her that they’re trying to learn about butterflies (not from them).

Shilpa Jain says that it is hard to use the phrase “democratic education” because of how each of those words have become so corrupted and diluted from their true meanings. Sonia Nieto added that democratic education “means practicing what we preach. It means putting into effect all of those noble ideals of equality and fair play.” She continued with a challenge to “look seriously at the policies and practices we have in place and ask how those further or not a democratic vision. Do high stakes tests for example further the ideals of democracy? What about the curriculum?” Her answer to each question was “not currently.”

After attending a democratic school and teaching high school and preschool in a democratic environment, I’ve come to settle on a personal definition of what democratic education is which unfolds the word “learner” in IDEA’s definition. I see democratic education as learning that is meaningful, relevant, joyous, engaging, and empowering. I see it as learning rooted in respect for children and young people who actively participate in their education journey. It is learning grounded in love and community. I’ve come to realize democratic education is more than any one learning environment, such as a school, and more than one feature, such as voting, but an approach to life and learning and an approach to interacting with all members of your community in a way that respects, honors, and listens authentically to each voice within it. For me, this is the practice of real democracy, which can manifest in many different ways based on you, your community, and your learning environment.

• What Should We Cut? 
• Pre-Occupy Wall Street
• Let’s Build Factories
• Ten Reasons to Abolish Homework (And Five Alternatives)
• 10 Reasons Teachers Make Great Punching Bags
• Why I Accept Late Work
• Stop Teaching Kids About Germs (Satire)
• 4 Stages of Personalization (Music Metaphors Included)
• Paperless Un-Schooling Summer School
• 10 Reasons the Tests Are Lowering Our Standards
• 3 Thoughts on the Real World
• 10 Reasons to Save Social Studies
• 5 Questions for Education Reformers
• I Am the Ninety-Nine Percent, And Actually I’m Pissed
• Actually, It Is About the Technology
• Why We Paint Murals