Professor Sharon

Professor Sharon header image 2

100 Day Project – Day 38 – Light bulbs

October 13th, 2011 · No Comments · 100 Days Project, Children, College students, Musings, Teaching & Learning

100 Day Project – Day 38 – 8:56 pm

There were two lightbulb moments today: one for a student, and one for me.   An Introduction to Early Childhood Student had a really obvious lightbulb moment.  I ask students to have Reading Talks.  They have read an assignment, responded to it in writing and come prepared to discuss in a small group in class.   This student really did the light up moment — got very excited and shared that moment with the small group.  And wonderful, for me the teacher, she was willing to repeat it to the whole group.  Her moment involved really thinking for the first time about the reality of “teaching” versus “facilitating a child’s learning.”  It was a wonderful moment for her – and for me.

My lightbulb is a little harder to explain, having to do with how I redirect a student’s idea of interacting with a child.  It was the Creative Experiences in the Arts for Young Children class and in playing “Where is Thumbkin” together, a student expressed concern that children would know what holding up the middle finger would mean and we shouldn’t use the song because of that.  It would be too complicated to figure out how to write up the exchange in class around this issue completely.  It was a great discussion.  The lightbulb moment had to do with my watching myself try to support a student’s thinking but at the same time “correcting” that thinking. Really, one cannot give up singing or exposing children to everything just because we decide it has some message or is “inapproprite” – and in my opinion, mostly because the teacher finds it uncomfortable.  So it’s not easy to explain, but I know that I need to watch my responses to students in these moments and figure out if they are okay, too light, or too heavy handed.

Two light bulbs on a Thursday – a long dreary weather Thursday is a good thing.  Today I’m think about the light.

Tags: ·····

No Comments so far ↓

There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.

Leave a Comment