SFL Golden NUgget #1

Golden Nuggets Chapter 1:
When I started reading the book I was expecting obvious stories, about teachers that were obviously wrong. I was not expecting to read about regular experiences. Things that happen every day in a classroom. That is why I probably like this book. It is not simply a list of what not to do, and what to do. Instead it is about changing to an entire new mentality. The mentality that children want to understand, and through clear communication they can understand. In the first chapter the first story about teachers discussing students really got me thinking about how to change my mentality of students, and those around me.
One of the stories was about two teachers arguing about taking the children outside in the snow or not. I could imagine this conversation so clearly in my mind, but above all I could imagine the children listening to the conversation. The author points out that the argument was simply over going out into the snow or not. Some of the phrases that the teachers were say were: getting sick and they’ll disappear. In the context of the conversation most adults would consider these phrases unimportant, but out of context and literal these few words can be terrifying.
I used to think that helping children learn through conversation was limited to just the times that I am directly speaking to a child. The author Mooney states, “This is something demanding more thought from all of us. Every early childhood textbook cautions beginning teachers against talking about the children as if they were not listening and watching adults’ every move. Yet it‘s easy to do this without giving any thought to our words or their consequences.” (p. 10) I thought about how according to the DAP book “Scientists all over the world are studying how very young babies listen to language,” (p. 53). With that I began to flip through my own memories of working with children. My niece Eva is starting to pretend to talk on the phone. She blabs, pauses, blabs, and then says luv u and puts the phone on the coach cushion and walks away. No one ever sat her down and explained how a telephone conversation should go. She learned by listening to her mother.
In the example above there is no doubt in my mind that the children heard ever word the teachers were saying. I believe this mostly because I realize that children particularly preschool children and well into the grade school years are very egotistical. If the conversation the teachers were having was about them, the children were probably very interested in what is being said. Goodness, I know that when I can hear people talking about me in the same room I am very interested in what they are saying.
As I identified this example I realized that children are always listening, and because they are always listening it is my responsibility to invite them into the conversation. The idea of inviting children into the conversation to discuss what they want to do, and how they think things are is DAP appropriate. In the compare and contrast section of the DAP hand book one of the negative examples is that, “Teachers do not recognize how important it is for children to guide some of their own activities, such as play, and they frequently interrupt and undermine children’s immersion in or managing of their own activities” (p. 155) The golden nugget I learned in the story above is that I need to change my mentality to believing that children are always listening to what I say. I also need to practice inviting children into a conversation, particularly when the conversation involves them directly.