Education Archives:
Learning Values Along With the ABC’s
by Pat Harden
The third grade classroom quickly fills as 16 boys and girls file
into Ms. Ryan LeCesne’s room Monday morning at Flint Hill School.
They quickly place their sitting crates in a circle and sit down
with their morning snack. The academic day is about to begin with
“Morning Meeting.” I find myself riveted as Ms. LeCesne counts
backwards from 5 to 0 and every child settles into silent attention.
The “Morning Meeting” is a particular characteristic of a popular
program for early childhood, elementary and middle school called the
Responsive Classroom program.
In recent years much attention has been paid to the need for schools
to attend to the moral and social/emotional development of children.
Character education was once the sole or primary purview of the
family. Now character education is taking center stage in the
mainstream educational dialogue starting with those planning the
earliest pre-school programs and continuing through secondary and
post secondary educational programming. In an Association for
Supervision and Curriculum Development publication, Developing A
Character Education Program by Henry A. Huffman, Tom Lickona in his
forward lists reasons why schools should pay more attention to
character education. The list ranges from rising youth violence and
increasing dishonesty to increasing peer cruelty, self destructive
behaviors, and growing ethical illiteracy, including ignorance of
moral knowledge. While many of these behaviors seem very distant
from first grade, prevailing wisdom dictates that the process of
setting the groundwork for combating these problems must start with
the earliest socialization curriculum of the pre-school years.
“As a child learns socially appropriate behavior in school, she
learns that the behavior is useful in other settings…when we as
educators invest this time and effort with children during
childhood, we are providing them with the tools that can make the
difference in their school careers and in their lives” (Warner and
Lavarne).
Younger children are now joining older students in spending longer
hours in structured school settings while parents work. The
importance of schools joining parents in the effort to impart values
and relational training is self-evident. As a result, a plethora of
character education programs have hit the market. Some are stand
alone programs delivered by specialists separate from the primary
teaching teams. Other programs are designed to be utilized by
primary teachers in a program integrated with academic teaching.
Many schools offer a combination of both.
The Responsive Classroom is just such a program. It has been
developed by the private nonprofit Northeast Foundation for Children
and sets out a structure of interaction for the classroom that takes
certain basic tenets into account. After much research and
observation of children and early adolescents within the school
setting with teachers, administrators and other child development
specialists on the development team, it became clear that there are
two basic tenets that support the idea of integrating academic and
character/social education.
§ The greatest cognitive growth occurs through social interaction
§ There is a specific set of social skills that children need to
learn and practice to be successful academically and socially:
cooperation, assertion, responsibility, empathy and self-control
(CARES).
The Responsive Classroom sets for a structure of practices that
teaches social skills and guides the acquisition of academic skills
in a way that supports positive interactions among students and
between students and teachers. The practices include
- Morning Meeting
- Rules and Logical Consequences
- Classroom Organization
- Academic Guided Discovery
- Academic Choice
- Outreach to Parents and Guardians
The Morning Meeting which starts the day in every Responsive
Classroom school combines aspects of the entire program and begins
each day with a pro-social learning experience. The meeting begins
with students and teachers sitting in a circle. A specific format is
followed which builds on every student’s need to enter the academic
day in a particular way by having certain developmental strivings
met. It begins with a greeting where each student greets his or her
immediate neighbor in a specified way decided upon by the group.
This helps every student feel acknowledged and welcomed to the
school day. The second component is sharing. Here students are given
planned sharing time on a pre-determined schedule to share whatever
they would like with the class. Sharing ideas or events are given as
much emphasis as sharing things. This component, over time, helps
all students feel known and understood as individuals. There is also
an emphasis here on public speaking and interaction with your
audience as the sharer calls for comment, questions and thoughts.
The third component is a group activity which helps the group join
together in a fun and cooperative manner and the last component,
news and announcements, sets the structure for the academic day.
As the new Director of Admission of Flint Hill School, I must
immerse myself in the FHS experience. This is why I find myself
seated with the third grade class. A little girl walks in late and
the teacher says, “Welcome, here’s a great space for you. We were
wondering where you were,” as two boys scoot over to make more room.
The first order of business is greeting me and the teacher explains
that there would be an addition to the usual messenger job and from
now on the messenger would also be the class greeter. She then asks
what a greeter might do and, giving a clue, says, “It has to do with
a guest!” Hands shoot up and a greeter is defined by the group with
great enthusiasm and participation. “How would you like to be
greeted as a guest?” the teacher queries and, again, with much
interest a young girl says, “I’d like a handshake.” Someone else
says, “A Smile!” Ms. LeCesne then adds that she wants to know the
person’s name. The teacher congratulates another student for using a
complete sentence with what, who, when and where when she describes
what she would like as a visitor. This is a topic they are working
on in language arts. A hallmark of this program is seeking academic
teachable moments within the context of natural social interaction.
Many educators believe that using social interactions as teaching
moments, helps students to integrate their learning into real life
situations heightening their ability to retain information.
The meeting proceeds with sharing which includes descriptions of
each shared experience or article with calls for comments, questions
and connections to other topics that had been discussed before. The
interaction is rich and lively watching these 8 year olds adroitly
handle the audience is quite impressive. As students talk,
connections to spelling and vocabulary words are pointed out by
students and teacher in an ever expanding shared learning
experience. The group activity and news and announcements are
equally filled with educational moments on all levels.
I leave my visit feeling that the first lesson of the day had
accomplished so much. They had learned and integrated information
about:
- Sentence structure
- Public speaking
- Sharing
- Welcoming others
- Negotiation
- Decision making
- Intellectual connections
- Respect
It was all done in a way that involved everyone at their own
level and with interest and enthusiasm.
Ultimately, character education is important because it gives us, as
a society, a common language of social interaction that enables a
discourse that solves problems and forms connections in a way that
enriches the societal fabric. For students it must also be fun and
integrated with other aspects of the educational day to make sense
and have meaning. The Responsive Classroom model is one that does
this well. Parents should expect schools to pay attention to this
important area of education. You and your school can work together
to educate and raise academically skilled and socially competent
students.
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