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w eek 8 10/16/13. Maya: teaching heads, hands, and hearts
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Maya: teaching heads, hands, and hearts • “Perhaps all the effort and attention validated his feelings, told him his needs and desires were worthy of respect here, and perhaps that was enough for him. Perhaps that recognition, that affirmation, was the fundamental need, and the blocks were only incidental.” (p. 110) • Friday is block day.
“Each group of children brings new and exciting challenges. Here’s all these new personalities. What will they be like? What will we discover? How will we grow as people and as a group? I find that exciting. I don’t feel the work is repetitive because I don’t do anything exactly the same. Each day is different. The year starts, and it’s a whole new beginning. Here I go again.” (p. 125)
curriculum: a little track • determining what experiences, what values, attitudes, knowledge, and skills, are the most worthwhile • big-C CURRICULUM & little-c curriculum • stakeholders on the curricular battlefield
in this culture (big-C and little-c), this school, and this classroom, • what values, attitudes, knowledge, and skills deemed important, and what are not? • what values, attitudes, knowledge, and skills do students have access to, and what do they not?
implementing curriculum • explicit and well thought out goals • short-term, long-term, specific, general • be frugal • LESSONS and lessons are sacred • celebrate what kids know and can do
Good teaching is seeing the moment in the context of the moments that follow, as well as the ones that preceded. The present moment is part of something larger. We live in the present moment, but the meaning we make of living in the moment comes from going beyond the moment. A good teacher looks at what he wants students to be like in a month, at the end of this year, when they leave this preschool, this elementary, middle, or high school. As adults.