Calling All Teachers!

I’m not a teacher but want to subscribe to the comments. I’m sure there will be some good stuff.

When I was teaching, I always took the kids outside for recess. I was one of the few who would send them out to run around for a bit even in the rain, for the kids who wanted to go. Virtually all of the activity was mandated by the school, though. I had fifth graders who were not allowed to walk to lunch alone, even down the hall. This was not just because of safety issues, but more fear of losing my job or getting yelled at in front of the kids if they got out of hand I was not there. I saw that happen repeatedly when I was teaching. We didn’t have a free-range principal. : (

I teach grade 8. I do support homework (independent learning) but definitely limit it to just enough to make sure kids reinforce concepts and learn HOW to learn on their own so that when they’re older they can find information without a teacher’s help.

The biggest thing I do to foster independence is to deal with students, not parents, as much as possible. There is a huge movement in education to cut out kids from their own education- grades are posted online for parents to see before tests are even passed back to students, parents call or email rather than having students approach teachers with problems, notes have to be sent home so parents know exactly what kids assigned each week, websites are set up where teachers report every single thing that is done during the day- it’s ridiculous! Worse, it cuts out the parent/student conversation about what happened during the day. I know kids aren’t overly anxious to share at that age, but that shouldn’t mean it becomes my responsibility to report back every minute of my students’ lives to mommy and daddy.

To avoid this, I use a website for students to ask questions to me directly or to have discussions about topics in a forum. It’s not just to report homework to parents. I give instructions for assignments to students and expect them to listen. I let them choose what aspect of a topic they want to work on whenever possible. I also don’t post grades online. It is the child’s responsibility to keep track of their assignments until they prove they can’t. Then we step in with interventions.

For me, by age 13 students need to be responsible enough to pack up their own backpack at the end of the day, collect make up homework from their teachers after an absence, or ask for help when they don’t understand. Teaching these skills rather than stepping in and doing everything for them is the best way I know to put the “free range” theory into my classroom.

And when parents over-hover? Kill them with kindness and reassurances that their worries are needless, and if all else fails tell them to take their complaints to the principal, who’s great and shutting them down.

I picked up “The Daily FIve” over the summer and although I teach middle school (the book is designed for the elementary classroom), I was inspired to try and adapt the ideas. I’m still mulling over the process and a little stumped as to how to divvy up the routine in an authentic way (that they would actually enjoy, mind you)… but I do just love this book. It encourages kids to choose between five different self directed activities, including reading to self, reading to others, listening to books, writing, and reading together. What I love most about the book is that the teachers see their kids develop a genuine and self-initiated desire to spend time, uninterrupted by “teaching”, experiencing books, something I don’t think is cultivated enough in the rigid structure of most classrooms.

Here’s the link to the book (allows a look inside). http://www.amazon.com/Daily-Five-Gail-Boushey/dp/1571104291

Has anyone successfully used or adapted this book in working with middle school or high school classrooms?

Not to sound like a spammer, but our whole program- both elementary teacher prep and our support for experienced teachers- is built on these concepts. Specifically, check out our Critical Skills Program and David Sobel, Place Based Education guru. There are a bunch of sample lessons and our teacher community could provide you with zillions of examples.

antiochne.edu/education

I have students do LOTS of independent reading. Being an avid reader often makes students more motivated to learn on their own so I spend a great deal of time thinking of independent work for students to do in association with books of their choosing.

For example:
Rather than giving them lists of vocabulary words for them to learn, memorize, and then take a quiz on only for them to forget all the words the next day, my students do their own self-directed vocabulary from the books they’re reading independently – so it’s relevant to them personally. I then give them assignments throughout the year that requires them to use those vocabulary words in their writing.

I also require they have a literature journal where they write letters to me and to classmates about the books they’re reading independently that require them to think beyond just a summary of the plot. They have a list of sentence starters that they use to help guide their thinking.

I’m hoping that by giving them choice (with guidance of course) that I will create a classroom of thinkers rather than just making them do “compliant work”.

I have the good fortune to work at an excellent Montessori school for children age 2 through 12. Being Montessorians, our overriding fundamental goal is to help children become self-motivated and independent. Often it feels (especially at the primary/preschool level) like we’re fighting against our licensing regulations (and sometimes parents!) to do this, but we have managed to find ways to work around it. Here are some of the things we do:

We encourage parents to have their children pack their own lunches as soon as they are able (from about 4 years old). If a child forgets their lunch, it isn’t the teacher that puts one together for them from what’s in the classroom left over from snack – the child does it on his or her own.

The children understand that it isn’t mom or dad who “forgot my jacket” or “forgot my lunch” or whatever. It’s the child’s responsibility to remember these things, not the parents’.

We do a LOT of things in primary to prepare them for the increased responsibility and freedom of the elementary classes. From 2 until 6, we do things like: children have the freedom to choose their own work (which continues in elementary), they are always expected to clean up after themselves, they set their own lunch tables, resolve their own conflicts (with guidance and mediation as necessary!), are included in classroom problem solving and rule-making, and so on. Uh… because it would be against licensing rules, we certainly don’t have things like real knives out for carrot, banana, and apple slicing work at all times (and we certainly wouldn’t hurry around collecting all the knives and putting them on a high shelf as soon as licensing shows up for a surprise visit. Um.)

Unfortunately, during the 2-6 years (before children are in elementary), we have a lot of restraints while playing outside. Children that age in our state are REQUIRED to be within direct visual supervision of a licensed teacher at ALL times at a ratio of no less than 12 children to 1 teacher – even, theoretically, while in the bathroom. If a child even walks *behind* the teacher, we technically Out Of Compliance. It means they can’t even go inside a classroom on their own to get a jacket, or they can’t walk to the art studio across the yard without someone watching them. But we deal with it, somehow!

In the elementary: Because we’re a Montessori school, as much as possible the structure of the classroom work cycles is determined by the children. Barring large projects and other special circumstances, the main reason they might have homework (in the elementary – there’s never homework at the primary level) is if they chose to goof off in class instead of finishing their chosen work. Everyone has enough time to do what they need during the class time provided, and ultimately it is the child’s responsibility to recognize that. Fortunately, because children have as much freedom as possible to choose the work that interests them, teachers spend a lot less time nagging and a lot more time giving interesting lessons and helping children work on things they’re enthusiastic about. And having to do unfinished work over the weekend is a very strong lesson that children quickly learn to avoid!

Also at the Elementary level, we do not have parent-teacher conferences. We have *student*-parent-teacher conferences. The children are responsible for sharing with their parents and teacher what their goals were for that term, how well they met them, and what they feel they still need to work on. Children are given the opportunity to be accountable for their own learning. (Occasionally there needs to be parent-teacher meetings without the children, of course, when there’s particularly difficult circumstances – but we try to keep that to a minimum.)

Many of our school events are organized by the elementary children. The Thanksgiving Feast and our twice yearly concerts are coordinated in large part by them. They plan the seating, the food, the order of operations, etc, and then they organize getting the primary children together and make sure they’re where they need to be.

We have a lot of field trips. I’ve led three camping trips for 5 and 6-year old primary children that were an hour or more away from school, and lasted for two days and three nights. The elementary children go on several environmental education overnights a year with their teachers, and (if the fundraising is good enough) roughly one ten-day international trip yearly or every other year. This year was the Yucatan, and they’ve also been to Hungary and Oaxaca. Of course, the teachers are always with the children on these trips, but they are nevertheless HUGE confidence builders.

There are so many other tiny things, involving the children taking care of the environment in which they’re in, maintaining the classroom, cleaning, etc. In primary AND elementary, the children cook lunch for the entire class in rotating groups every Wednesday – the teachers participate less and less as the children get older. And, yes, from the primary years the children are using real, child-sized knives to cut the food, and they’re taught how to do it *safely.* (I mean… we absolutely DON’T do that because it would be against licensing rules. Yes, that’s what I mean.)

The result of all of this is some of the most competent, reliable, independent children I’ve ever met. 🙂

One practical thing to add. In a Montessori school, we call it care of self. The simple things that children can do to “do it my self”. This leads to real self-worth. One of these things it putting on one’s coat by one’s self. It is easy and child under the age of two can learn how to do it independently.

1. Lay down the coat “on its back”.
2. Stand at the top of the coat near the hood or shoulders. But not on the coat.
3. Reach down and place hands into the arms of the coat.
4. Quickly raise arms above the head.
5. Shrug a bit and allow the coat to fall down to a normal position.
6. Turn to face the teacher or an older child so you can have help learning to zipper you own coat. (By the time the child is 4.5, they should be able to zipper their own coat.)

It takes about two times for a child to get it. Especially when others are doing it too.

You would not believe how quickly getting out the door can be.

Go on you try it. Then go show a kid.

Independence it not just a place in Missouri.

EV
http://eavice.wordpress.com

EV, I’ve seen people suggest that little trick, and I don’t know why. My nieces were putting on their own coats the normal way at only slightly older than two – two and a half – and their coats didn’t have to get dirty on the floor first.

I teach kindergarten at a public school. In my classroom the majority of the day is spent doing free choice centers. In the morning we have an hour for mostly language-based centers (letters, words, books, etc.). They must go to the writing center and the math center every day, but the other four centers are free choice. They are in control of where they want to go and how long they stay at a center, promoting independence and responsibility. Many choose to do their mandatory work right away so they can be sure to have it finished. Though I don’t give them much direction about where they need to be, the kids are pretty good about visiting all the centers throughout the week. In the afternoon we have another time for play centers. There is no mandatory center in the afternoon. That much playtime is frowned upon, but I value it in my classroom and will cut other things to make it fit.

Even though they are five, I hold them to pretty high standards of independence. When problems come up, they are expected to work it out themselves before they can come talk to me. I am often heard saying, “How can you solve that problem?” The kids have access to all their classroom supplies. If they want to use counters in math, they go get the beans.If they are painting, they get out the watercolors and fill their own water cups. At the end they rinse out the cups and set them out to dry. At centers, they get out most of their own materials and put them away when they’re done. (One student knows where things are better than me. She is the one choosing where the supplies go because she puts them away.) The students ask friends for help before they ask me. This goes for everything from directions for the writing assignment to tying shoes.

I’m a high school teacher. Like a few other posters, I feel like I could go on about this a lot longer than you or anyone else would want to read. But I would like to know more about the groups you are speaking to. Are they high school, or younger, or mixed? Teachers, administrators, or both? etc…

I teach college students, and the one thing I do to foster independence in my students is treat them as adults. It’s amazing how many college instructors do not do this. I’m always calling colleagues’ attention to the fact that referring to “The kids in my class” (when “the kids” are 18-26 years old) tends to foster kid-like behavior and attitudes.

When I was teaching first grade, I would often have children come to me and say things like, “so-and-so stuck his tongue out at me” or “so-and-so budged in line.” etc. My first response was always, “Did you tell him (or ask him) to stop (or move)?” They almost aways said, “No” until they realized that I was not going to do anything until they first did something for themselves. If they said that they did ask the person to stop their offensive behavior, I would ask, “Well, did he stop?” If they answered, “Yes,” I would tell them that they’d done a great job of solving their own problem and send them on their way. If they said, “no,” I would tell them to try again and this time I would watch (from my desk). The children quickly learned that if they were asked a second time to stop something, I was watching and they stopped. I did this for minor infractions. I was fortunate to work in a small school where we really did not have issues of bullying. I’m sure I would not necessarily have used this method if I did not feel confident in the child’s ability to handle the situations solo.

I also had a lot of time in my classroom when the kids were done with their assignments called “Show me that you’re learning” time. This was pretty much free time where they could play a game, draw, read, write letters to each other (yes, I promoted passing notes in my class) etc. One year, I had a student who I thought could use a challenge, so I brought in a chess set. She quickly learned how each piece moved. I had two other students who already knew how to play chess, so among the four of us, we would play games– I asked the two boys to “talk through” each move so that the learner could understand what they were thinking. It worked great. We quickly had several other students interested in learning how to play– and so they watched. We did this for a few days (I brought in more chess sets)… Then I was absent for a day and when I came back, just about every child in the class knew the fundamentals of playing chess– because they had learned it during “show me that you’re learning” time. I loved giving them time to explore areas that were interesting to them. I really loved my school.

OK, EV and Jessica beat me to it… What I want to point out is that we need to help parents learn to TRUST their children, because without trust nothing can be accomplished from a Free-Range perspective. We need to help parents see their children – even the very young ones – as capable human beings, not sacks of potatoes that must be dragged around all day long.

Sadly, the only effective way I’ve found for parents to realize what their children are capable of is by videotaping their children at work in the Montessori classroom and then sitting the parent down and saying “look at what your child is capable of doing”. I don’t know how you could incorporate this into your presentation…

I’ve talked to parents until I’m blue in the face, but I still get kids who are toilet trained at school and wear pull ups at home, or can put on their own shoes at school and yet must be “helped” at home, or even worse: children who eat their own lunch at school, and must be spoon fed at home. Parents who don’t want their kids to be free will find any excuse and put up many roadblocks to confirm their viewpoint.

Good luck…

I teach in a teacher-administered school, and we work by consensus. My mother was an excellent public school teacher who I noticed was constantly having to submit to the rules of school boards and administrators who had not spent time in the classroom. Our structure prevents that sort of thing, but then presents the challenge of justifying our approach.

I have had success talking about child development in terms of…..a baseball mitt. When you walk into a store all the mitts have five fingers and they all could belong to anyone. You take it home, you oil it move it a million different ways and then you stick between your mattresses with a ball stuck in it and with rubber bands wrapped around it. It might appear ridiculous the abuse you put your mitt through. But it is all so that the mitt is better suited to it’s purpose.

Education is like that. You have to have all kinds of experiences and struggles to help you stay flexible and receptive to the information that comes toward you. Information without experience cannot lead to understanding.

This explanation has helped my parent understand the variety of challenged presented to the children inside, and especially, outside of a classroom.

teacher tom,
that sounds perfect! Abstract concepts without practical skill is (at best) useless.

I am not a school teacher but I teach music to children under six and I home educate my own bunch. A favorite in my music class and my living room is when we turn on the music, pass out scarves and let the music move us. It doesn’t matter what kind of music I put on, there are colors and wild jigs in every corner of the room. In my 45 minute music class, it is a good opportunity to get our wiggles out. At home, it is the best medicine for a cranky day.

Hi Lenore, I’m a high school teacher and something I have found useful (both for students and for me) is to have some time in some lessons where the students can’t ask me any questions. So I set them a task and I might say, “For the next 20 minutes, I want you to work independently” and then they have to get on with it, by themselves, usually in silence (or sometimes with discussion amongst themselves). If they have any teacher questions, they just have to hold them for the end or figure it out themselves (which they normally do). This is is a nice antidote to the usual asking about EVERY SINGLE LITTLE THING instead of figuring it out themselves!

Also lets me get a bit of admin done at my desk 🙂

At my daughter’s school on the bushy outskirts of Melbourne Australia we have a thing called Cubbyland. It’s in a gully area of the playground where the kids are allowed to use anything they find (fallen branches, sticks, bark, stones etc) to make cubbies (playhouses). The kids are the boss of it and the teachers keep an eye on it only from a distance, and only really intervene if the big kids start hassling the little kids. My daughter, she was in prep last year and begins grade one tomorrow, she’s six) was filled with talk every day about the schoolyard politics of Cubbyland, who was starting a war with who, who were the bosses this week, who they were setting booby traps for. (They aren’t allowed to do Cubbyland in the summer terms because of the very real possibility of snakes.) As the Principal described it, it’s like Lord of the Flies but without the Piggy killing.

The great thing is that when Fred showed me her ‘cubby’ after school it just looked like a clearing in between three trees to me, with a few random sheets of bark, but you could totally see that to her it was a kingdom.

I begin every day with my kindergarten class outside. We play after everyone else has gone in to start their day. We head over to the climber and play. I generally stand back and try not to interfere with their play. We’re lucky because we have bushes and trees around the climber and these have become the areas of choice for the kids. Mostly I just had to give them permission to play there and set two rules — don’t pick up broken glass and don’t swing your sticks around until you check to see if the way is clear. I suspect many of my collegues wouldn’t approve of the students running and playing with the sticks and other treasures they find. On Fridays, we start our day in the creek valley behind the school. We’re quite lucky to have this natural place so near us, but at other schools I’ve worked at it has just meant being a little creative, but there are always all kinds of “natural” places were I’ve taken kids to play. Never had an injury or parent complaint. I have actually had parents ask me where we go so they can take the rest of the family on the weekends.

I teach high schoolers in the arts department – dance specifically.

They are always a bit thrown off when, after two days of class, I ask them to choreograph their own stuff. They say things like “We don’t know how!” “You didn’t teach us enough!”

And my response is always the same – “Give me a break! You don’t know how to dance? I’m not asking you to assemble a jet engine! Turn on a song you like – and move around!”

With a large portion of our students being highly focused on academic excellence, most of the kids are hyper-attentive to gradepoint averages, standardized test scores, and the like. They are very concerned with how they will be rated by others. They are not familiar with the concept of trusting their own creations, and knowing that what comes from inside of them is valid and worthwhile.

Because of that, I tend to assign a lot of projects that require minimum intervention from me. The older kids teach the middle schoolers once a month, they all have to create their own dance/music video, and they have to choreograph a piece to perform in front of a small group. In my entry level classes, I never say, “You must learn this,” I always say, “You should try this.” Most kids leave class saying, “I thought I would just learn how to dance here – but really, I learned that I am capable of a lot more than I thought I was.”

My #1 tip for early childhood classrooms is to be “process-oriented” rather than “product-oriented”.

The goal of a coloring activity is to learn about colors and practice fine motor coordination, maybe to practice sharing and communicating with others using words…NOT to color in Princess Jasmine so she looks as close as possible to the way she does in the cartoon.

“Product-oriented” activities lose sight of targeted learning objectives in lieu of a teacher-arbited, right-or-wrong end result.

“Process-oriented” activities focus on practice of necessary skills to move toward targeted learning objectives.

When I was a middle school science teacher (I left last year to be a stay-at-home mom) I used a “scaffolding” technique that allowed students to choose most of the activities they did for the unit. They would choose a certain number of subject-related activities to earn a “C” grade (answering book questions, doing labs, playing learning games, watching science videos and taking notes, etc.), and then pick from more open-ended creative activities for a higher grade (opinion essays, crafts, posters, poems, make-your-own worksheets/games, etc.). It is a lot of extra work for the teacher, since you have to make three times as many activities to have a variety, and the classroom is pretty chaotic with so many different activities going on at once. But the great thing about it was that kids had a lot of fun being able to pick which activities they wanted to do, using their strengths and interests to guide their learning. In essence, this curriculum is a sort of “Free-Range Learning,” where all the kids are learning the same subject (like “Rocks and Minerals,” or “Cell Biology”) but they are free to choose just how they learn it.

I do set aside 5 minutes of note-taking every day to make sure the State Standards are covered, and there are 1 or 2 activities per unit that I require every student to do, but other than that you could say my classroom is pretty “free-range.”

If you are interested in some examples, I would be happy to send some unit sheets to you. Just email me – lauren_rae@juno.com

A little late to the game, but here are my ideas from when I used to teach drama and art to elementary school-aged kids. Granted, we were working in a very free minded art school owned by the city of Austin, and we were given a lot of free rein, but at the end of the day, you still had to run your class like one.

Being a theatre major, we’d always start rehearsals with a warm up and I would do that with the kids. We’d stretch, play a fun game (like Red Rover–I had a large classroom fortunately!), and do some vocal exercises. It got noisy and rowdy a lot, but the kids loved it. They were all inner city kids who had never really been able to run around and express themselves that way.

We would also read lots of books that related to the theme for the session and then re-enact them. My favorite activity, and the kids’ too, was where we created our own stories. I would take ideas on characters and then draw them out of a hat, and the kids would each contribute one line to the story. I would write it down and the kids would illustrate their line. Later, we would create costumes and actually enact the story for the parents. The kids learned so much from this: expressing creativity, team work, storytelling, and they all felt like a star at the end. And of course, each kid got a copy of the entire story.

I also left the last ten minutes of class for the kids to do whatever they wanted out of a range of activities. They could either read books quietly, play dress up, draw, or play pre-approved movement games. Their favorite game was a version of Red Light Green Light but involved them holding the yoga tree pose. And each kid was allowed to do what he or she wanted, so there was no need to vote. Invariably, they’d all end up playing the same thing anyway!

I also didn’t have a lot of rules in my class. It all centered on respect for three things: the teacher (me), their classmates, and themselves. I tried to very rarely use the word NO, instead I would re-direct. NO was usually used when someone’s safety was in jeopardy or there was serious trouble. I also utilized a three warning system…three strikes and you were out. Other teachers weren’t so lenient, but at that age, kids forget the rule sometimes when they’re having fun! I only had one incident of serious physical violence the entire time I taught, and I had kids from some rough homes.

I think that art and PE are integral to the free-range movement and unfortunately, too often they’re being cut from school programs. The more we try to stop children from expressing their emotions in healthy constructive ways, the more we set them up for failure later in life. There are ways to allow them their freedom while still following lesson plans; it just takes a lot of creativity! Good luck, Lenore!

I teach university level, so it’s not the same. But I let my students live with the consequences of their actions. Didn’t do your homework? It’s okay by me. (I’m not checking, I’m not marking). But you won’t understand anything we’re doing today.

I found when I stopped checking daily homework, taking daily attendance, and stopped forcing every little thing, my students learned about life a lot faster.

Working in NYC, there isn’t a lot of extra space, not even a lot of extra materials! However, I really like the Daily 5 and the companion book ‘Literacy Cafe’, where students can choose and are responsible for recording their daily literacy activities. Guided reading is also much easier because it is strategy based rather than reading level based.
Like any teacher, I delegate as much of daily routine and record keeping to students as I can (homework checking, handing things out, some bulletin boards, some tech support, cleaning up.
This year, I really like that I am able to use short songs for in class transitions (chairs to rug, lining up, etc). The students have a chance to chat to each other, dance if they want to, clean up at their own pace. The expectation is that they are where they are supposed to by and silent by the end of the song.
Also this year, our 2nd grade team came up with TRUST as an acronym:
TALK out our problems
REFLECT
UNDERSTAND our differences
SUPPORT each other’s learning
TAKE PART every day
as an ongoing effort to get kids to talk to each other and work as a community rather than as against each other (and constantly tattling).

Hi Lenore,

I’m a homeschool teacher…does that count?!
We do activities with other families and groups and for the most part we just let our kids work out their own issues. We sit back and wait… we’re a group of unschoolers, for the most part. There are some that are “helicoptery”, but mostly because of food allergies. We encourage our little ones to put on their own jackets – one, two, flipperoo style. We encourage our children to help one another – this takes some of the stress off the parents! 😉 We take our children to indoor play spaces (despite my dislike of the germy ballpits) and let them run, jump, fall and get hit. We play in the rain and snow. We let the little ones play with sharp objects, teaching them appropriate handling of knives. Yes, two-year-olds with pocket knives and hacksaws.