Advocacy for Early Childhood Educators

Speaking Up for Your Students, Your Colleagues, and Yourself

Colleen Schmit

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000060560
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Didattica generale

Become a better advocate—for your students, for your coworkers, and for yourself—with the valuable strategies in this accessible guidebook. Written with a candid and humorous style, this tool kit reinforces why effective early childhood education matters and the positive impact an effective advocate can have on a child's classroom experience.

Chapters explore how to explain and support best practices, build relationships with students and families, speak up for English language learners and students with exceptionalities, reduce coworker conflict and negativity, and reach out for the help you need.

Equipping readers with practical takeaways and everyday examples of what advocacy in early childhood education actually looks like, Advocacy for Early Childhood Educators is perfect for teachers, coaches, and anyone seeking effective strategies to become a relentless advocate for their students, for each other, and for themselves.

Section 1

Advocacy for Children and Families

Advocacy
1
Research-Based Practices Matter

Oh my gosh. When I began teaching, I started off so fresh faced and ready to change the world. I was absolutely thrilled to have received my first teaching job. I began teaching kindergarten at age 23. I was newly married, and my husband and I did not have a dime to our name. We were living in an apartment that we really couldn’t afford and sleeping on a mattress on the floor with no box springs. Right after we got married, neither of us had real “grown-up” jobs. When we went to apply to lease the apartment, we showed the landlady our diplomas. “Look! We promise we will be responsible adults. See these certificates. This means we can work. We just haven’t found the right jobs yet.” The apartment manager looked at us with a smirk and said, “Okay. Rent is due by the 5th.” Looking back, those first early years of marriage were fun, crazy, hard, growing years. The same was true for my first years of teaching. Fun. Crazy. Hard. Growing.

I had just graduated from the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) with my degree in Elementary Education K–6 and a specialization in early childhood education. In my opinion, UNO had and has a strong teacher’s college. In particular, their early childhood program is stellar. I learned about the what, how, and why of teaching young children. My coursework and the content presented was filled with information on developmental theorists. Piaget, Vygotsky, Maslow, and Froebel were all major league players in my education in undergrad.

So, when I began teaching, I taught the way I was taught to teach. While taking undergrad coursework, it became extremely obvious that young children learn through movement and manipulation. I knew I needed to allow my kids to move and I did just that. For example, if I was providing a big book read-aloud on the carpet and my kindergartners were wiggling around and fidgeting with their shoes or sitting on their knees and this behavior did not interfere with anyone near or around them, I allowed it. I knew 5-year-olds fidget. They rock. They move.

I also knew from coursework that young children needed time throughout the day to talk. They learn best when not restricted by rigid expectations. I wanted to elicit the ideas that were in their little brains so I knew what they understood and where I could possibly take them. At the time, I had been hired at a school where 90% of my students were English language learners with their primary language being Spanish. My first year, I taught in a full-day inclusion kindergarten classroom. Many of my babies did not have pre-K or Head Start experiences. In fact, most of my children had been home with mom for their first five years and our classroom was their first school encounter. Many had limited English language skills. I quickly realized it would be very important for me to allow lots of time for my kiddos to talk and share their ideas and stories. I allowed my students to talk often and in any language they would prefer! I wanted them to grow in their English acquisition skills, but I also knew it was important for them to keep a tight hold on their home language. Again, if I was performing a read-aloud (I use the word performing because that is honestly what you are doing when you are teaching) and my students shouted out a thought or asked a question or made a connection, I did not correct that behavior with a redirection like, “Oh my. Raise your hand.” As long as everyone felt that they had an opportunity to share or contribute I allowed a freedom of conversation in our classroom. Now, let me make a little disclaimer about behavior management here before you get out your pitchforks and torches. Yes. Of course, you want to have behavioral expectations in your classroom. However, the behavioral expectations that you implement must directly match the needs and abilities of the children you are serving. If you have ever spent significant time with 5-year old children, you will quickly understand that sitting still and quiet on the carpet for extended periods of time is not their strength or really within their abilities. Having an expectation that young children sit quietly and still on the carpet for a 20-minute read-aloud is not developmentally appropriate. There. I said it. And since I am already on my soapbox, let me add another little tidbit here. When I use the term young children throughout this book, I am talking about all children in early childhood. Early childhood education includes children ages birth through eight years. That means that third grade is technically part of early childhood education. Are we treating it as such? In my opinion, hell no.

Another huge nugget of wisdom I had carried over from my undergrad education was the understanding that young children learn when we make connections based off their interests. When I began teaching, I used a style known as the project approach. The project approach ties in all curriculum and standards based off the interests of the children in the classroom. You tie in everything you do in the classroom and develop a project. The project truly takes a life of its own. For Type A teachers, this can be a challenge. Luckily for me I am a Type A minus teacher, which means I can adjust. I will be totally honest with you, teaching using the project approach can require a bit of extra work and a lot of flexibility on the teacher’s end. You must have a strong understanding of your state standards and where you need to go throughout the course of your school year. You also must have a good understanding of developmental milestones and developmentally appropriate practices. Teaching this way is hard, but oh so magical and fun. Teaching any way is hard. Don’t you want to add in the magical and fun components too?

Here is an example of a clearer picture of what the project approach really is: One September morning during my first year of teaching, I was leading a morning meeting on the carpet. My objective was to allow children to share stories about their weekend and practice using new vocabulary that they were acquiring in English. All of a sudden, a huge, black spider went crawling across the carpet in the block center. In September in Nebraska, the weather changes at night. The cooler weather promotes all sorts of creepy crawlers to enter your classroom (e.g., crickets, grasshoppers, and big, black spiders). Of course, the kids spotted the spider right away and were not at all interested in any objective or task I was implementing on the rug during whole-group time. All attention was on the spider. I am going to make a generalization here and say 5-year-olds are naturally and intrinsically interested in living things. I knew I couldn’t compete with the hairy spider on the rug, so I didn’t. Instead, I asked a child to grab our insect catcher from the science center and I reluctantly and bravely placed the spider in the clear bug observer.

The children had all sorts of interesting questions about the spider that I absolutely did not have the answers to: “Mrs. Schmit! Where does this spider sleep?” “Mrs. Schmit! Does the spider have a husband?” “Mrs. Schmit! How much can the spider eat each day?” Since I am not an expert on spiders, I encouraged my class to list all spider questions down during writing time and we would use them to help create a KWL board. A KWL board is a tried-and-true graphic organizer to help decipher what you Know about a topic, what you Want to know about a topic, and eventually summarize what you Learned about the topic. Once we had our KWL started, it was obvious that spiders and insects around us could naturally take root into an inquiry-based learning opportunity.

During our project, I integrated all subject areas. We made spider patterns in math, we talked about the parts of a spider and we compared and contrasted arachnids versus insects in science, we baked spiders out of biscuits, researched spiders during reading groups, and each and every learning center in the classroom had something spider related. We sang spider nursery rhymes, created webs in art, and acted out how a spider catches its prey. We were all things spiders. Now, like I mentioned, this type of teaching and guiding takes extra work. Some may say it is too challenging or unrealistic. However, it is so much fun. The kids were engaged. Heck! I was engaged, learning right alongside my students.

So here I was my first year in, doing what I was taught to do in undergrad. Teaching the way I was taught to teach. I loved my job. I loved my school. I loved my coworkers and administrators. I was utilizing developmentally appropriate practices and thought this was the way it was supposed to work. However, I received a lot of feedback from others that this is not the way it works within an elementary building.

Many coworkers and members of the leadership team had questions, comments, or concerns about the way I was implementing instruction in my classroom. (All names, grade levels, and details about the educators shared in my tales from my years in the classroom have been changed. None of my coworkers were nasty, rotten people. I began teaching in 2003 when we were heavy into the holds on No Child Left Behind. Everyone was doing their very best with what they thought was right at the time.)

The first-grade teacher would see my children waiting, wiggling, and chatting in the hall to use the restroom (not interrupting any learning that was happening clear down the hall) and she would teacher shame me in front of the kids, “Oh kindergartners, when you get to first grade I am going to have to teach you the hallway expectations. Mrs. Schmit, it is October and your kids don’t know how to sit quietly and still in line.” I did not like how that shame felt so I would redirect my students with a “Give me 5 Kindergarten.” They would respond and sit quietly, looking bored and miserable.

The music teacher would come into my classroom. She would bring scarves, and triangles, and all sorts of engaging materials to the carpet and my children would be on their knees, excited to see her, excited to see the cool stuff she brought along with her, and she would have a fit, “Oh no you don’t. You sit quietly. Do not sit on your knees. Do not talk to me without raising your hands!” “Mrs. Schmit, your children do not know how to behave on the carpet. For the last 10 minutes of music class everyone will put their heads down on their desks for a time out.” Now, I really did not like that. It was one thing for me to be teacher shamed by the first-grade teacher in the hall, but it was another thing for my children to be punished for the classroom expectation that I had set up in our room.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was when I began to receive feedback from my own grade level team. I had a fairly large kindergarten team at my school. There were three other veteran kindergarten teachers in my grade level and they were lovely. They welcomed me into the school and truly tried to help me acclimate as a new teacher. When these lovely, veteran teachers saw large spiders hanging all over my classroom they had some words for me: “Um. What do you have going on in here?” Oh this big, black spider crawled across the floor last week and the kids were so into it! We have started a project-based study on spiders. “Oh no. It is September. We are learning about apples.” But the kids don’t care about apples! They want to learn about spiders and bugs. “No, Mrs. Schmit. It is September. We have long-ranged planned the year. Right now, we are learning about apples and patterns. Check your pacing guide. It is all right there in the pacing guide.”

Like I mentioned, I loved my school. I loved my job. I loved my coworkers. I especially loved the children and families I was serving. I wanted to stay in my district for the long haul. In order for this to happen, I felt like I must conform to the institution I was in. This would mean no more loosey goosey classroom expectations. I conformed and became the queen of rigid expectations. I was a drill sergeant. I would ring a bell and the children would quietly and quickly line up. During small-group rotations, there was no talking while moving groups. I still was nice. I still had a smile on my face for the kids, but what was missing was a true sense of relationship building. I no longer wanted my students to fidget or move on the carpet. Now if someone was on their knees while seated on the carpet during my read-aloud, I would stop what I was doing and redirect their perceived “misbehavior.” Oh my. Let’s make sure we are all seated correctly. Crisscross applesauce and put your hands in your lap.

The learning environment quickly changed from being “our” classroom to “my” classroom. Voice and choice were absent from instruction. Instead of using the project approach, I taught using themes. The major difference between thematic teaching and project-based learning is choice. The themes were my choice. Project-based learning happened naturally based on what they kids were interested in. Now when a big black spider crawled across the floor, I stepped on it instead of catching it in our bug catcher. After all, we had work to do and the spider did not match my theme or what was happening in the pacing guide.

Once I conformed to the institution, I was praised. Every observation I had by any member of the leadership team during my time in the classroom was glowing with strengths. Other teachers were pulled into my classroom to observe how I was teaching. “Go watch and see what Mrs. Schmit can do with the kindergartners. They are so quiet. A lot of work is happening there. Go observe how she gets them to work.” Before my conforming, a quiet classroom to me was uncomfortable and weird. Now I was being praised for compliance and silence. This type of thinking is completely backward from everything we have known for hundreds of years about how young children learn.

Gradually, I became less and less of the version of the teacher I always thought I was called to become. I became focused on rigor, getting my to-do list done, and encouraging high reading levels and less engaged in developing positive relationships, creating creative thinkers, and helping children to enjoy learning and school. Now not only was teaching still really hard, but also it was no longer fun. I lost my zest. I lost my focus. I forgot my true purpose as an educator.

My head and heart began to battle. My head barked, “If you want to stay here and be successful you better whip these kids into shape and follow what is being asked of you.” “They must be ready for first grade!” My heart quietly murmured, “You know this isn’t the right way to do this. This doesn’t feel right.” My headstrong thoughts won, and I continued down a road I never should have taken.

Let me take just a moment here to note who is 100% responsible for my conformation to an institution: me, moi, yo, yours truly. My conformation, so to speak, is the sole responsibility of me. It was no one else’s fault. Like I mentioned earlier, my peers and leadership team were simply doing the best with what they knew and had. I truly believe everyone had the best intentions for serving children. I so wish that as a 23-year-old, I would have had the voice and articulation to speak up and explain to my coworkers and administrators why I was doing what I was doing. I did not have that voice at the time. I had developmental theorist like Jean Piaget in my back pocket but I was afraid to pull him out.

Something else began to happen at home that influenced me professionally. I became a mother. Eventually my husband, Bob, and I got real jobs, a box-spring bed, and enough money (sort of) to start having our own children. We currently have four beautiful little rugrats ranging in age from 3 to 12. Next summer, there will not be a new baby in our house. We are blessed and happy but at maximum clown capacity. I am a donkey on the edge and adding one more to our messy little mix might throw me completely overboard or I may run away from home.

When I just had my oldest child and was working as a kindergarten teacher, I could barely keep my head above the water. I could keep up the façade that everything was fine. I am a good teacher. I am a good mother. My classroom was organized and so was my home. I looked really good on paper and especially cute on social media. After baby number two came, I was kicked square in the butt. Our second child was the exact opposite type of infant as our oldest. This is a tale as old as time, and I believe it is mother nature’s way of tricking you into have a second baby. Number Two had a milk and soy protein intolerance. She had colic. We both developed thrush while I was nursing her. “I’ll show you what you can do with early childhood degree, Ma. You think you know young children? Let me teach you some things.”

Suddenly it became increasingly difficult to pull off the façade that I was super mama and super teacher. I would work with young children all day and come home to my own beautiful babies and have nothing left to give. I would plop the girls on my couch and lie there like a zombie version of myself. The television did a lot of my mothering in the evenings. Bob was working long hours in those early years of parenting. Our little family had a lot of love, but it often felt as though we were in survival mode (sometimes it still does).

Being an unenthusiastic shell of a mom was not how I pictured being a mother. Teaching without joy was not how I pictured being a teacher. At that point in my life, I knew I needed to make a change. I always saw teaching as my calling or my vocation. It was scary as hell to imagine leaving. I never thought I could do anything else. At 23, I had envisioned being an old lady sitting on the rug with smiling kids barely able to get up from the carpet but still loving what I was doing. Now I was in my early thirties thinking of leaving my calling. Quitting. Giving up. I felt more than defeated, but I knew I needed to reset.

Luckily for me, I found a job at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) working as a program evaluator in Child Development. I never knew such a thing even existed. It was a pivotal moment in my life to decide to jump and leave teaching, but I am thankful every day that I did jump. Stepping away from the classroom meant that I had an opportunity to reset and get my priorities straight again. During my first month of work, my supervisor at UNMC came to me and asked if I would like to attend a training on a new observational tool that we would be using to evaluate teachers across the state of Nebraska. Now, since I was spending my time recharging my battery away from the classroom, peeing whenever I wanted, and eating lunch like a human being, I was more than open to learning something new. Do you think that during my last years as a teacher I would have had the same response if my principal came to me and told me I needed to learn a new observational tool to evaluate my teaching style? Um. Absolutely not! “Why do I need to learn something like that?!” “You have already told me I am doing everything the way I am supposed to!” “I don’t have time.”

The Classroom Assessment Scoring System or CLASS tool by Teachstone was the new observational tool that I would be using to evaluate teachers across the state of Nebraska. During the beginning of the t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• My Why Is the Same, My How Is Different
• Section 1 Advocacy for Children and Families
• Section 2 Advocacy for Colleagues
• Section 3 Advocacy for Yourself
• Conclusion: Now What?
• References