Building and Supporting Resilience in Our Community

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As we gear up for another round of shoveling and dealing with the headaches of the increasing snowfall this seems like a good time to talk about resilience.  

The Early Childhood Advisory Council (ECAC) is a group of stakeholders who meet monthly to discuss how best to support children and families in Somerville.  They spent September-January closely examining key issues and reporting on what is going on in their agencies.  Amid discussions about transportation, food insecurity, housing, sleep, play, mental health and physical well-being, quality early education, immigration, and out of school opportunities, a topic rose to the surface - building resilience and supporting families dealing with stress.

The ECAC will spend the rest of this year engaged in advocacy and action related to resilience. This is an opportunity to re-visit the “The Campaign to Nurture Resilience in Somerville: Helping Kids Thrive” - an effort by Somerville Family Learning Collaborative (SFLC) ten years ago.  The concept of resilience has always been key to supporting Somerville families in raising their children to be successful in school and life. Now we want to extend the concept of resilience to the entire community - agencies, schools, and the city as a whole.

Amy Bamforth, Early Childhood Mental Health Specialist at SFLC, spoke to the group in early January and helped define and dispel some myths about resilience. We watched a short video called Supporting Resilience packed with information. Consider sharing it with your colleagues, friends, or local municipal representatives (city council, school committees) and talking about it with them. 

RESILIENCE IS - A universal capacity which allows a person, group or community to prevent, minimize or overcome the damaging effects of adversity. It includes:

• Our inborn capacity for self-righting and for transformation and change.
• A process of connectedness, of linking to people, to interests, and ultimately to life itself.
• The ability to defy negative predictions as a function of meaningful protective factors or interventions
• The capacity to bounce back overcome adversarial factors from challenges typically predictive of failure.
• An ecological phenomenon. It cannot be developed by sheer will power within the at-risk person; it is developed through interactions within the environment, families, school, neighborhoods and the larger community.

This last bullet is really important.  Resilience isn't all "nature".  Rather it is cultivated through the connections and relationships we build in our communities, in our work together.  And resilience can be "status quo" - sort of a stabilized state, out of crisis.  But there is also "transformational resilience" that involves bigger changes in people's lives. This means looking for and building on personal strengths in individuals, families, schools, and communities. 

Turns out there are some specific things we can do together.  The Center for the Study of Social Policy's Strengthening Families Initiative has a nice summary of Protective Factors we can foster and tap into to help children and families move towards resilience. They are:

• Parental Resilience
• Social Connections
• Knowledge of Parenting and Child Development
• Concrete Support in Times of Need
• Social Emotional Competence of Children.

Whether our work is in schools, social service agencies, municipal offices, health care, etc. we must ask ourselves:

How do I foster protective factors in my daily work with children, families, and citizens? 

What does building resilience look like in schools?  In government agencies?  In hospitals and doctor's offices? 

Finally, Amy Bamforth also shared a checklist from “A Guide to Promoting Resilience in Children: Strengthening the Human Spirit: by Edith Grotberg, 1995. Here are a few of the items that parents, teachers, and others who work with and serve families should think about.

The child has someone who loves him/her totally (unconditionally).
The child has someone outside the home she/he can tell about problems and feelings.
The child is praised for doing things on his/her own.
The child can count on her/his family being there when needed.
The child knows someone he/she wants to be like.
The child believes things will turn out all right.
The child is willing to try new things.
The child likes to achieve in what he/she does.
The child feels that what she/he does makes a difference in how things come out.
The child can focus on a task and stay with it.
The child has a sense of humor.
The child makes plans to do things.

The Early Childhood Advisory Council meets the first Tuesday of each month from 10:00-11:30 at the SFLC at the Cummings School at 42 Prescott Street in Somerville.  For more information email lkuh@k12.somerville.ma.us. Hope to see you there!

Snow Day! Snow Day?: Things To Do When We Can't Go Outside.

The possibility of a snow day can be exciting. People stay inside, spend time with family, and everything moves at a slower pace.  We get a reprieve from the rush of daily life.
However, this lovely image can be very different when there are young children to take care of - especially when weather (or even illness or school breaks) forces us inside for several days.  

A blanket on the floor creates a place for
art.Note the tiny amounts of fingerpaint
placed on small papers for each child.
Just the right amount for little hands and
less mess.

In-Home and Family Childcare Providers know first hand how to help children be engaged throughout the day and we can borrow ideas from them to get us through the days inside. Thanks to the Somerville Family Learning Collaborative, the Parent Home Visiting Program, and the Beautiful Stuff Project for the great ideas!

You don't need a lot of special equipment or furniture to make a space for children to play and do projects. A shower curtain, sheet, plastic table cloth, a blanket (see left), or a paper grocery bag cut open work fine. This turns any space into a play space that is contained and protects areas where you don't want an activity happening. 
Blankets and cushions are  perfect for making forts and hiding spaces. Places to Play at Home has great ideas.

Check the recycle bin.  Egg cartons, boxes,

and masking tape make great sculptures.

Drawing in coffee grounds.

Box tops (shoe box or other) and 

masa harina, cornmeal, salt.

Also think kitchen:  Fill the sink with water or better yet, bring in some snow from outside.  Tongs, basters, add cups, containers, toys and things that can float or be buried in snow.  Eye droppers with colored water for colorful water or snow.  Pull up a stool next to the sink and roll up their sleeves.

The links below contain ideas of things you can do, often with materials you already have, to keep little bodies and minds busy.  

No mess collage - contact paper and bits of

fabric, paper, etc. From SPS Smile Program.

Somerville Early Education Pinterest Site

Recipes to Make at Home

Things to Do on a Snow Day





December flashback: Here are the links from the December blog on non-toy gifts for the holidays and there are great ideas for things you can do at home:

Teachers Resisting Unhealthy Children's Entertainment (TRUCE) has some great ideas for family fun at home or at school using easy to find materials.  Ideas for forts, cardboard boxes, socks, playdough, etc. with materials readily available at home.  

Martin's Big Words, Our Big Questions

A few years ago, when I was planning anti-bias curriculum for my preschool classroom and working at the Eliot-Pearson Children's School at Tufts University, I was introduced to the book, Martin's Big Words by Doreen Rappaport, illustrated by Bryan Collier.  Wonderful in its simplicity and complexity teachers and parents can read the full text or just the "big words" which stand alone as powerful reminders of what we must focus on to ensure equity and fairness for all. The Somerville Early Education Pinterest site now has some ideas related to this book and Anti-Bias Education.

Approaching topics related to injustice, prejudice, race, class, gender, and differences in ability is all part of Anti-Bias Education.  "Anti-bias work is essentially optimistic work about the future of our children" (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2010). It involves helping children to learn about how they are different from and similar to others. While not easy topics, children are uniquely attuned to equity issues - they know what is fair and what is not.  When approached thoughtfully, Anti-Bias Education has many possible entry points.   Why focus on Anti-Bias Education?  Because: 

• Parents want their children to have every opportunity to succeed.  
• Teachers want to meet every child's needs.  
• People charged with stewardship of education initiatives want to support children and families. 

Towards these ends we have to ask ourselves some big questions.  And we have to come up with some big answers.  Here are some of the big questions Somerville will be grappling with this year and an introduction to some groups you may or may not be familiar with.  

In the coming months this blog will take some time to focus on anti-bias curriculum, culturally responsive teaching, and how various groups are working to create access, equity, and quality programming for families and children in our city. 

Some big questions:

The Kindergarten Readiness Group:  What do children need to know and be able to do to be ready for school and how can we promote play-based curriculum to support readiness in the face of academic pressures?
(This professional learning community is a group of teachers from Somerville Public Schools, Head Start, and community center-based early childhood programs.)

The Early Childhood Advisory Council:  How can we build resilience and support families dealing with stress? 
(This group of critical stakeholders in Somerville is hosted by the Somerville Family Learning Collaborative, SomerPromise, & Somerville Public Schools and meets monthly to talk about supporting children and families. It includes representation from organizations that provide services related to education, health, the arts, housing, early intervention, community-based early childhood programs, mental health, physical well-being, food security, out of school programming, home visiting, playgroups, homelessness, dual language learners, etc.)

The Early Education Steering Committee:  What does it mean to provide a universal kindergarten readiness system that prepares children and families for success in school and beyond?
(This steering committee oversees the Early Learning Challenge Grant and meets monthly to engage in critical long-term and short-term strategic planning with a focus on universal kindergarten readiness, quality programming, quality teaching, and family engagement. It includes representatives from Somerville Public Schools, the Somerville Family Learning Collaborative, Center-Based Programs, Head Start, Tufts University, and SomerPromise.)

Martin Luther King Day reminds us of some tremendous achievements and how much work we still have left to do. Take some time this day to think about what you stand for, how you might move forward, and who your partners will be in creating change.



Anti-Bias Resources:

Download of the first chapter of Anti-Bias Education for Young Children & Ourselves
http://www.naeyc.org/store/files/store/TOC/254.pdf

Teaching Tolerance
http://www.tolerance.org/critical-practices

Teaching for Change
http://www.teachingforchange.org/programs/anti-bias-education

Executive Function Part 2: Tools to Support Choice Making & Self-Regulation

In Part 1 of this series on executive function I wrote about how to organize shelving to help children make choices and how to demonstrate choice making.  In this post we will talk about tools that support choice making at school and at home.

When you work in schools, whether the children know you well or not, they will tell you things that are important to them.  As you kneel by a table to watch children playing with counting cubes it is not unusual to have someone turn to you and say something like "I have a dog." or "It is my brother's birthday." Recently I was walking with some children to the cafeteria and a boy whispered to me with a great sense of pride, "I am the table wiper. That is my job."

In my house we had a job chart on the refrigerator.  List of kids names down one side, jobs across the top.  The jobs changed each week.  Instilling personal responsibility through meaningful activity gives children the chance to internalize motor planning skills and experience confidence.  Sarah Ward notes that adding "er" to a verb can help children to visualize themselves doing that activity. Instead of "Wipe off the table." you could say, "You are the table wiper." or "We need a table wiper today."

An important aspect of executive function skills is the ability to make decisions and engage in purposeful, meaningful work. This helps children organize their thinking and develop self-control and confidence.

However, opportunities for children to engage in self-directed activity can be scarce. What opportunities do children have to make choices that involve decision making, accompanied by important motor planning experiences such as carrying materials, making choices from shelves  - and not simply have things put on tables for them? 

Think buffet, not full service restaurant.

But before we choose our entrees or get started on our jobs we have some things to do.

Asking children to choose and engage in activities without first demonstrating how to handle materials and clean up can result in a chaotic atmosphere at home and at school. Play the "Clean Up Game" to model.  Have the children watch you take out several materials. Put them on tables or on mats on the floor or the rug.  Ask children to watch carefully to see if they can remember where you got things. (At home, emptying the dish drainer or dish washer is a great activity.) Then ask for volunteers to put things back. Demonstrate how to carry trays, tubs, chairs, etc.  Show children how to handle materials carefully whether it is a small laundry basket at home or a tub of blocks at school. (Have small children put their thumbs on top of the edges of a tub or tray or plate when they carry things for stability).

Responsive Classroom techniques use Guided Discovery Elements to introduce everything from water color paints, to dictionaries, to crayons, to the scale in the video: 

• Introduction, Naming, & Care of Materials
• Generating and Modeling Ideas
• Exploration
• Sharing of Work

See You Tube for examples of this process - Guided Discovery of a Balance. Notice that the teacher is on the floor with the children.  I think this lesson is actually a little long and requires too much wait time for most children, but the elements are there.

Montessori teachers also do very thorough large and small group presentations of materials from dollhouses to specific didactic materials and You Tube has some examples as well.

To learn more about executive function see The Art of Control, a great resource for classroom and home ideas.

Now for the buffet - Choice Boards are one way to help children make choices once they have finished a center or required activity, or can be used for your free choice time to help children put closure on play and make decisions about what to do next.

There are lots of different versions of these.  Sometimes the "boards" are in the actual areas of the room where children "sign in and out" of a playspace by putting a card or tag with their name on it on the board near the area.  No more spaces on the board means that area is full. Here are some Choice Boards from a very quick Pinterest surf.



Healey Head Start

This choice board uses pictures of children and Velcro backing for photos and for the actual activity cards. Notice that there are a potential of 4 spaces at each center but some are covered with a black square indicating that fewer children can go to that activity.  Also note that there are really three types of choices here:

1. Static areas, such as "blocks" or "easel"
2. Discrete activity  at a table such as "magnets",
3. Dynamic area that has many choices within it such as "writing center" or "math shelf" or "art area".  These last type of choices give children practice making decisions about what they  might want to do within a particular content area.

The choice board below is painted homosote (really inexpensive from the hardware store), small cup hooks, and paper key tags for children's names. Each card represents an activity of one of the three types mentioned above.

Important is that when a child finishes one activity and cleans it up (or at least prepares the  materials for the next person in some way), they must return to the board before going to the next activity.  For many children this is an exercise in self-regulation.  It forces them to think:  "Am I finished?"  "What must I do to make this area ready for my friends?"  "What do I want to do next and how will I get there?" 



Small key tags with children's names on them

are moved from hook to hook by children as they

decide what to do next.

Child Study and Development Center, UNH

Like everything else, the choice boards also need a full introduction and modeling.  But the resulting self-regulation will be worth it.  I also advocate for having children approach the choice board by "child" not by "activity".  So I never say, "Who wants to go to blocks today?" That simply puts me in the position of choosing for children and creates overt competition.  Instead I ask, "Who thinks they know a few things they might want to choose today?  Remember if an area is full when I call you, make a different choice and you can change choices when there is space."  The children's pictures or key tags are on a small mat in front of the choice board and children are called to make their choice.

 

 

Think about how you  might want to start off the new year with a job chart or a choice board and help children become "builders", "sweepers", "dishwasher emptiers" "counters" and "readers".

 

Happy New Year and more posts in January!

 

Rethinking Holiday Gifts: Being Crafty about Saving Money and Sparking Creativity

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I know I spent some time this weekend thinking about holiday gifts for my family and friends.  As an educator I am aware of the power of the toy industry and commercialism on our spending habits.  A friend recently said that she avoided Black Friday sales after realizing that most of what she bought that day ended up in the yard sale pile at the end of the summer.

So what makes a good gift for young children?   Sometimes it is not what is on the shelves (or online) at the major toy stores. Here are some ideas for saving money and giving gifts that spark creativity and thinking. Teachers can also think about these ideas for their dramatic play areas in the classroom or for community service projects to make for children in other settings.

Teachers Resisting Unhealthy Children's Entertainment (TRUCE) has some great ideas for family fun at home or at school using easy to find materials.  Ideas for forts, cardboard boxes, socks, playdough, etc. can be used as inspiration for a "kit" that you put together yourself.  The Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood has a nice guide to commercial free holidays with ideas for "coupons" you can give.  I know as a parent I like to receive coupons for extra dishwasher emptying, laundry folding, dog walking, car cleaning, etc. from my kids.

Assistant principal at the Capuano, Alli Franke, made this craft purse for her niece using a repurposed bag. Items like glue, tape, left over wrapping paper, stickers are easy to find at drugstores or Staples - the biggest expense was the zig-zag scissors and glitter pens.  Dollar bins at places like Target or craft stores have inexpensive supplies you can add.

When my children were little they loved playing spy and superhero. We made them a spy/superhero kit (a shoebox covered with paper) with a small flashlight, magnifying glasses, safety goggles, sunglasses, a cape (piece of fabric or pillowcase), a thrift store baseball cap, old keys on a key chain, small notebook with a little pencil, carabiners that can hook onto belt loops to carry items - total cost usually around $10-15, sometimes less.

Think kitchen chef kit - whisk, bowl, little rolling pin, etc.

Think gardening - seeds, small pots, paint pens to decorate pots, soil, bulbs to force open during the winter, small trowel.

Instead of the toy store, think about the supermarket and hardware store as a place to shop!

Let us know if you have ideas we should add and I will put them up here and in the Family and Teacher pages above.

_________________________________________________________________

Science Kit at Home - ideas for making a home science kit.

Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood - lot of good information here on how much advertising is directed at our children and the need for parent intervention, especially in talking to our children about toys that do more harm than good (think recent hubbub over the Barbie who tells us she needs help with technology from the boy doll).

Interesting piece, Hobbies in the Home on the toy industry and  extolling the benefits of play and passing down one's interests to our children.

"We don't sing!"

Recently, Maura Mendoza, a parent liaison, reminded a child as he went out the door at dismissal, "Tell your mom what you did at school today...you play, you read, you sing..."

He interrupted her at that point saying, "We don't sing!"

Now Maura knows that teachers are using music with children and that they go to music class once a week.  But the child's response made her think about children's perception of what "counts" as singing at school. 

The next day she brought her acoustic guitar and visited five classrooms during "choice time." After that children were singing a long the hallways, during drop-off and dismissal time and of course every time they saw her at school!  

This led to continue her project - "Music Mondays" - a once a month 20 minute session right after preschool dismissal at 1:45. There were sign ups with a flyer and sign up sheet.

About 30 families signed up and over 40 families ultimately came, lured in by the music and obvious event happening. 

What Maura found is that not only do children love singing but their families joined right in once they learned the words. Important here is that Maura sang songs that were in children's home languages or had "nonsense" words that were easy to learn and where you really couldn't make a mistake. For example, songs like Ram, Sam, Sam (which I learned as Rum, Sum, Sum) have many versions and can easily be adapted. 

Singing in front of other people can be anxiety producing, especially if you are not confident as a singer. But you know what?  The children are not music critics - they really just want to sing, belt it out, join their voices with yours.  So singing in your own voice is actually crucial to song learning, song sharing, and skill building.  When you use your own voice you can adapt, slow things down, speed them up, stop and explain.  CDs are great for learning songs but are no substitute for our own voices. 

Music also has other benefits:

• Learning songs in another language 
• Song charts used in classrooms are good for vocabulary & word recognition
• Keeping the beat is important for math and literacy - listening for and practicing the patterns of a song
• Singing supports expressive language
• Rhyming, rhythm helps with memory and motor control

When children sing every day at school they will sing at home, and parents will want to learn the songs too. Also, ask parents to teach you songs in a child's home language. Consider sending home words or links to YouTube videos or even make a CD of the children singing that parents can play at home so everyone can sing together.  And parents can share the songs they sang when they were children - your kids will love them!

Rick Saunders, Director of Music for Somerville Public Schools shares the following resources for families and teachers:

Singing and the Development of Language Skills

The Importance of Singing to Your Baby
Four Important Reasons to Include Music

The Benefits of Singing

Thanking Our Teachers

As Thanksgiving approaches "thankful" curriculum emerges from classrooms.  Teachers work with children to surface what they are thankful or grateful for - important lessons in what may be children's first public expressions of gratitude. Children know what is important:  noodles, smocks, family, shoes, Ninja Turtles, even sisters. No one would argue that helping children to be thankful is valuable - and so we must also think about how we value our teachers.

A recent Washington Post article - Teacher to Parents - has been posted numerous times on Facebook in the past week or so.  In it a teacher explains to parents about why she cannot tell all the details of a particular child who has been identified as "that kid".  Teachers must maintain confidentiality but also a commitment to working for, advocating for each child.  This means that while much of a teacher's work may be public, there is much that happens behind the  scenes that often goes unnoticed, and many times unrewarded. In the past weeks I have seen countless acts of support in classrooms for children, your children. The article is worth a read, especially the list at the end of what a teacher might do daily for a child.
For these things we can be thankful.

Last week NIEER (National Institute of Early Education Research) highlighted findings from the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment's new report, Worthy Work, STILL Unlivable Wages: The Childhood Workforce 25 Years after the National Child Care Staffing Study.  NIEER reinforces what we already know - that early education matters, whether children are home with family members (who are their first teachers) or in family childcare settings, center-based preschools, or in the public schools.

 

We have far to go in figuring out equity in compensation across settings, but are thankful for those who continue to work with young children in all these types of programs.

                             
In Somerville we are thankful to have received an Early Learning Challenge Grant from the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care (EEC) for the past three years.  This funding allows us to look carefully at programming across the city with a goal of making sure every child is ready for kindergarten. We are especially mindful of the alignment of various professional development opportunities for teachers. In the coming year we will work to bring teachers  together to share their work with each other - and we will share that work here on these pages.

 I am thankful to have such thoughtful and committed teachers across the city to collaborate with as we work for all children.

Thank a teacher this week.