Our videos are all about observing the work of effective teachers and the classroom communities they nurture. The central role of teachers is to help children become "genuine learners." How effective teachers best establish learning situations is the common theme of all our programs.
And, we don’t tell you as much as show you — as in one of our first grade classrooms where Michael and Kwame are fighting over a game, and teacher Joe brings together a circle of students to sort out the conflict and learn from it (Values Go to School). Or when Deeto, a kindergarten student proudly spells “strawberry” and his teacher, Najima helps him announce it to the class (From Pictures to Words). Or in pre-school, how Arianna, Jill and Jimmy build a train out of chairs — one of many ways that children make use of space and situations filled with imaginative opportunity (When a Child Pretends).
Because we know that every child is unique, our programs display teaching situations that are an alternative to the test-driven approaches that increasingly direct classroom practice. These videos offer ways to incorporate individualized teaching into classrooms that also must address these mandates. Our programs suggest that to support children's life in school, it is essential to attend both to the individual learner and to the classroom community.
As you know, for children to become active learners, they need not only self-confidence but a sense of enjoyment in the learning process. Enjoyment comes when children experience the material they are learning as meaningful in relation to their own lives.
Our programs demonstrate the importance for children of all ages to have opportunities to engage in exploration, make discoveries and see relationships between ideas. A teacher's guidance is critical to whether children have a positive or negative feeling about the learning process in their early years, and has far-reaching consequences for their future performance in school.
The aim of The Learning Child Series is to suggest approaches in education that can be used to help children acquire “habits of mind” — general intellectual abilities and strategies that can be used in a wide variety of learning situations. These include genuine curiosity, a focused sense of inquiry, the desire and ability to make connections, problem solving strategies, “as-if” reasoning, and the ability to understand differing points of views. Assisting teachers and parents in nurturing these habits of mind so that children become active and genuine learners is the ultimate goal of The Learning Child Series.
