|
Emotionally Responsive Practice
Young children come to school with their
own agendas for learning. Developmentally appropriate early
childhood programs support these agendas by allowing children
to explore and discover areas of interest. Emotionally Responsive
early childhood programs are conscious of supporting children’s
emotional well-being and acknowledge that children’s
developmental issues must be welcome and understood by teachers
and caregivers.
Environment
The classroom environment lets children
know what teachers value and extends an invitation for children
to focus on the valued activities. Emotionally Responsive
classroom environments reflect children’s developmental
concerns, personal, familial, and cultural attributes, and
provides an opportunity to deal with real experience through their play.
Songs, stories, and photographs can acknowledge
the range of young children’s emotions. In addition to
books, blocks, paints, and manipulatives, dramatic play materials
can allow children to dress up and take roles, create their
own dramas, and design mini-environments. Dolls can reflect
cultural diversity, and accessories can symbolize familiar
aspects of family life.
Emotionally Responsive classrooms have an
area that is soft and relaxing, perhaps including puppets
and soft animals, and some well-supervised enclosed spaces.
They are clean and well cared for. Children can expect to
find desired items in a stable location. Toys and other learning
materials are well maintained and removed or fixed if they
break.
Teacher-Child Interaction
Teachers engaged in Emotionally Responsive
Practice acknowledge that they have an important role in the
lives of the young children in their care. Young children
come to depend on the teacher’s availability. They learn
to read their teacher’s expressions and anticipate responses.
The teacher becomes an organizing presence
in the life of a young child and may give children their first
experience with becoming connected to someone outside of the
home. Therefore, Emotionally Responsive teachers are consistent
in their availability to children and let children know if
they are going to be unavailable.
Emotionally Responsive teachers are able
to tune into the developmental issues that are important for
the kids. They know that children who are worried about separation
have trouble staying focused and being receptive. They do
not attempt to distract children from these concerns, but
develop language to address such issues within the classroom.
For example, a teacher may say, “I
wonder if you are missing mommy. Would you like to write her
a letter?” If the child bursts into tears, the Emotionally
Responsive teacher is comforting and reassuring, saying something
like, “I know you feel really sad about being away from
mommy right now. A lot of kids get sad about that when they
first start school. Let me show you a story about a little
boy who felt sad like you.”
Emotionally Responsive teachers allow children
to connect to them and feel attached to them. They also must
help children to begin to use symbols to express developmental
as well as experiential reality. Providing a child with a
book that symbolizes his or her dilemma tells the child that
the teacher understands and can offer a positive image of
the emotional experience while extending an invitation for
communication on another level.
Curriculum
Teachers engaged in Emotionally Responsive
Practice use curriculum as an avenue for helping children
to integrate unresolved developmental issues or difficult
life experience and to invite children to express emotional
life in a comfortable and containing way. For example, a group
of 5-year-old children becomes increasingly anxious as the
end of the year approaches. The teacher, knowing that many
of the children have had disruptions in their lives, realizes
that they will need information about what happens at the
end of the year and what will happen in the Fall. She also
realizes that children who have had attachment relationships
disrupted have to have a model for separating but remaining
connected.
The teacher uses curriculums suggested for
these themes in books and invents additional activities that
are appropriate for her particular children. Activities include
reading stories about saying good-bye to teachers, going to
new schools, staying connected over time and distance, thinking
about people when you don’t see them, etc. Children paint
and decorate huge boxes that symbolize their current classroom
and a new classroom and integrate them into the dramatic play
area. After a field trip to the river to observe bridges over
water and boats going under the bridges, children come back
to school and build bridges with blocks and create water table
waterways with boats.
After and during each activity, there is
opportunity for group and individual discussion. The Emotionally
Responsive teacher is able to facilitate group dialogues and
to provide some reality testing for children who need it,
reducing their anxiety level and increasing their attention
for their other subjects.
About the Author
Lesley Koplow, M.S., C.S.W. is the Director
of Creating Emotionally Responsive Pre-k for Children, a collaboration
between Bank Street College and the New York City Office of
Early Childhood. She is the author of several books including
Unsmiling Faces; How Preschools Can Heal and
a sequel concerning preventive mental health in the early
grades. The sequel is pending publication by Teachers College
Press. She is also a psychotherapist in private practice.
For more information:
Contact Lesley Koplow at .
To read more on Emotionally Responsive Practice,
Bankstreet recommends
Unsmiling
Faces: How Preschools Can Heal by Lesley Koplow (ISBN
0807734705)
|
