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A CONSTRUCTIVIST VISITS WINNETKA

At the invitation of Becky van der Bogert, Superintendent of the Winnetka Public Schools, I came to Winnetka to speak at the 14^th Annual Winnetka Alliance Networking Dinner.  After a dicey drive in predawn snow to the Hartford, CT airport, the flight to O'Hare was a non-event.  With the assistance of our two cell phones, enhanced by GPS, my host and I met exactly at east end of Terminal B.  

          For the next ten hours, I was firmly but kindly escorted through three schools, a lunch meeting with teachers, an afternoon meeting with teachers, and a sit-down dinner followed by me as speaker de la nuit.  While this schedule sounds grueling, in fact, the richness of what I saw and the constant grace of my escorts converted these few hours into a memorable day.

          Since my comments need to be brief, allow me to give you random episodes that will live and inform my own work for years to come.  Understand that I have changed the details to fit the meanings I sensed while there. 

Crow Island

          Rules for skating on pretend ice rink in the kindergarten class. 

          Child to George: "You can't go in there.  You need a ticket.  And you have to take off your shoes. You wear those (points to paper shoe covers?).  You have to sign up and take one of those (claim ticket for shoes)." 

          The ice rink was more than pretending.  It was a complete Dewey-style system of cause and effect, commerce and equity, creativity within structure.  The rules held together with one having purpose for another, rather than a list tacked on the door. 

          First grader explains the block fort she and her friend had made.  They used unit blocks; plastic tiny bears; hollow, cardboard pyramids. 

          George: "Tell me about these (pyramids)." 

          Child: "They are bombs."

          George: "I see.  I notice none of them (point to pyramids) are touching (there are about twenty all together, carefully distributed).  Why is it so important that they do not touch?" 

          Child: "So they don't explode." 

          What an interesting motivation for this girl to explore a rule of spatial

distribution, each element being equidistant from each other element.  Non-touching rules are infrequent in block play and are certainly creative. 

Hubbard Woods School Lunch Meeting

          Teacher: "Perhaps there is too much emphasis today on knowing the correct facts.  Without fantasy, children's imagination will suffer. When children hear about something they ask, 'Did that really happen?'"

          George: "Why do you think children want to know if something really happened?"

          Teacher: "They are curious, they just want to know."

          George: "Yes, but what drives this curiosity?  Are they afraid of losing face if they say something is true and they turn out to be wrong?  Are they anxious about surprise?"

          Teacher, later: "I think, often, we do not ask why children ask a question, where it comes from.  We just try to answer the question."  

          This interaction impressed upon me the important distinction between a child's interest and a child's reason.  We need to find the reason behind the interest in order to have a high level conversation with children.

Greeley  School

          In a second grade class, the children had made drawings of architectural elements common in Frank Lloyd Wright's designs.  Inside a section of a page labeled "Lintel," one child drew a door.  On top of the door he drew a rectangle, no wider than the door.

          George: "This is interesting; it looks like the door is holding up the lintel."  Had I had the opportunity I would have loved to revisit the drawing with the artist.  The drawing reminded me how important it is to create a theory about why the drawing makes sense. Of course, the door holds up the lintel.  What else could it be?   The door is directly under the lintel. The fact that this conception does not quite capture the structure of an arch precisely recapitulates why it took centuries for masons to invent the arch.  Such was the profound message of Piaget. 

Teachers' meeting at Skokie School

          Teacher: "I let all my children bang on jar lids to open them, after one child showed me how to do it with a brush handle.  My assistant almost stopped this because of the noise. How do you make these wonderful moments happen more often in the class?"

          Another teacher: "For one thing, you become open to the possibility that an unexpected event can be educational." 

          George: "I think it is o.k. to 'rig the environment,' the way we put hidden leaded weights in the building blocks to create situations that would violate the children's expectations about center of gravity."

          We cannot complete our objectives waiting for the coveted "teachable

moments." We are open when they

happen spontaneously, but the skilled teacher knows how to maximize their occurrence.

After the talk at the Networking Dinner on Thursday night

          Teacher to George: "You only said it once, but you should have said it often.  You said that if you observe carefully you can see their intelligence.  I really like that word 'intelligence.'  Many people think of intelligence so differently, and that you can not see it in the child's play."

          I think she meant that when adults watch children play that that they see fun, they see creativity, perhaps industry, but seldom frame play as an indication of intelligence.  This idea that ordinary moments contain extraordinary acts of intelligence, of strategic problem solving, of amazing forms of inference, was exactly what I wanted to show with the video clips I presented in my talk.

          I would love for you to visit me at www.videatives.com and continue the wonderful dialogue that your wisdom and commitment make possible. 

George Forman, Ph.D., is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Massachusetts.  He spent a day visiting Winnetka schools before speaking to over 130 early childhood professionals from Winnetka, Northfield, and Kenilworth at the Alliance's 14th Annual Networking Event on January 15, 2004.