Blog Week 6

This weeks blog is about learning assessment but I have sort of strayed form the narrow topic.  Enjoy enjoy how. 

Maria Montessori a constructionist, said in educating the whole child one must consider the child and follow the natural inclinations of the child to work and discover.  She prepared an environment for this to happen called the “prepared environment”; we call it a classroom.  However Montessori’s classroom looked very different than what we have today.  Due to some state and educational mandates the freedom of the child to roam out of doors at will is prevented. Some schools provide education due to state funding and state licensing the restriction of things as real knives to cut with is not allowed thus preventing a real world experience that Montessori was able to provide.  Other factors such as family structure and social economic circumstances are also preventing many teachers from following the child in the classroom.  This is not to decry the effort of Montessorians to provide a good education for the children they serve.  In the school where I teach the emphasis is on meeting state requirements and NAYCE requirements to obtain that funding ergo many things from Montessori are put aside.  Many public schools are in the same boat, it is all about funding. The approach in the public sector is to test, test, and test some more. I see more and more early child educations programs caving into the state regulations instead of what is best for the child as an individual.

Natalia Mahlman Petrzela notes that while schools have narrowed their focus to achievement. society had broadened the focus to addressing many holistic thoughts in the area of health and wellness and serving the whole person. Petrzela notes that the scope of focus has not included the education system in the cultural shift.

The scholarly work What does it mean to educate the whole child ( na. nd.) is opened with the quote. “To the doctor, the child is a typhoid patient; to the playground supervisor, a first

baseman; to the teacher, a learner of arithmetic. At times, he may be different things to

each of these specialists, but too rarely is he a whole child to any of them.

—From the 1930 report of the White House Conference on Children and Youth

In the paper Miller (2008) spells out the core qualities of an holistic education.

1)      Encourages experiential learning.

2)      Personal relationships are considered to be as important as subject matter.

3)      A concern for the interior life of children

4)      Ecological consciousness

The PDF Whole Child – Making the case for educating the whole child states that to serve the whole child children must be safe, healthy, engaged, challenged and positively supported.  (www.ascd.org) Here in the US we are working toward that goal however slowly.  What is it like in a part of the world where there education is still a privilege not a right protected by law? 

According to a report by Schaffer And Combs (2013) School to School International brings an interdisciplinary approach to the problem of the high rate of drop out from primary school in Africa.  In the past the problems have been dealt with piece meal but School to School International wants to bring the whole person and the whole problem into the mix to develop a solution to the problem.  Here is a list of the comprehensive components they bring to the table. Programs in early childhood education, health and wellness, water, local language instruction and parental engagement, active teaching and learning, effective school management, girl’s education and global citizenship.  That is an ambitious undertaking but a hopeful one.

·         Whole child education has been around for some time in various forms now the world of neuro science is using science to demonstrate how neurology affects learning.  In the article The Neuroscience of Joyful Education by Judy Willis addresses the idea of pairing good teaching with neuro science. She wants teachers to use the RAD approach.

·         Novelty promotes information transmission through the Reticular activating system.

·         Stress-free classrooms propel data through the Amygdala's affective filter.

·         Pleasurable associations linked with learning are more likely to release more Dopamine.

·          

    As a teacher of preschool children I can see how keeping this in mind would be a good thing in my classroom.  Brain based education is becoming more and more researched and accepted.  Going forward in my teaching experience I intend to use the information from the research I have done for this blog to be better informed in my teaching practice.

 

Effective Collaboration For Educating  The Whole Child (na.nd.) retrieved February 13 from www.corwin.com/.../34869_Kochhar_Bryant__Effective_Collaboration PDF

Petrzela, Natalia Mahlman (2013) Educating the whole child. Retrieved February 13 from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/natalia-mehlman-petrzela/educating-the-whole-child_b_1321422.html

Transforming Education in Africa A Whole Child Approach. (na. nd.) retrieved Feburary 13 from http://www.schaffercombs.com/scmain/2013/04/20/transforming-education-in-africa-through-a-whole-child-approach

 

What does it mean to educate the whole child (na.nd.)  Retrieved February 13 2014 from http://www.ascd.org  

   

Willis, Joy (2007) The Neuroscience of Joyful Education. Retrieved Febuary 13, 2014 from

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/summer07/vol64/num09/The-Neuroscience-of-Joyful-Education.aspx

Blog post 2/1/14

Violence and its impact upon development

The stress I chose is violence.(Maltreatment)   Berger (2012) states that “on average more children die of violence either accidental or deliberate than from any specific disease.”   My ex spouse was a physically and emotionally abused child and my current partner is also a survivor of sever physical violence as well as emotional, verbal and mental abuse.  These two people who are now adults have used different coping mechanisms to hold on to themselves through the process of growing up.  My former spouse has not talked to anyone very much about the abuse. He expressed to me that his dad beat him as a child when he was drunk.  And others have cooberated this fact. He holds a great deal of anger inside, and denies he has any problems.  He has become very religious since we divorced but when we were married he refused to attend church with his family.  In retrospect I do not know if he has the ability to face his dragons on the surface he seems well put together but underneath in certain places his stressors show up in his actions. 

My partner was horribly abused as a baby and through out childhood and young adulthood by her mother.  There was never any provocation for the abuse and she has had several broken bones as a result of the abuse.  Her head was slammed in to a wall on several occasions.  One time when the teacher noticed the extensive bruising on her body she called the police.  They told her to go home and be a good girl and she wouldn't get hurt.  Her optic nerves are damaged because of the abuse. She is now legally blind because of the abuse and other medical conditions she has.   How she dealt with the abuse was to develop a strong drinking habit at the age of 14, the strategy of trying to be invisible, and developing Dissociate Identity Disorder, also traits of Borderline Personality Disorder have a role to play in her ability to cope with the abuse and daily life.  Both of them have PTSD from the abuse. We could not take my former spouse to the Mall with out him having a mini melt down. My partner however has been in therapy for many years and continues and she has been sober for 26 years.  While she copes in a limited situation of living in a way where she controls everything as much as possible she is not able to cope with being in an environment where she must deal with several people at once. Or in situations where she has little or no control over things that can trigger her PTSD. Even if they are people she likes.  Going shopping is hard and after about an hour she can no longer take the sensory overload and we must go home.  If any triggers crop up it sends her in to a tail spin emotionally that can lead to physical and health compilations.  The kind of stress these two people experienced as children can never be erased and while management is possible there is no “getting well” for them. 

The area of the world I chose to investigate for stressors and the impact of they have on child development was Sri Lanka.   Sri Lanka has been at war for many years.  In 2010 Fernando, Miller and Berger released a study on how the effects of war and/or natural disasters impacted child development.  The study used children ages 7-13 who were recruited through the school system.  Demographically there were children of Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim children and both genders were represented.  There were two events of violence studied. One was violence due to war and the other a Tsunami a natural disaster.  It was found that girls internalized the stress, anxiety and depression while boys externalized the stress through aggression.  Muslim and Christian children scored worse on psychosocial outcomes then Hindu and Buddhist children under the same conditions.  The finding of this study was that empirically children who experience daily stressors are impacted by them in a similar way as children who experience stress through war and violence.  The impact on social and emotional factors even years after the war has ended has been great for the children.  Much of the time the economic factor a left over of war will add to the daily stress of children and families alike. 

In conclusion the effects of violence have are long lived and will be with the person and society from generations to come.

Berger, Dale, E. Fernando, Gaithri, A., Miller, Kenneth E. (2010) Growing Pains: The Impact of Disaster-Related and Daily Stressors on the Psychological and Psychosocial Functioning of Youth in Sri Lanka. Retrieved February 1, 2014 from http://www.drkenmiller.org

Berger, Kathleen, Stassen (2012) The Developing Person Through Childhood. New York, New York: Worth Publishers.