Teaching to Children’s Capacity

Abstract

Patricia Carini valued children’s own play and work—writing, drawing, sculpting, building—as a critical mode of meaning-making and learning. Modern education often places little emphasis on such play and work: standards-based programs and projects absorb every moment of the school day, often requiring even more time than is available. Yet allowing children to play with the curriculum engages them without anxiety, gives them ownership, and calls forth serious endeavor—inviting students with a wide variety of interests, proclivities, challenges, and gifts. When teachers stop to observe and describe this play, they can use the insights gained to strengthen their practice and extend what is taught and learned, often beyond what the standards require. This article offers three brief stories from the public school practice of a teacher who did her teacher education at Prospect, collaborated with others through Summer Institutes, and worked with Pat throughout her graduate work. The stories reveal a practice rooted in a valuing of children and their capacities that honor Pat’s legacy, her values and the ways these shaped educational practice at the Prospect School. It explicates how understanding the phenomenological philosophy underlying the descriptive processes gives observational knowledge a trustable place in daily decisions. The article ends with examining the challenges of giving children ownership of their work in today’s classrooms as well as ways it can create openings for adults and children throughout a school. Most importantly it holds the importance of each child’s belief in their own place in today’s schools as the core to joyful expression and resilience.