This week’s post is another in the
teacher self-care series – recommendations you can share with teachers that
make instruction less work and more impactful.
This one’s for any elementary teachers you know.
I’ve taught almost every grade K- 12,
but my time in kindergarten was some of my favorite! So much learning happens in a kindergarten
classroom between August and June! I
think I kept a pretty tight focus on learning, but I confess that I had a
favorite end-of-year project – the frog pop-up book.
In May we came to the end of a very
long unit about water, ending with water as habitat. Thus the frog book. I included every pop-up method I knew: there
was a springy snake, a frog who opened and closed his mouth as you turned the
page. It was an amazing book, really.
Except….
The paraprofessional and I spent hours
cutting and folding, getting things ready for tiny hands to put together their
masterpieces. And, altogether, the kids probably spent hours working on their
books. There were smiles and pride, to
be sure, but probably some tears as well (I tend to erase negative memories,
but I’m betting on it). I knew the kids
weren’t really learning anything during all this time, but I justified the
project as a take-away memento that students would enjoy reading during the
summer. I imagined them turning the pages of the pop-up book and remembering the
more memorable learning we’d done as we studied water for months. If I had it to do over again….I’d probably do
the same thing! We all loved those
books!
But here’s the thing. In some classrooms, a lot of teacher and
student time is spent on crafts. And let’s be honest, other than honing some
fine-motor skills, not much learning happens. So, if you know a teacher of
young children who just loves cute paper-folding, pipe-cleaner,
toilet-paper-roll projects, she might breathe a sigh of relief if you steer her
toward arts instead of crafts in her classroom.
Crafts have a defined outcome. There’s
a specific way the project is supposed to look, with a little wiggle-room. Art
projects, on the other hand, are individualized and exploratory. The process is
about trying things, manipulating, and creating. Teachers set out materials, perhaps with some
general theme or purpose in mind, and children decide what to do with them.
Keeping in mind the distinction between
arts and crafts and leaning in the arts direction can lighten a teacher’s load
and encourage children’s creativity. And if she occasionally decides to do a frog
pop-up book, well, that’s okay, too!
This
week, you might want to take a look at:
More
about arts vs. crafts:
Podcasts
for teacher well-being:
Books
for having fun with words:
Encouraging
response through The Standup Game:
Teaching is a creative profession.
Here are 10 ways to boost creativity:
That’s
it for this week. Happy Coaching!
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