Driving on West Street headed downtown, motorists have likely driven passed St. Mary’s Child Center and not given it a second glance. They do not know that inside preschoolers aged 3-5 are thinking for themselves, asking brilliant questions and are carefully guided to find the answers on their own.
Inside Mimi Barry’s classroom, the discussion is water. It began when a 5-year-old boy asked a 4-year-old girl why she didn’t color her water in a picture blue.
“We got into a discussion about the color of water,” said Barry, the lead teacher in the classroom. “That conversation showed that they were interested in finding out if water was blue so we are going to find the answer together.”
After free time, where the children have the opportunity to choose an activity, Barry, who shares classroom duties with two additional teachers, gathers her class for a meeting to talk about the color of water.
“What color do you think water is?” she asks. “Is it white?”
“No, it’s blue!” a girl shouts.
“But, can I see through it?”
“Yes.” a boy says.
“OK. So what word did you use yesterday?” Barry asks the boy. “You had a perfect word. It starts with a ‘c’.”
After a few seconds, a girl near the back of the group quietly says, “Clear.”
“Yes! Water is clear,” Barry confirms excitedly. “What color do you think the water in the canal is?”
After the children give varying answers from clear to green, Barry doesn’t offer them an answer; instead they take a field trip to the canal so the kids can see for themselves.
This type of learning environment is called the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education. Teachers follow the children’s interests and do not provide focused instruction in reading and writing. The approach has a strong belief that children learn through interaction with others, including parents, staff and peers in a friendly learning environment.
“It’s what we believe to be the highest quality of early childhood programs in the world are the schools (teaching) the Reggio Emilia (approach),” said Connie Sherman, St. Mary’s executive director. “The most important thing to the Reggio philosophy to us is the concept that children are strong, competent and capable. It changes everything you do with children. If you believe that, you believe that children are able to construct their own knowledge through experience.”
Some key features of the Reggio Emilia Approach:
* Common space available to all children in the school includes dramatic play areas and work tables for children from different classrooms to come together.
* Presentation of concepts and hypotheses in multiple forms such as print, art, construction, drama, music, puppetry, and shadow play. These are viewed as essential to children’s understanding of experience.
* Teachers act as recorders (documenters) for the children, helping them trace and revisit their words and actions and thereby making the learning visible.
* The teacher’s role within the Reggio Emilia approach is complex. Working as co-teachers, the role of the teacher is first and foremost to be that of a learner alongside the children. The teacher is a teacher-researcher, a resource and guide as she/he lends expertise to children.
Throughout the halls of St. Mary’s and in each classroom is evidence of this learning. The walls are covered with students’ work showing the progress from beginning to end. For example, one classroom studied where vegetables come from. The teacher begins by asking students the question and documents the answer. One 4-year-old responded vegetables come from Wal-Mart. To help students reach the correct answer, they grew vegetables in a garden on school grounds. After the experiment, the same 4-year-old had a different answer.
“Vegetables grow by watering them in the dirt.”
Giving such learning experiences to children is one of the main reasons Barry left the traditional classroom where she was teaching first grade.
“Having kids be able to choose what they want to do and us teach from what their interests are is incredible,” she said. “We aren’t some extremely structured program where we have to go by the books. I think all of us teachers can agree that we learn from them everyday. It’s not just them learning, we’re learning right along with them.”
In addition to its two locations: the Thompson Building at 901 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. St. and the Gilliatte Building at 9230 Hawkins Road, St. Mary’s has a lab school at IPS #60 through a collaboration with IPS and Butler University’s College of Education. The lab school curriculum is inspired by the Reggio Emilia approach and students majoring in early elementary education will complete a “Block A” unit classes and field experiences at the school. The school’s kindergarten and first grade students are grouped into four multi-age classes collaboratively taught by six Butler faculty teachers. The plan is to add another grade each school year and the Lab School will eventually serve K-5.
“We know about the rapid language, cognitive and social growth that happens in the early years so when children start in preschool (at St. Mary’s) and continue on we’re able to facilitate that growth,” said Dr. Ena Shelley, Butler’s dean of the College of Education. “I love that there is communication among the faculty so the children not only know the school, but when they move to kindergarten and first grade, the teachers already know the children.”
Since Indiana is one of eight states that do not pay for a preschool education, children’s learning often doesn’t begin until they’re 5-years-old. Most of the children being taught at St. Mary live in poverty where their parents have limited monetary resources. Tuition is income-based and CCDF vouchers are accepted. Without a St. Mary’s education, these preschoolers would normally enter kindergarten years behind their peers. With a St. Mary’s education, their transition is seamless.
“Poverty can be pretty devastating to a child’s development, not because they’re not bright or loved, but the stress of the poverty causes them to lack experiences that are common to other children,” said Sherman. “What happens is children in poverty enter school one to two years behind and that gap continues to widen. We know that high quality early childhood experience can mitigate such results.”
