Spontaneously Joyful

My mantra for the week is, "I invite myself to be spontaneously joyful." And just to think it makes me feel, well, spontaneously joyful! As Taj Mahal sings, "Remember that feeling as a child, when you woke up and morning smiled?" It's time, it's time I felt like that again.

This morning on National Public Radio I heard a great story on a new approach to early childhood education based on the work of our good friend Lev Vygotsky. You can listen to the NPR story here. Called "Tools of the Mind", the approach intends to teach children to regulate their own learning. The premise is that children do not learn as well as they could because they have not learned how to regulate their social, emotional and cognitive behaviors. Self-regulation forms the basis of executive functioning, which research shows correlates more highly with academic achievement than early reading or math skills.And, those of us in schools know that the lack of executive functioning greatly impedes our ability to teach.

What I really like about this approach is it is rooted in play, what we used to call "free play." When children create their own scenarios and play them out, or experiment with tools of their own choosing, they are learning about the world. Much of children's experience in our modern world involves them in highly structured activities (lessons, organized sports) or electronic environments (TV, video games)which demand little in the way of imagination. In a Tools of the Mind classroom, children use their imaginations in their play -- yet with one important pre-condition: intention. Children learn a process that requires them to declare their intention before they play, to an adult who records it on paper, and then with whom they debrief when they are done. In this it is very similar to the seminal High/Scope "Plan-Do-Review" cycle. High/Scope's nearly forty years of research shows the unequivocal importance of high quality early childhood education. Tools of the Mind offers a new way of thinking how to support young children in learning about their learning.

Which, to my mind, is one of the many sources of spontaneous joy!

I'm Not There

Altho this has little to do with Not Another Brick's ostensible focus on the ways in which American education might be transformed, a couple of us saw Todd Haynes' film contemplation on the many lives of Bob Dylan:



This near Fellini-esque montage of Dylan's life in which seven actors portray Dylan at different stages of his life mezmerized me with its blend of the iconic and the obscure. Maybe I'm making too much out of it yet Haynes' courage in taking on this subject and his willingness to experiment wowed me. And of course, there's the music. Dylan's older than me yet he's written much of my soundtrack. I wondered, tho, why not more "Blood on the Tracks?" I guess we all have our own favorites.



I wonder how kids might be challenged to represent their knowledge in such creative ways...