Early Childhood

I had a few days in mid-July where I was able to attend an early childhood conference. I cannot say enough positive comments about this conference, because it did not just reach out to preschool teachers, or special education teachers, or education professors, or PHD students. It brought together everyone who works in early childhood - from those administrators working in the Infant and Toddler offices who are on the front line of meeting with families to assess whether or not their child may have delays or a disability - to the Speech Language, Occupational Therapists, Physical Therapists, preschool teachers, special education preschool teachers, children's librarians, and parents. The message was clear - we are in this together, and we are looking at the whole child.

As I sat in session after session I began to realize how much our practices change when we get to elementary school. So much of early childhood is about what is best for the child. The session participants did not blink when a presenter suggested that it was totally OK for a child to be walking around during storytime. I heard this during MULTIPLE sessions (my own included, but other people said it as well). The ideas of meeting a child's sensory needs, supporting parents to make sure their wants and goals for their child are met, and asking "are we doing what is right for this child, not the process?" were not new ideas.

One session I attended (it had nothing to do with my work, but the one I'd wanted to go to was full and so I popped into the closest one), was intended for service providers completing the initial assessments for Infant and Toddler Connections. There was a very enriching discussion about the power of functional assessments and how standardized assessments are harmful for the child and family, as they don't give a full picture of the child's needs. And if we don't have a full picture of the child's needs, how do you fully help a child? (Good question friends. Let's ask that of the political decision makers who have gotten us to focus on end of year assessment data.) Or those of us doing these same process (finding children eligible for special education) in elementary school. The process somehow stops being about what's best for the child and starts to be about how to complete the legal paperwork and what accommodations a child might need to pass a standardized test.

In the keynote session, the presenter asked how we could possibly teach children to problem solve if we weren't encouraging open ended play, providing opportunities for exploratory skills, and honoring the importance of one on one interactions. When did problem solving stop at early childhood? When did we stop encouraging open ended exploration in favor of rote skills? Why does the importance of play stop in preschool?

Our children's brains don't suddenly respond differently when they enter those elementary school doors on the first day of kindergarten. Why do we act like they do?

There were so many moments during this conference that I wished I was in a room with elementary school teachers so that we could talk about how to take the same scientific findings and apply it to our third and fourth grade students who have trouble sitting down and learning rote skills.