June 28, 2018
On this last day of school, I tried to focus on a thought, an idea, a striking revelation; it was a difficult endeavour because of the rapturous energy that was going through the school. Yet, in a moment of calmness and directness, a child comes to me during P.E., where they are all doing different activities, and hands me a ball and a scooper (jai alai if you are familiar with the proper term). He waits for me to play with him.
How does a child ask for help?
This child brings things to you and acts when he needs something and uses words very sparingly. Even in the class situation he does likewise: he is quiet (though he likes to run away and gets off topic as do most grade 1s), and he asks only when he wants something. During centres, I observed another child sit quietly on the carpet next to a student; he held a pack of large playing cards in his hands and sat there waiting. He wanted to play cards, but he did not ask. Did he know how to ask? I remember prompting him, did you want to play cards? He gave me a positive response, and I encouraged him to ask the student beside him to play cards with him… They did not end up playing cards.
It is important that students learn to speak their needs and wants. It is a task that is surprisingly difficult because it requires that students identify what they are going through, and what external factor it is that they need from those around them in order to grow/learn/be content/sleep/eat/play. To further complicate the situation, how you ask can sometimes cause people to shy away from you. As a grade 1 student, they are still learning how to ask others to play with them. Funnily enough, I have never liked the idea of a play-date, but upon reflecting, it makes sense as a beginning to understanding how the social dynamics of setting up an appointed time works.
As I prepare my material for my incoming grade 7 students, I hope for one primary thing: that they further deepen their own process of making sense of the things around them: “What do I want/need?” “What makes me joyful?” “What makes me angry?” I think these are vitally important questions that are always significant. Watching the little children at John Allison Elementary during these last 3 weeks has been an amazing blessing. What the kids are doing is trying to make sense of the world, in a way that is slightly different, but not fully removed, from the way that adults try to make sense of the world. The children’s world is the school and family contexts… Ours, us big people, we just have a bigger sense of what the world is. Ultimately we are just trying to make sense of everything and further engage the world as best we can.