I've been spending about a day a month at a small parent run pre school. So from the children's point of view I inexplicably appear, disappear, and reappear. I work with small groups of children at their new math center, sit and talk to them, read stories, or sometimes just watch. Finally last week, one little girl said to me "Who are you?" I told her I was a teacher. "But you're old!" she said. (I am still not used to people actually seeing me for the age I am. I don't feel old. But I guess to a four year old, it's a different story.) Inspired by this remark, I said to her, "Well, I'm a 'grandma teacher." "Oh" she said, "Hey everybody, she's a grandma teacher." I finally had a role at the school.
This exchange besides being charming made me think a little. First of all, "grandma teacher" is probably as good a definition as any of who I am and what I do. I also began to think about the important qualities of "grandma teacher", and how she might be different from other teachers. I immediately thought “Well she must be kind and on your side, no matter what.” There is no wrong answer with a grandma teacher. Grandmas may be strict and may have their own rules and idiosyncrasies, but they are always there for you; they always think you are special, and hopefully say so regularly.
This entry has been sitting on my computer since I started it last week in the Munich airport. Yesterday, I was roaming on line and checked in with the new ted education site. I watched a video by Sugata Mitra called “The Child Driven Education,” about some experiments with giving children access to computers (in both this country and in, if I remember correctly, India) and then seeing what they can as a group teach themselves over time. After the first round of self teaching, Mitra organized what he eventually came to call “the granny cloud” – grandmothers who were recruited to be available through Skype to interact with the children. When they told him they didn’t know what to do, he told them to act like grannies – “stand behind the children and tell them how wonderful and smart they are. Encourage and compliment them.” After about three months the learning curve as shown in test scores improved significantly.
So the efficacy of grandma teachers is now “scientifically proven ”with ”hard data”! I personally think the key is not so much endless uncritical praise. I recently gave a training where a parent asked me what I thought about praise as a teaching tool. I don’t think much of it. Praise (“Good job!”, “You’re so smart!” even “That’s a beautiful picture!”) implies the possibility of it not being a good job, or not being smart enough, or a picture that is only OK. Everything, including the child herself, is being judged. More powerful as a teaching tool, and as every practicing granny knows, is creating a nurturing safe space to explore new material, tell silly riddles, be yourself, without the pressure to perform or succeed. This is kitchen table learning at its best.
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