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Teach Wonder
Teach Wonder
Agency: Context, Control, and Iceland Part 2
This is part two of our conversation. If you haven't yet listened to part one, you'll want to start there. In this episode, we discuss the concept of control in educational settings, drawing insights from our observations in Icelandic schools. We highlight how Icelandic schools foster autonomy and responsibility in children, allowing them to manage their own time and decisions, such as meal choices and transitions. We touch on the curriculum we learned about from our observations and conversations with teachers, and talk about the important takeaways for us an educators.
Intro Music: David Biedenbender
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Music by Novifi from Pixabay
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I think there are pockets of time, or windows of time, where we teach children how to wait by being like quiet and compliant, because that benefits maybe the group or the room from a macro level, but it doesn't actually benefit the group or the children. Okay, now we're recording,
Introduction:So welcome to teach wonder. Yes. Welcome to teach wonder, a podcast hosted by Ashley O'Neil and Julie Cunningham.
Julie Cunningham:Welcome back to teach wonder. This is part two of a conversation on control, context and Iceland. If you haven't listened to part one, I recommend pressing pause and listening to the first half before continuing with this episode. In our first episode, we talked about how we observed schools in Iceland where children had significant autonomy and decision making power, and how that fosters a sense of control and responsibility for children. We also talked about how we can incorporate nature, play and choice time, and how that allows our teacher moves to translate as trust. This time, we are focusing on the space inside the school and classroom, along with content, this discussion is about agency, and continues to include examples of our time in Iceland. Here's Ashley.
Ashley O'Neil:There was definitely a culture. I heard several times that school feels like home, and I don't mean like homey. They have. The schools were very cozy, very comfortable, very warm and home like but in some of the structures. And so I think universally, we all saw schools that had some variation on you choose when you're hungry, and you choose what's for lunch and how much you're going to eat and when you're finished. And there was just an overall idea. When I think about the school environment, and I think about control specifically, there was just a removal of some of those crowd management moments, right? Like these schools were no smaller. It wasn't like they were 15 kids in the school or 10 kids in the classroom. They were traditional classroom sizes, hundreds of kids in the building, right? Like big, big systems that they're working through, and yet you didn't see teachers gathering children in lines to all go somewhere together. Children would move throughout the space as they needed to, and I think about all the time. It took a long time to get kids outside, to close on right they're putting on all these layers, and it takes a while. And same thing, it takes a while to undo their stuff. And there's only two teachers, and the kids mostly did it by themselves, but some of them needed help. And when the kids were done, they went back to class. There was no waiting for their peers. There was no goofing around and trying to get them to stand in line and be quiet, because kids are, you know, this is a learning space. There was none of that. They just said, you know your body. You know where you need to go next. When you're done and your space is cleaned up and your boots are put away, you can go back upstairs and go back to your classroom, and that was something we saw all the time. Kids were gathered in from outside in small groups. Universally, students went to lunch kind of on their own, and paced themselves on their own, like we said, when it came to going to the bathroom. And in many of the schools, the classrooms were comprised of multiple rooms or multiple closed off spaces. So there weren't these big open classrooms. There may have been a block room that was shared by multiple preschool classrooms that were all quite small, and so children would be in different classrooms with no sight lines, nothing like that, and they would decide where they wanted to go. And so I think about the control in the classroom and how we work so hard to gather everyone together and have everyone be quiet and line up in the hallway and move as a group, and it's hard. It's hard to move in big groups like that, and a really not easy, I understand that it requires a lot of change, but an easy solution. Rather than implementing more rules to the hallways and more structure to the space that comes from the teacher. They just remove those situations in general, like the kids just moved freely through this space, and then those clog that hallway, clog the pressure points weren't there anymore. Another aspect of what we saw and what we're thinking about when it comes to power and control is when it comes to content, right? So the questions we're thinking about are, who decides what we learn, who? Who makes the most decisions in the classroom, who picks the pace and the interesting stories and the hooks? And I think all the time about we work a lot with teachers, and we'll hear things from fabulous, caring teachers, and they'll say, you know, this was such a cool unit, and I was so excited to launch it, and this was such a cool story, and the kids weren't into it at all, and it was really hard. And there's a disappointment there, which is fair, because you put a lot of work into your project, and the kids engagement isn't there. But so often we pick the pace, or the pace comes from, you know, vertically aligned standards dot. Documents that you get from a curriculum director, and it's passed out to you that, you know, kindergarten has to move at this speed. We decide the interesting hook, or the story or the picture book or the material that's going to be so fun, and then we're trying to sell kids on what we think they should be interested in. And how do you think, how do you think that affects things? Or, how do you think that relates to agency? Yeah,
Julie Cunningham:I agree with you. And I think then we're also surprised when students don't invest enough to ask. I'm thinking of science in particular, right? But don't invest enough to ask interest interesting questions, when nature and the nature of science can be all about the interesting questions. And so how? How difficult would it be to flip sort of the script right instead of the instead me as the teacher doing all the investment in the content? What if we started with the topic or the standard or something as a theme and allowed the students to ask the questions, or expected the students to ask the questions first, and then built our curriculum, our lessons, our activities around that. Like, would it really? Would the end result really be that different in terms of our outcomes, in terms of what students learn about the content, likely not, but the investment, because they're given agency over the content, over the topic, I feel like would naturally be higher. We all, as humans, are more invested in things that we're interested in. There's always things that we have to do, but we are always more invested in things that we're interested in doing.
Ashley O'Neil:I think the difficult thing with that comes with that is a big shift, right? And you have to have a different outlook of your space. I spoke with one of the kindergarten teachers at a school, and they have a country wide curriculum. Iceland into a much smaller country than the United States, obviously, both geographically and population wise, but they have a curriculum, and it's really focused on these big tenants. It's much smaller, the number of words in it, the level of specificity, and the focus is much more on child are on like emotional well being, physical well being, understanding nature, understanding how to be part of a democratic community, like having choice, caring about the planet and the future, and being like a steward of the spaces that you're in. And they achieve those things by the children doing a year long study and this year long project that's driven by them, and the teachers have to have a lot looser hold on their lesson plans, right? There is no scripted thing. And another benefit, because I feel like it's important to be honest and acknowledge some differences, is they don't, they don't have the kindergarten teachers don't have this rigorous reading curriculum. The children learn to read and write. There's reading and writing. I saw sentences from kindergarteners, but that comes from they're working on these projects, and the reading and writing is, oh, you need to write that down, because that's part of your project. Let's figure out how to do that. So I recognize that this content idea is a bigger shift, but in smaller ways and in smaller spaces. Asking your students honest questions and then genuinely trying to incorporate those into your work is a great place to start asking what they're interested in saying, you know, hey, we're studying ecosystems in January. This is what ecosystems means in a broad spectrum. We could, you know, look at the fungus side. We could look at decomposers. We could look at water cycles. There's lots of ways we could tackle this. What's interesting to you? What do you see in the community? And then to be ready to incorporate those things in, and then to be transparent about the constraints that you are also working under as an educator, I think is a realistic takeaway or translation of, how do we give kids control in the content spaces?
Julie Cunningham:Yeah, and even, I think, even the physical spaces as well the content spaces, but also, like, what if there was a corner where, when there was free time. There was art supplies, or, I don't know what it is, right, but whatever the students in your class are interested in. So what if there was, what if they were allowed to have some spaces, even in the class, that when your school they allowed, they had some choice as to what they're working on, whether they're reading a book or working on art or doing something to make a prototype at a cardboard or whatever those spaces allowed for. So yes, the curriculum, but also sort of the What can I do with any sort of free time? But that would mean that all students. Had availability to that free time, not just some. I
Ashley O'Neil:think there's pockets, though. Like, I think about how much time is waiting in school, right? Like waiting to transition, waiting to go to recess, waiting for that stuff like and part of our job, when I think about humans and this is far reaching, so just bear with me, but part of our, part of one of one of the things that we're trying to develop in kids. We hear all the time, kids don't know how to be bored. They don't have these attention spans anymore, right? But then I watched as these children had enrichments available to like, go dig with a stick and build a trench in the playground. We can talk about it more in just a second, but their ability to just go outside and move their body when they wanted to. There were genuine hobby like or true, enriching ways for those children to spend their time, to get deeply engaged and focus on a task when they had and there was the time and the flexibility to do that. So it's not that I think there are no more hours in the day over there than there are here. I think there are pockets of time, or windows of time where we teach children how to wait by being like quiet and compliant, because that benefits maybe the group or the room from a macro level, but it doesn't actually benefit the group or the children, right? And so what if, during those down times, those waiting periods, there were things that children could do, like when you're done, you're freely allowed to move throughout the space and engage in the materials that you see. You're teaching them how to be industrious with their time, how to find things that they're interested in and be busy and move their hands. And I don't think that's a bad thing.
Julie Cunningham:I think one of the things that we're talking about here ways in which we can be thoughtful about implementing some of these things within our the confines of our space and programming. Also is like, what would happen if every student, student didn't move to the next step of the project at the same time? Like, what would happen if a student wasn't finished investigating the materials, or every student wasn't finished investigating the materials, but some students moved on to the next step, like, would that? Would that really be problematic? And maybe it's problematic for our ability to control the event, but probably it's not problematic for us in many other ways. So just trying to play with that idea of, What if every kid wasn't doing the same thing at the same time when they come in here for a program, and if
Ashley O'Neil:I flip it to like me as the teacher, because we're trying these things, right? So I'm thinking about how I will do this, like, what does it look like if I can't give directions to the whole group at the same time? How does that adjust the way I share directions? How does that help me focus what I actually need to say? And it also makes me think a lot about, we talk a lot about UDL and here, or equitable practices that benefit everyone. It's really hard for some students to focus and tune in to your whole group instruction and your whole group directions. That's a really difficult that's a difficult space that's not meeting everybody's needs. And so is when we make this shift of students not all being in the same place at the same time. We're not giving whole group directions. We've got kids in different places, it also is not forcing us, but kind of forcing us, to really think about practices that also benefit children. And we know that universal design or doing practices that benefit some students actually benefit all students, right? Like everyone benefits from the personalized attention they get from hearing from you with a group of like a trio, instead of you talking to 20 kids at the same time. And so I'm also interested to see what other positive benefits come out of it as we really refine our practices, and I think that they are, incidentally, going to be in line with some equitable teaching practices that specifically benefit some students who are maybe marginalized or have some needs at school that aren't met, and then generally benefit everybody, because I think we all benefit from more control and more choice, more genuine choice, and a more personalized or customizable approach to learning
Julie Cunningham:something else that goes along with that, that's also very difficult for adults, a lot of times, is to kind of stand back right into not fix everything for the student, even though you can see, and that's I mean, that's true of us in the makerspace, Right? We could see that cutting that cardboard a different way might make it easier. But then what is the student learning about the use of the tool that they have right or their decision making? Is there anything wrong with the way are they doing it unsafely? I mean, if not, maybe we need to learn. Um, just Well, definitely, we need to learn as adults to stand back and allow the student to figure out the best process for themselves. I mean, until they ask for help, of course, like if a child asks for help, we would help them, but I think we have as much of a tendency, as any other adult or educator to want to make things easier for students and in our minds more enjoyable, therefore in the maker space, when really part of learning to be a maker is working through some of those skills and maybe even frustrations for yourself.
Ashley O'Neil:You know what I like about it, too. I have always struggled with the phrase like productive struggle and even and I know Donna wall, and I still sometimes struggle with like that sale often, because I think sometimes it an unintentional image that that puts in mind is that we're contriving experiences for kids to have a hard time, and we're like, hey, it's good for you. It's hard. It's good for you to struggle. And I could never quite put my finger on like, why that bothered me, but I think when we were in Iceland, kids were allowed to do a lot of things that were hard. Teachers did not intervene when I would have intervened, and I tend to be a late intervener, and it was more of a we respect a child's learning process, and every interaction is also an interruption. And there was a true awareness that that is that child learning. Are they in a state of flow? Are they deeply engaged in the task? And so like, a child was using a scissors, not unsafely, but incorrectly, and because their intent was different. And the teacher observed for a long time, first, for a long time, and then when the child did ask for help, her first question was, what are you trying to do? Rather than like, this is how I use a scissors. Let me show you, right? And I just think that that frame is different. So it's not about saying like, we're going to find ways for kids to be challenged and it's going to be hard and they're going to be miserable and it's good for them, but it's about saying like, we respect and honor their learning process. So we're going to step back and observe and watch and see what's actually going on here, before we jump in and intervene and insert our idea of what they should be doing, and that differentiation and that respect for children, I think, sits better with me and is about honoring them, versus us taking back control because we think they're being unsafe, unproductive, whatever.
Julie Cunningham:I cannot tell you that there's, I cannot think of a time that I'm ever sorry that I ask another question, right, like and I, I can think of two examples, one that's not so recent, when we were doing a very young like a preschool event in conjunction With our local Discovery Museum here, and we had robots for the kids to use for coding. So we had that mouse robot, and there's like a, it's a game, right? There's a and there's not like rules, but there's directions that come with the game. And so, like, we're going to go in and we're going to show the kids how to do this game, but this little boy picked up the robot and was moving it as he was coding it, as he was pushing the buttons to coat it, and I got picking it up and physically moving it on the game board at the same time that he was pushing the buttons to code. So I thought he misunderstood that he had to move the robot and code the robot. Now I thought he did not understand that the robot would move itself after pushing go on the code. And I almost corrected him, but then I decided to watch it play out, because I don't know why, but I did really that's another one of those instances where, like, what harm can come of this, like, even if he misunderstands what the robot is going to do when, like, that's not no one's getting hurt. Um, so no, he understood the whole time what he was doing. He was keeping track of the code that he put in, so that he would know when he was done coding the robot. So he was moving it at the same time as putting the code in so he would know when he got to the end. And that was his way of like, keeping track. And had I interrupted him and said, No, you're doing it wrong, like that would have been completely wrong on my part, right? Again, potentially not exactly harmful in this situation, but potentially harmful because he wasn't doing anything wrong. Doing anything wrong. And then just recently, I was working with college students on their goals for the year when they work with students in our space, and I heard something in a goal that gave me pause. And so I had an image in my head from this goal of how this college under. Graduate student studying to become a teacher was going to act with was going to interact with children based on what the student said to me, this college student, and had I gone with that, I would have had a very different impression, and I might have corrected the student. But instead, I asked, Well, can you tell me what that looks like to you with when you interact with students. So their goal was giving me one image, but the way in which they described what that interaction would look like with other students was entirely different and completely set me at ease. So had I just corrected that undergraduate based on my first impression of their goal, which I was I mean, about to do right, instead of asking that follow up question, which really clarified for me that they knew what they were talking about and that Their goal was and their intended outcome of their processing. The goal working with children was completely appropriate, but I think I would have jumped in and said, No, no, no, like, that's not quite right. So those are two examples in which I and that's just fortuitous that I did that. I don't always think to do that, yeah,
Ashley O'Neil:but it's a good reminder that when in doubt, right, like if, as you're trying to grow your own practice or your own skill set and your maybe your your muscle memory wants you to intervene or or teach, quote, unquote, by telling maybe you try to just retrain that little part of your brain to ask a question instead and to see where that takes you. Because that, I mean, if you walk away with one thing today, I think that could be like a instead of telling, maybe asking would be a really good
Unknown:one. And Ashley doesn't have to keep this in the podcast. But my other I always like go back to thinking about how it feels myself to learn new things, right? And so, because you probably haven't had a dog agility story in a while, I'm currently
Julie Cunningham:competing at dog agility, which is something entirely new for me, right? And guess what? I'm
Unknown:not always successful. I'm new at this, and I'm learning so it's a reminder, like, I'm
Julie Cunningham:fairly competitive, and I like to do well at things, whether I'm new at them or not, right? And it doesn't feel really great to not be successful when you're learning to do things. I mean, the initial feeling, right? But in order for this to be fun for both me and my dog, I mean, when we don't have a good run at an agility course, like I need to ask myself, I mean, I don't need to beat myself up over the net good run. There's gonna be plenty of more agility courses to run and plenty more competitions to try, right? But also, like, what? What can I learn from that doesn't make sense to make those same mistakes a second time. So what can I do different or what? What can I learn from the mistakes that I made? And if I don't do that, it's pretty quickly going to cease to be a fun hobby or activity,
Ashley O'Neil:for sure. And I think that was actually a great segue into what I wanted to bring up next, which is a little bit about behavior and what power and control has to do with behavior, because you have to be in the right head space to be able to ask yourself those questions, right, and how you show up, or how you're internally regulating and thinking about those things matter, and I think a big difference, and I'm gonna say a difference, I think a big difference that I noticed or observed In our conversations with our teacher friends from the UK, and the classrooms that we were in was a real posture around what is behavior and what what does it tell us? And what I mean by that is, if you have a child like I'm thinking about at my house, right? And I have four kids and a husband and a dog, and somebody gets up and they need to use the restroom, right? I'm like, Oh, yep, they needed to use the restroom. And it's very matter of fact, like, this is them knowing their body. This is what they're taking care of, even if I was in the middle of a story, if they like, excuse me, I've got to go the restroom. Like that is just a neutral, you know, part of, part of a part of being a person and behavior was treated that way when we were in Iceland the classrooms, and we posted a picture of this on Instagram, if you want to see it. But a lot of the classrooms had doors that went outside, and particularly at this one school they'd intentionally built on the second story this massive balcony that was covered and very structurally safe. There was no way for a kid to fall in the balcony. Because if children were feeling like they needed to move their body, or a teacher was observing that a child maybe was getting loud or moving their body more, or kind of running, maybe they like slid into the spot where they were going to go, rather than walking over, they could just go outside and move their body like it was a natural part of being a person. And. So when I asked some of the teachers about how they think about student behaviors like you would maybe call it non compliance, like saying no or moving or being really loud, or maybe running or jumping or doing something that would maybe not be an inside behavior, they very much were like, kids need to move. Kids need to be loud. Kids need to do this. That's part of childhood. That's part of growing up, and there was such a respect for that as a natural part of being a person. Losing your temper was a natural part of being a child, right? Crying was a natural part of being a child, making mistakes or spilling things or or impulsivity or hurting a friend's feelings, or shoving all of those were a natural part of childhood, and so they were treated like a natural part of childhood. And that approach was it resulted in some really respectful interactions and a really relaxed environment that didn't feel like control.
Julie Cunningham:And then, when you're talking about the like, the non compliance behaviors, also, instead of saying or instead of thinking, here's what the child did wrong, the question that adults were asking themselves were, what does the child need? Absolutely And then, therefore, that really influences how I turn around and interact with the child, because I'm thinking about it from a what do they need perspective, instead of a, why are they being so naughty or disrespectful?
Ashley O'Neil:And it gets back to like, I think there was an expectation, like, when I am trying to regain control of a situation. It often comes from a fear, a frustration or a dysregulation on my part, right? Like if I if the classroom is too loud and I'm bothered by it suddenly, and I'm trying to get everyone to be quiet, I'm trying to regain control. It's usually because of one of those things. None of those things have anything to do with a child. It's all about how I'm feeling on the inside, right? And I've I watched and observed deep understanding of that with teachers like the and and just a deep understanding of that as part of a natural humanity. And so rather than saying there was no like power struggles, teachers didn't get into power struggles with students where No, but you're going to do it this way. Because I said, so I don't want to do this. And the child kind of pushed back, and it kept escalating in that way, because I think there was just a different understanding, like you said, of searching for, why is the child asking for this thing? Why are they saying, no, why don't they want to be here? And let me be clear, like it's not like we didn't see any tears or frustrations or that mean we saw all of those things, but the way that they were handled was this was a natural part of childhood. This child is communicating something with this behavior. I'm going to calmly try to figure out what it is. I'm not taking it personally, and I'm not going to try to implement more control when the situation is feeling, quote, unquote, out of control to
Julie Cunningham:me, right? And then you you mentioned like the dysregulation or the fear or the maybe weariness of giving up control, and how you would have to ask yourself that right in order to understand what was bothering you about what was going on in the classroom, or child's behavior, but we also saw, I think, in order to help with regulation, potentially both for the adults and the students, but a lot less visual noise and a lot less enrichment, enrichment, like materials or toys, or here, like play with this, or here do that, and a lot less visual noise, meaning things on the walls, and things just being like particularly busy, which can be very difficult for Some adults and children, and this idea that if it's difficult for me or if it's difficult for a child, then it's better for everyone, if there's just less of it, so less visual noise, less potential enrichment, and so kids were expected to when we went on these nature hikes, or when they were outside plane they they weren't given a lot of playground toys and a lot of like, extra materials, I'm thinking of even like trucks or cars or things to drive around. There weren't a lot of those extra things, enrichment materials, but And yet, children were perfectly engaged in their settings
Ashley O'Neil:and playing and visual noise was such a big thing that it's brought up at their university and their teacher training programs. Like that phrase and that concept, which is really interesting to us, and just this idea that that sense of community, and I think it gets back to also like who has passed. Hour in a space, right? Because we might hear well, like it's not fair to the kids who like having all these things on the walls for us to take them off, because it's not good for everyone. That was not the discussion. The discussion was, we care about each other, and if it's not good for some of our students, it's not good for everyone. And so we think about that. And that's not to say that there was nothing in the classrooms, but it was very thoughtfully curated. You might see a set of classroom pictures up, and then those come down before anything new comes up. You may see a a chart that has a schedule, but there's not schedules everywhere for every topic. There's not anchor charts everywhere for every topic, because for them, the cost of the visual distractions, the just like, amount of data that kids have to consume and wade through is not worth any enrichment that they might find in having an alphabet strip on the wall or something like that, and that was different for us to see, but it did not detract from the Children's joy or engagement or happiness. In fact, we all, I think, commented that the classrooms felt very peaceful and homey, so they weren't cold and clinical. They just were much calmer than I think we would have seen elsewhere,
Julie Cunningham:and because, because we didn't like take a wagon full of enrichment materials on a walk with us or to the woods with us. Children engaged with what they had, right? The pine cones and the looking under rocks and the digging underneath the stump and the and that was all great, right? Running a stick through snow or climbing a tree or what I mean, there didn't. They didn't need. The interesting thing was, they didn't seem to need those extra enrichments. Yeah,
Ashley O'Neil:and there was, like, one of the schools I went to, even in terms of playground equipment, there's far less. There was a lot of mounds, like, either mounds of dirt to make these kind of rolling hills that, when I asked about them, they're like, Well, those are good for kids to play on. So that was like a piece of equipment, but there were maybe, like three swings and a slide, like, there was very minimal in terms of playground equipment also, and there wasn't a clog where everybody was waiting in line to go in the swing, because it was the only thing to do. Many of the children had made up games that they were playing. They had, like you said, a stick that they were kind of moving around in the sand, and they had really deep, rich stories that were going on. Whatever their play was, there was just less distraction and less adult offered stuff like you were saying you music. Okay, Julie and I feel like we've done a pretty thorough debrief with you about our trip to Iceland. And while you won't see another full Icelandic themed podcast episode from us anytime soon, we aren't quite finished with our trip just yet. You see we met some amazing people and some lovely practitioners on our trip from all over the world, and we learned so much from them, and we thought you might like to as well. So our next episodes will feature interviews with some special guests to make sure you don't miss out on these interviews, and we promise you you don't want to, we recommend that you like or follow our show in your podcast app, and that way new episodes will be sent directly to your feed. This has been another episode of teach wonder brought to you by the Center for Excellence in STEM education. Thanks for listening. You.