On Education
My ideas
about teaching and learning are based on professional experience in a
variety of settings - including childcare in private homes and in group
residential milieu, work with families in crisis, and support and advocacy for
adults with mental health challenges. I also draw upon the very personal perspective of loving other people's children, and from helping to raise my now twelve-year-old niece, whose life has had a significant impact on mine.Oh, and I’ve been a student my whole life. |
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All I Ever Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten Most of what I really need to know about how to live, and what to do, and how to be, I learned in Kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sandbox at nursery school.These are the things I learned: Share everything. Play fair. Don't hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don't take things that aren't yours. Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. Live a balanced life. Learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work some every day. Take a nap every afternoon. When you go out into the world, watch for traffic, hold hands, and stick together. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the plastic cup. The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that. Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the plastic cup - they all die. So do we. And then remember the book about Dick and Jane and the first word you learned, the biggest word of all: LOOK . Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule (treat others the way you want to be treated) and love and basic sanitation, ecology and politics and sane living. Think of what a better world it would be if we all - the whole world - had cookies and milk about 3 o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or if we had a basic policy in our nation and other nations to always put things back where we found them and clean up our own messes. And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together. - by Robert Fulghum Other LessonsSome of you may be familiar with this Jane Elliot. If you can't get the pictured video to load, please click on the second thumbnail below the box. This clip is rather long, but interesting. See what you think. |
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