Discussion: Including Every Child

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“Child-Centered Learning in Practice” Program Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: In this video segment, three teachers present their perspectives on the way child-centered curriculum and environments foster healthy development and learning for infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and primary-age children.

LINDA FRITZ: In my classroom, the child's learning is based on relationships. And because of that, it happens at the child's pace. And I can't force a relationship to happen, I have to truly be caring about that child. I have to truly allow that child to feel comfortable with me. I can't push it. I can't pull it. I can't make it happen. It has to come from my heart and happen at that child's pace.

So with some children, that will happen just immediately. We'll look and we'll make a connection, and we're ready to embrace one another. And other children I have to sit back and kind of allow that child to feel comfortable with me, and for that relationship to develop in a more slow-paced manner.

Some of the children that you see on the tape today are not children that are in my classroom, so that was a unique place for me to be in with that video taping today.

Mikaela's not in my classroom. So I was trying to develop a relationship with her in playing the peekaboo game so that she felt comfortable. And she seemed to feel very at ease there. The smile came very easily for her, so I felt like I could move a little bit closer and could go a little bit further in that. But I really wanted her to be the lead of how that activity went, because it was her learning that was happening.

I'm learning a whole lot at the same time when I'm watching children learning. I'm learning how to do that. And some days, it's more successful than other days. Some days I click along with the kids and other days I'll go home and think, got to do that differently tomorrow. So child-centered learning requires that the adult be learning at the same time.

Well, I watched Mikaela since she entered our program. I've watched her and I know a little bit about her needs and the fact that she's developing a little bit slower than maybe a typically developing child. I've just seen little teensy bits of interactions with a physical therapist, a speech therapist, and talked a little bit to her teachers about what her goals are. But whenever I've sat down to interact with Mikaela, I get that big smile. That goes back to developing that relationship. So I feel like that she's very open to me, and that she felt comfortable.

So today, I really wanted her to feel comfortable in our room and to have fun, and to experience the toys and the objects that we have in our classroom that she may not have in her room. So when I first started working with her, I just wanted to make sure that relationship was still there. So we played the peekaboo game because she had this scarf and she had those little bean bags. And so we were just playing that trying to develop that relationship.

And as I saw, she was really enjoying that. And then, these other toys are just there around us. I thought, well, peekaboo is kind of like object permanence. Am I still here when you put that scarf up? Yep. And she could see through the scarf and I could tell she could see through the scarf. So I thought, well, let's put that scarf, or this scarf I have over these objects here on the floor. And her attention just naturally was drawn to that, which I didn't know was going to happen but it was nice to see that she visually let this go and went to the visual field here on the floor. So I thought, OK, I'm going to pull it away. And I get that same smile. Oh, those things are still there. So we just played with that a little bit.

And I tried to encourage her to even move a little bit to get over there to where the objects were, or to put her own scarf on there. And that was a little bit more difficult for her, I think, for whatever reason physically at that point in time, where she wasn't quite so interested. But I tried to encourage her to, even at one time, crawl over and get a block that we had covered up. And she kind of scooted a little bit. So I tried to get her up on her stomach to see if I could get some of that gross motor activity of crawling, which I know that she's ready for but not yet doing. And that was minimally successful. And mostly because I don't know exactly what her physical therapist is saying about her strength in her arms and her legs, and how much support she needed for that.

But then we went right-- well, she went. And I think that's an important part of child-centered learning, too, is that you're willing to follow the child. And you don't always have this idea in mind about where things are going to go. She just naturally turned and the mirror was there. And she started padding at the mirror and playing in the mirror. So I thought, well, this is the same sort of thing. I can peek around the mirror, and I can disappear. And she could look back and forth. So we just played there with the mirror and with some of the other kids that were coming in and out there, too.

And I'd seen her pull up in my room and I knew that was a big step for her. So I thought, I wonder if she can pull on the chair. So I just kind of set that up there for her as a little bit of a challenge. And I wanted to see how she would do. I was real surprised-- that chair isn't real sturdy-- that she was able to do that.

And then, when the other child came along and sat down there too, she wasn't intimidated by that other child. She felt very comfortable. That's not a child she knows, but she was able to allow that child to be that close. And I thought it was just a cool relationship between adults, relationships between children, and the

learning that was going on-- her gross motor learning, her language learning, just those different pieces. It felt like it just all fit together.

So we spend a lot of our planning time talking about what we've noticed particular children doing. We might say, I've noticed that he's really interested in trains or she's really interested in taking care of the babies. And I don't mean to be real gender-based there, but I do kind of see those sorts of things. We reflect on what we've seen children showing us. What their interests are, what their skills are, that sort of thing.

And then we, in our planning time, also will talk a lot about how is our daily routine going. That seems to be a rough part of the day when we're coming in from the playground and the children are hot was a discussion Cris and I just had recently. That's a hard time of the day where we're coming in, we're washing hands, and we're getting ready for snack.

And Chris, in her wisdom said, I think they're too hot to sit down to eat. So we said, well, why don't we come in and we'll just go over to the carpet and we'll try singing some songs. So we've been doing that. So we have to continually reflect on our schedule, on the activities, on what the children are showing us. And we try at each of our planning times, as much as possible, to also reflect on what's going well. And to take a few moments to say, that's going well, or that's not going well. But I think we tend to go real quickly to the things that aren't going very well. So we try, between the two of us, to encourage a few moments of just enjoying the things that are successful in our classroom.

I think one of the things that maybe is most observable and most different in our classroom is the pacing. And again, because reflection takes some time and being with children takes time. So we can't come in with this set plan of we're going to do this and this and this, and move through this prescribed lesson, or whatever, in a quick sort of way. We have to come in with we think this might work, let's watch and see.

And often with children, we'll notice they come in tired, or they come in hungry, or they come in a little bit more tentative that day, or more full of energy, so that Chris and I have to very much say, what are you thinking? Shall we change something around here and be very flexible in terms of our plans for each day, looking at what the children are showing us that they need that particular day that we might not have been aware of. Or even maybe, if they've had a little bump and they're feeling hurt, that that may need to change then what we're doing for the day. But I think the pacing is probably the thing that is most different. It's really a very slow paced sort of thing.

And that's sometimes hard for me because I'm-- you come in you've already done two or three hours of work at home, or whatever. And you're kind of on a

roll. And you're ready to move. And now you have to slow back down and follow the child's lead. So that timing is really crucially important.

Today with Demetrius, he's new in my classroom. I know a little bit about him, but I didn't want to push him into doing certain things. So I kind of set some stuff up, and then I really purposefully just sat back to see, is he going to be interested at all in this kitchen kind of activity? Or does he really want to get back to the cars, which is where he had started originally? So I purposely kind of set it up a little bit, and then wanted to watch to see how he was doing.

And that isn't always very easy for me. Sometimes I come in and I'm ready to play. And I want to play. And just to allow the child to say how they want to play. Sometimes it's really important that I don't always get to be the boss, or the queen, or whatever in terms of play.

Yesterday we had made some play-dough. And it was just [INAUDIBLE] and I at the end of the day. We were the only ones left, and we were working with play- dough. And she was doing her stuff with play-dough and I found I just kind of had to pull the reins back, because I wanted to create something pretty cool with play-dough that I knew I could do. But I also knew that if I did that, it might kind of stifle her a little bit.

Because I've see children say, make me a ball. Make a snake. And she knows that I can do that better than she can do that. So I don't want to show off my skills just because I've having fun. I kind of wanted her to see what she can do. And so I often will purposely try to just do exactly-- poking at the play-dough, exactly what the child's doing, so that I allow them to be the leader in that activity.

Well, I always see a big difference in children when we're going from the classroom to outdoors. It's sort of like you open up that door and things change. Kids that were kind of quiet in the classroom-- well, maybe become a little more boisterous. Children that were kind of really starting to push the limits in the classroom may calm down outside. So I always see a dramatic difference when I bring children outside. It's like you're taking them into a different world. And you are.

And I always like to just kind of step back, again, and kind of watch and see. Who's going to run to the slide? Who's going to run to the water sprinklers? Who's going to sit down? And who's going to get on the bike? And notice where they're going, and then see where I might be most helpful in supporting a child.

And often, I guess, in the classroom and outside, I kind of look for, where do I need to be in terms of supporting a relationship with another child? Children don't naturally share things very easily at this age, so they may need a little support in that. So that's probably where my mind first goes, is how to support their relationships in that social-emotional kind of stage.

We use a couple of different assessment types, and probably observation and reflection are right up there at the top as we've mentioned in so many other parts. But we use developmental milestones that we'll check with the child. Particularly as we've worked with children over a number of years, we kind of just get a sense, OK, they're about ready to start rolling over now. And then, tomorrow-- yeah, they're rolling over. But if you don't, you're saying, oh, they're about ready to do that and you don't notice that happening, then that's maybe when we'll start really paying a little closer attention and assessing. So we're always looking for developmental assessments.

During developmental assessments, we're also assessing whether the child is still interested in his project. They may have showed us yesterday that they're interested in bugs. And I bring some bug books out today, or I get the magnifying glasses out and they're not interested in bugs anymore. They're ready to move on to something else. Or they are still interested in bugs and they're even more excited about it. So we have to continually assess their interest.

And then we have to do some assessing of how the day's going, just for the whole class as a whole. And assessing how our schedule is going. Are we meeting the children's needs? Are we pushing them too far before we're able to give them a meal? So there's lots of assessing that goes on-- assessing of their developmental skills, assessing of their interest in the projects that we're doing. Assessing, are we meeting their needs?

And sometimes we have to call in specialists to say, OK, we think there might be something going on here with this child. She's not answering questions in a way that I normally would expect. So sometimes we have to call somebody else in to say, will you watch? Would you observe and see what's happening here?

I think the benefits for the children are that it really values the child for who they are and not who the teacher thinks they may become, or what the parent wants them to be. But it puts a value on, right now, where the child is right at this point in time. They don't have to be becoming something, but they are who they are right at that point in time.

And I think it's really important for there to be an equality in that relationship. And sometimes I think people don't really see that when they're working with babies. They see the adult as the knowing person and the baby as the child who needs care. But in so many ways, those babies know what they need and they know what they want. So I think as much as possible, I try and make sure that I'm valuing that child for who they are right now and not who they're becoming. And I think that's a wonderful gift to give children. And maybe one that they won't get throughout their life on a continual basis, but if they can get started that way and get that gift at any point in their life, that that's an empowering kind of thing for a child to know that they were valued for who they were at that point in time.

And I think that then helps them in their interactions with other children and other people. If they've been treated that way, that gives them the basis then to treat others that way. And I really feel like this could be the beginning of what makes for a brand new world. If you start these kinds of quality relationships in a child's life early on-- you start it here and you start it there and they go out from that, I think it has great potential for our world. And wonderful opportunities for that child to have had that experience.

Hopefully then, others will watch that happen. Other teachers in the classroom. Hopefully their parents begin to pick up on those sorts of ways to interact with children and to really notice what the child is saying, what the child is wanting, and valuing that. I think it's great potential for that child.

LISA LEGNER: The curriculum we use is built around what we've learned. And we know about the child, what we've learned. And we know about their development and what we think will be coming next. So we try to encourage growth and development in those ways.

I think a good example of child-centered approach would be, let's say, name writing. And we saw today some children who needed to solve the problem of whose turn it was at the computer. So we ended up getting a clipboard and the first child I was working with had barely started to recognize his name. And no interest whatsoever in fine motor, which is fine. So he spelled his name for me-- for the most part-- and I wrote it.

The next child, who was the same age but at a little bit different development, is emerging in that same skill. So he not only spelled his name, but he wrote some of the letters independently and some I helped him with.

Then the third little girl that we saw come up is ready for kindergarten. And she is totally ready for kindergarten. And she just took the pencil and wrote her name herself. So while it was the exact same activity, the exact same situation, the goals were all very different. The children were different. How they managed it was different. And how I dealt with it was different.

And the first step of the process is always to watch. And sometimes that's a struggle for me because I like to talk and I like to jump in and do. But I have to force myself to sit back and really watch. Watch what that child is doing that day at that time. Then I can take that information and compare it to some developmental milestones that I know they may be approaching or may not be approaching and pull out materials that may facilitate activities or learning that would bring that child up a little to the next level.

Linda talked a lot about appreciating the child for who he or she is that day. And that's definitely, definitely appropriate and the start. But when we talk about

teaching them, we want to, again, provide materials, provide opportunities, the environment, the people around them, to help them stretch just a little bit further.

The children have success, and then it continues from there. It's a circular type of process. You won't see cut-out type things or commercial things. You will see class books that we make, the children make, and they're out for them to continue to read and review. You'll see photo albums. You'll see what looks like a real mess oftentimes. And it is a mess, but it's a great mes because it's learning in progress.

Well, we hadn't really planned on doing water play, but the temperature today, the environment outside, was very, very warm. So out came the water, out came that type of wet, cool activity, play, spray bottles.

The sand in the sandbox has been getting drier and drier as we've had this heat wave. And the children, over the last week, have discovered that if you dig down deep, it's wet. But if you want to pour it, you use the stuff on top that's dry.

One of the children today brought water from the water table and poured it in the sand. And they kind of couldn't figure out why the top was wet. And one little boy started to mix it and knead it together so that it was all the same. It must have annoyed him in some way. But he was really enjoying that whole aspect, that sensory aspect. That for him, I thought was very interesting. Because later he was at the water table, another child had been filling a bucket and dumping it in the sand and scooping sand into that same bucket, then bringing it back to the water table. And there was sand in the bottom of the water table. And his perception of it was that it did not belong there.

However, he was very interested that it was on the bottom and continued to rub-- I think it was a little jar, a cup across the bottom. And I noticed, I pointed out to him that it made a noise. Did he notice that? And he continued it, and got very quiet and listened. And continued with this.

What I thought was just a nice conversation. Yeah, there was some learning that occurred. I was floored when we went back to the classroom because this little boy went directly to our construction area where we have blocks and hard hats and things like that, and got the cement mixer toy out, went to the basket of books that contain books about trucks and building and trains, and what have you that is also in that center, pulled out the book about a cement mixer and said, read this to me.

And when I got to the page where it said that they make sand and water in the cement mixer, he just looked at me. And I knew right at that moment he had put it all together.

Now he knows, in his mind, how to make cement. And we talked a little bit more about how the sand changed when it was wet. It was slippery. And did it fall through his fingers? And he just really grasped. And that's kind of an advanced scientific principle. And so now he understands.

Our director is very interested in increasing children's time outdoors and providing a natural environment in which to grow and learn. So we do have gardens that the students, the children, and the college students, and the teachers have worked together to create.

Well, one of the things that the children decided they wanted to plant were tomatoes. And so the teacher, at that time, went and purchased some cherry tomato plants. They planted them. They watered them all summer and now they're starting to ripen.

Well, many of the children don't really care for tomatoes, but they're willing to give it a try. So they'll taste it. And they've learned very quickly that red tomatoes taste a whole lot better than green tomatoes, which is, again-- you can look at that on so many different levels. And the children do because they're at different levels.

We're blessed enough here to have mixed age grouping. I appreciate that now. When I was a younger teacher, that thought horrified me of having three, four and five-year-olds all together. And how am I going to meet everybody's needs? But I was thinking of a more traditional teacher type of position for myself.

And now, I don't see myself as the great and powerful Oz that is expelling my knowledge to the children, but I'm an explorer with them. And I'm a facilitator for them to explore and learn different things for themselves. And share with each other, as well as myself and their families.

Child-emergent curriculum has benefits more than I could ever share with you. Primarily, it stimulates brain development and encourages development in all of the areas of development-- fine motor, gross motor, language, social-emotional skills, cognitive skills of course. But it allows the child the freedom to develop those skills and to grow at their pace, at their will, and when they're ready.

If I was going to teach one thing to everybody that day, now I realize it could not happen because everybody's going to come at it from a different way. Not only just their development, but their family background. Their physical part of them.

I had a little girl yesterday who seemed very clingy. When the mother picked up, she told me they had been in a car accident and spent many hours at the emergency room. I knew there was something wrong, but I didn't know what it was until I spoke with the parents.

In order to support a child-emergent curriculum, we need information about the child, about the family, from the child and from the family about early development, about family makeup. Are there siblings in the home? If there are, are they older? Are they younger? A child that has a teenage sibling is going to come in with a very different perspective than a child who has an infant sibling. And the family makeup will be different as well. So kind of that whole background, as well as, are there any family stressors?

And these could be wonderful things, like grandma visiting or vacation. And they could be very distressing things, like a car accident or a trip to the hospital. So it's important to gather that information as much as we can. It gives us a clue on maybe what to present, but how to present it and to predict how a child may be receiving it or viewing the type of experience that we're offering them.

We assess the preschool-age children by using a portfolio assessment. We gather a lot of work samples. We record anecdotal notes, observations, as well as photographs of the children as they are learning and exploring. We put all that together in a portfolio that we can use along with our-- we also use the Illinois State Learning Standards for Preschool. So we'll take that portfolio and see where is that child falling on those types of things. What's their strength? What is it that they prefer? And we share that with parents. And it's kind of nice then, they get to keep it too. So we have that, our portfolio assessment.

We also use just a very short, little checklist for each child. And those are the formal assessments, as well as screenings, of course, and health histories. But the assessment process isn't just those things, it goes on continuously. Just like the planning, we have to observe, then we assess, what are we seeing? Then we say, what are we going to do? Where are they going? And then, provide the materials or activities, or whatever influence we want to give the child, and then come back to it. Did it work? Did it not work? Were we totally off the mark? Were we right on top of it? And if so, is this something we want to continue with? Is it going to grow into a project? Is more than one person interested in this? And that's how it develops.

So I think oftentimes, assessment is seen as a separate thing. But it's really all part of-- assessment is part of planning and planning is part of the assessment. They reflect each other. And I think if they don't, maybe you're not getting as fruitful of a response as you would hope.

I think, what's been the greatest challenge for me over the years? And that would be in communication of what we're doing. It's like trying to explain a rainbow. It's difficult to explain, but it's easy to see.

CRISTEN SUSONG: When I'm planning for my classroom, I am looking towards a child-centered curriculum in everything I do.

I view the children as an integral part of what I'm teaching. And what their needs are and what their learning styles are determine what I'm going to plan and where I'm going to go with what we teach. And that's so important to allowing the child to be a part of their own education and their own learning. They become invested in it. And instead of just being a vessel that the teacher's pouring information in, I really see myself as a facilitator helping the student to find the path that they need to take for their own success.

The benefits are numerous. The children become more engaged in what they're learning. They're interested in what they're learning because they get to decide what they're going to learn. So they really can just dive into that subject matter and really find that path that they're going to be successful.

It also promotes social and emotional learning. When children are working in groups and discussing their problems and their difficulties with each other, they're not just learning academics. Of course they are, but they're also learning to interact with each other and how to have that interpersonal relationships with their classmates as well.

And also, I think another benefit, is children really become more attune with what their needs are. They start to realize where they need more help or where they need a little bit more clarification. And as the year progresses, children are more confident to say, I really need more help learning how to multiply. I'm still not getting it. And they really start to take the pulse of where they are.

I think it's really important for the children to be an integral part in setting up the classroom environment. I want it to be a place where they know where everything is. They are in charge of putting things where they need to go, and they've decided the most logical place for them.

If you can set up places in the classroom for students who have particular learning needs, that they know that that's a safe place for them to go and read. The way the classroom is set up in an inviting way, not in just rows of desks where children are sitting being filled with information, but a way that a cooperative learning environment can take place. So even the simple placement of desks in a circle or even not using desks, using the floor, the classroom becomes everything. It's a very tactile place where children need to be able to touch and feel and grab and use instruments, and know exactly where to go to get that ruler or exactly where to go to get the papers that they need, instead of the teacher being the one passing the materials and facilitating that.

If the students are invested in the way the classroom is set up, they always know where they can go to find the book they need or where the encyclopedias are because they've made that decision of where those book should be.

The activity that we saw today in the classroom with my students, I think really demonstrates that the classroom environment is extremely important to how the child learns. From simply setting the desks in the conference room style where the students were sitting in a circle, not at little rows of desks and I was not standing above them, I was sitting with them as a part of the group, as part of the learning, is really important. As well as having access to the rest of the classroom for the students to explore and find objects and really decide what they would like to explore and measure.

The activity that we worked with today in the classroom, and almost all of the activities that I help facilitate in my classroom, work for children at all varying ability levels. I may have a student who is a struggling reader in the same classroom with a student who is a soaring reader and who is devouring books. But I find when you are letting the student be the leader and guide themselves through the activity, the student who needs that extra help and maybe a slower pace is going to feel more comfortable and not pressured to keep up with the rest of the class because they know that everybody in the class is going to be working at a different level. No one's expected to be on the same page at the same time every single day.

And if you set that environment up, the student will also feel more comfortable and it won't be such a stigma if they are struggling. And I also find that the students who are a little bit ahead love to help out and love to be helpers and partners with those students. So they're not only learning from the teacher, they're learning from themselves. And they're also having peer teaching taking place, which is an excellent way to learn. When another friend is telling you something, it might even be better than the teacher telling you that something is true. So that's very important.

And there's always modifications you can make if an activity seems too difficult that we're doing. There are always ways to modify it.

In the activity today, there were some students having some difficulties with spelling words, or understanding how to spell computer table. And just simply saying, do your best guess or draw a picture of what you see. You don't have to write the word down that you're measuring, just draw a picture of it to remind yourself of what you measured. Just little simple adjustments like that can help children at all different levels of learning.

I think that there's a misconception that child-centered learning means that the teacher is just allowing the children to learn whatever they want without any regard to what the rest of the world is learning or what other classrooms are learning. And that's certainly not the case.

As a teacher, I know what the standards are. I understand everything the state wants me to teach the children in my classroom. But I'm not just teaching to an

individual standard that I've picked out and isolating that for a student to learn. I intentionally plan and let the students plan things that I know will hit those standards. And I can gauge whether they need more help or less help. If they're reaching those standards or if they need to go beyond those standards if they're working very quickly. So child-centered learning doesn't mean that you're throwing the standards out the window. It means you're trying to incorporate several standards-- you're learning reading, and math. You're learning math and your reading. You're learning science when you are doing your language arts.

So if you try to infuse all of the standards rather than isolate them, I think that you'll find that students, they're learning without even realizing that they're learning things. They're reaching those benchmarks without realizing that they're reaching them. They aren't pounding them over the head with them saying, you will learn this one thing and only this one thing. Because people don't learn that way. We all learn at different rates and not all on the same day.

For example, in the lesson that we saw today about measurement and estimating, we were reaching several math standards. The students were using a ruler. They were using the inches side of the ruler, as well as exploring some of the centimeter side of the ruler-- for those who were ready for that. Some students weren't ready to explore the centimeter side of the ruler.

We were learning about estimation, which is another math standard, learning how to give guesses and estimate and why that's important. The students were exploring the classroom. They were using a chart and writing down the information and learning the structure of a chart. And how to fill out that chart, which is an extremely important skill to be able to read the headings and understand what you're supposed to put in each box. So we were covering all sorts of standards.

Assessment is a really important part. As we all know, parents and teachers want to know if the children are learning, if they're reaching goals. But in child-centered learning, it's really important for the child to be a part of that assessment. So I do a lot of self-assessment. As you saw in the lesson today, if children felt that they were strong with their measuring skills, they could tell me if they were. And there were some that still needed more help, which is also the reason why we did another lesson today because students had suggested that they maybe needed a little bit more practice with measurement. So really being able to gauge a student as part of the assessment is very important. And a student assessing whether they're ready to move on is very important.

But assessment took place all day today as I observed the students. I can tell right there if they are using the ruler properly. Are they using the correct side of the ruler? So the teacher being engaged and watching and being watchful of the student, that's an assessment in itself.

At some point, there may be a formal assessment where a student brings up something for me to observe them measuring. And that's all I'm going to need from them for this lesson.

For other lessons and other subjects, the assessments could be different. Portfolios are a very important part of child-centered learning. And children being able to put pieces or work into that portfolio that they feel best represent their progress or an assignment they feel they really worked hard on, being able to choose that themselves is very empowering for a student.

And when they show that portfolio to their parent, they can point that out and say, I put that in there because I really felt I did an excellent job on that report on Mount Vesuvius, or whatever we're learning. And so a portfolio assessment's very important.

Of course parents want to know if their children are performing as well as everyone else. And so we also, in my classroom, my students are given standardized tests. And they're always well above their grade level and where they need to be. So that gives me that sense of I'm doing something right here. But assessment happens every day and every minute that we're teaching. It doesn't just happen on a piece of paper for a written exam.

What I feel is unique about my classroom is that the students feel like a family. Because we have meetings and we make decisions together, I think the students are open to doing new and fun activities that I may have an idea, or if another student has an idea for something they'd like to explore. The students really are respectful of each other in that way because we've set it up that way from the beginning. It's a very democratic process in the classroom.

I find my classroom is usually on the floor or laying on a beanbag and not necessarily a traditional walk in the classroom and all the students are sitting quietly at a desk working on a worksheet. That may be different than a lot of teachers may teach, but I feel that in a child-centered learning environment, sometimes that doesn't work for every child.

And if a child needs to do their math work on the floor, then that's just fine with me, if that's where they feel more comfortable and if that's what's going to make them be successful. And if they have to be out in the hall by themselves because they just can't concentrate, then that's OK too. So I think being flexible is a really important part of a child-centered classroom, being comfortable, and having an environment of mutual respect. And not being afraid for the classroom to be noisy. And having fun and gregarious. And being quiet is not always an indication of learning.

Well, I think that teachers are rewarded all the time with their students. But I think particularly, in a child-centered environment, I think you get to hear more and see more closely the little hurrahs that the students are giving themselves.

If a student has a light bulb moment, they're more inclined to share it with you. And I've had students come in struggling to read and struggling to keep up with peers. And they come into a classroom where a teacher is telling them they get to choose what they'd like to read for the day. And they don't have to read what everyone else is reading. The look in their eyes is, wow, I really can choose anything I want? And pretty soon, by the middle of the year, their reading is right where it needs to be. It's only because they were the ones that got to choose what interested them. And so watching those students who didn't crack a book open sitting in a beanbag chair in the middle of the room in their free time reading a book, that's probably one of the biggest rewards a teacher can get.