How to Create a "Nothing Without Joy" Environment

                         How to Create A “Nothing Without Joy” Environment 

                                    Narrative for Spring Hollow Movie 

                                              by Katherine Ratliff 
    (The movie can be found on YouTube Spring Hollow Movie Part One and Part Two) 

All movie and photo clips chosen for our movie were taken from the constant documentation that is our curriculum.  We take movies daily and at the end of the day, review our movies and select still photos from them, writing notes on them to highlight the many big ideas from the day to display them on document boards.  These ideas are shared with children through viewing and group discussions of the movies and photos.   During these group times, children share ideas and tell stories about their experiences with the revisits of their visual images.  No photos/movies in our dvd were set up, all were spontaneous and part of the daily routine.  The song choices symbolize Spring Hollow goals.                        

     

The Three Teachers 

Spring Hollow’s three people logo symbolizes diversity and the three teachers:  child, environment, adult. 

                                          

An artist goes over to the dress up shelf and dons a cowboy hat, travels to the music area to pick up the guitar,  moves to the middle of the room to sit in the chair and sings “Home on the Range, a song his father taught him the night before.  Upon reflection of this documentation, the adults realized the words to the song fit the concept of what Spring Hollow strives to be.  With a few changes, it could go like this: 

“Oh, give me a home 

Where the children of Spring Hollow play 

Where seldom is heard a discouraging word 

And the sky is not cloudy all day”

                                        

“This Old House” by Bette Midler was chosen to signify the value of “old” to give children a sense of history.  The word  “home” and “house” are significant words to symbolize that our school life should be as much like our home life as possible.  All of life, school and home, should be collaborative and integrative so that the Dewey philosophy that life and school are not separate is withheld and a love for learning is fostered.  The words “rang with laughter” in “This Old House”  symbolizes that joy is important in a learning environment.  Where there is joy, there is learning. 

                                     

Kenny Roger’s “The Gambler” is a song that the Spring Hollow teachers keep embedded in their minds to remember that sometimes holding back is the most beneficial tool to enhance and not stifle the child’s natural ability to learn.  It is important for the adult to know when to step in to scaffold learning by helping the child over a hurdle or stand back to allow children to be independent in their learning.

                                        

                                       The respect from the adult as capable 

the security from the environment 

and the acceptance from others 

encourages creative symbolic expressions from the child.

Teachers create an environment wherein the child is valued as being full not empty 

   naturally kind and intelligent.  

A warm environment is created  with beauty and history. 

History provides an understanding of ourselves. 

A beautiful environment gives 

the child trust and security to create. 

The adult is a facilitator 

creating think starters not think stoppers, 

maintaining the balance of knowing 

“when to hold and when to fold 

when to walk away when the dealings done”               

    The adult balances didactic teaching (intended to instruct) with 

socratic teaching (method of repeated questioning to elicit truths 

that are assumed to be implicit in all rational beings) 

inquiring or transmitting 

stepping in or out 

talking or listening 

asking or telling 

teaching or learning 

The children learn how to think rather than looking for what the adult 

wants them to say.  The importance is not that the child learns facts but 

learns to express his thoughts in the process of learning facts. 

The photo of the children pulling hay off the truck symbolizes our community, the history of our rural Tennessee lives.  The view of hay blowing in the wind in open pastures, hay bailed in large rolls or loaded on the back of trucks is a common site in our community.  This photo of a parent bringing hay to us in preparation for our annual campfire get together depicts our community. Howard Gardner states that “We must plant the seed in our own soil.”  We can not transplant the Reggio Emilia Approach, we must plant the seed in our own community.   We must bring our histories into the lives of our children, the history of our own surroundings, our own families, and our own teachers who make up our school communities.  When we allow children to naturally discover and explore their interests in an environment full of their own histories, curriculum topics emerge related to these histories.  Children can better attach their new knowledge to old knowledge from their experiences.

                                       

Such history related topics we have extended upon have been camping out, gardening, creek walking, and catching craw dads.  The photo of the children lined up along our creek bed role playing “goin’ fishin’” is a beautiful symbolic representation of learning related to the history of our community. 

                                         

It Is All About Relationships 

Circle Green As You Grow 

All Your Love Will Overflow 

Show  Love For the World to See 

That’s the Way It Ought to Be 

Carlina Rinaldi’s words 

“It is all about relationships” are significant because it connects Spring Hollow’s Reggio Emilia inspirations to another important Spring Hollow curriculum,  The Green Circle. The Green Circle Program was a nonprofit organization which marketed and held training and sold Green Circle curriculum materials.   I have used the Green Circle concepts as part of my curriculum since the early seventies.  My dissertation research tested the effects of eight weeks use of the Green Circle Program showing significant increases in social acceptance among Kindergarten children.  Our movie shows the Green Circle flannel board presentation being used to give children an outlet to talk about their feelings of acceptance and rejection.   The Green Circle is used as an outlet to discuss feelings daily.  A large green circle symbolizing the child’s world is placed on the window containing moveable symbols for each child.  When the child feels left out, the child can choose to place the figure outside the circle to symbolize and initiate discussion of his or her feelings.  The Green Circle curriculum includes follow up activities and a song about sharing love which is sung daily at Spring Hollow. 

                                        

Rod Stewart’s “The Very Thought of You” symbolizes the importance in our lives of “the other.”  It is through this sharing of ideas with each other that fosters the child’s scaffolding of knowledge.  

Love is like a mirror 

When you love another 

You become his mirror 

And he becomes yours 

Reflecting each other’s love 

You see infinity. 

(Leo Buscaglia)

                                       

The Arts 

The value of relationships extends into the arts.  Art is one of our many languages of expression.   When materials interact with each other forming relationships, they become art:  paint with paper or the combination of collage materials.  A creation in clay, collage, dance, or story becomes more significant to the creator when shared with an audience.   The audience is the validator.    

                                      

The slide and movie of body painting symbolizes the need for the young child to explore all senses though art activities.  This “messing about” stage of the art experience is necessary for the adult to accept in order for children to reach their full potential as artists.

   

                               

Clay is a daily choice in the environment.  A Spring Hollow child fulfilled her goal of making a clay pig like her older sister and Spring Hollow graduate created and is displayed in the Spring Hollow environment.  This choice of photos shows the importance and value of the environment holding pieces of the child’s creations, not only from present students but students in the school’s history. 

                                      

One day, a child announced about her creation, “It is a hat for all seasons” and explained how she used the dots to be snow for Winter, the leaves for Fall, the sun for Summer, and the flower for Spring.  The magic of this creation was that there was no adult present to encourage her creation, the creation evolved from the natural creative abilities of the child.  The child was encouraged by the support of acceptance from others and an environment where there are no wrong answers. 

The child gives the cues for the adult to know when it is necessary to step in to help the child over some sort of hurdle.  One artist was having difficulty drawing a dolphin so the adult teacher helped her to find a photo of a dolphin in a book to use as a model. 

                                       

Another artist was able to complete a symbolic representation of the people in her story about her Dad teaching her to ride a bicycle but expressed to the adult teacher that she did not know how to draw a bike.  So the child with the help of the adult searched for an art model for a bicycle and found one in the dollhouse. 

Performances are spontaneous unlike practicing for a product performance.  There is never as much magic in a pre-planned activity initiated by the adults with a pre-set idea of how the activity should evolve.  It is important that the adult gives invitations to scaffold knowledge based on the child’s expectations, not only on our adult expectations. 

                                          

The bus story was spontaneous with the small invitation of a pop up bus in the environment.  These spontaneous performances inspired by children making sense out of their worlds are revisited by showing the movie clips in our collaboration meetings.  The children collaborate to create a written story, and extend the topic with literature, drama, dance, music and visual art.  This spontaneous performance can invite other stories about a bus and school, a bus dance, a song made up or already known e.g. “The Wheels on the Bus,” and a creation of a clay bus, etc.

Symbolic representations are not only the visual art which children create,  they encompass all the art forms:  dance, music, drama and a fallen tree that represents “the African monkey place.” 

                                            

Collaboration and Negotiation 

A child realizes she needs collaboration from a peer to place the tire where she wants it for a project.  This movie clip shows the give and take of collaborative “problem solving” or in more positive wording “dream catching,”   The two peers go through the natural collaborative brainstorming technique of trial and error with solutions: rolling the tire, picking it up, and pulling it.  It is significant to note that the teacher is close by taking the movie but there is no attempt by the children to ask the adult for help, knowing that there is more joy and desire to independently “dream catch.”   The children know they are capable of this independence to complete the task at hand.  There is a rule for adults in our environment, “Do nothing for the child, the children wish to do for themselves.” 

                                           

One Hundred Languages by Loris Malaguzzi (founder of the Reggio Emilia Approach)

The movie of the two children with no verbal language communicating expertly with non- verbal language reminds us that we have many languages. 

No way.

The hundred is there.

The child 

is made of one hundred. 

The child has a hundred languages               

a hundred hands 

a hundred thoughts                                  

a hundred ways of tinking 

of playing, of speaking.

A hundred always a hundred 

ways of listening 

of marveling of loving 

a hundred joys 

for singing and understanding 

a hundred worlds 

to discover 

a hundred worlds 

to dream. 

The child has 

a hundred languages 

(and a hundred hundred hundred more)

Integrating Basic Skills 

The learning of basic skills is a small percentage of the languages we should pay attention to in our schools.  If we build our curriculum around the knowledge of letters and numbers, we are limiting learning.  In its stead, we should begin with the interests of the children and the validation of all their languages.  Basic skills can be integrated into the stories that unfold from the play of children. 

                    

“Slow Down, You Move too Fast, 

You Got to Make the Morning Last” 

by Simon and Garfunkel 

gives us all an important reminder that slowing down to follow what interests the children will bring joy.  When there is joy, there is learning whether or not it can be assessed by the adult.

   The Italian educators in Reggio Emilia have a phrase: 

“Niente senza gioia,”

translated “Nothing without joy.” 

Gene Autry’s  “Back in the Saddle Again” symbolizes 

The ending to each of our stories at Spring Hollow 

Brings us to a new beginning of a new story,                      

New Knowledge Connected to Learned Knowledge.   

New Questions to Old Answers 

    

The Journey Continues 

Creek walking is what our grandparents did for joy and this is a favorite 

activity for the children at Spring Hollow.  We have a small creek behind the school which children visit frequently.

“Nothing Without Joy” 

Our Journey Continues                       

  “Out Where A Friend is a Friend”