Education Commons^™

The Storytelling Study: Understanding Ourselves And Others Through Storytelling, Georgia Moses

Graduate Student Independent Studies

Study on oral storytelling in early childhood education is ample. Study on oral storytelling in the elementary grades, however, is limited. This is likely due to the connection between storytelling and dramatic play, a creative and imaginative exercise that loses value in many classrooms as children grow. The emergent themes across the developmental stages of seven, eight, and nine year olds illustrate the need for and power of storytelling in second and third grade classrooms. The Storytelling Study is an interdisciplinary, multimodal curriculum in which children foster deeper understandings of themselves and others through the exploration of oral storytelling. The …

Introduction: Reconceptualizing Quality Early Care And Education With Equity At The Center, Mark Nagasawa, Cristina Medellin-Paz

Occasional Paper Series

Issue 51 of the Bank Street Occasional Papers Series is a response to Gunilla Dahlberg, Peter Moss, and Alan Pence’s 25-year interrogation of the concept of quality in early childhood education (ECE) (Dahlberg et al., 1999, 2013, 2023). Their groundbreaking work has called early childhood educators to question deeply held assumptions about the universality of childhood and how these shape the standardization of practices in early childhood settings around the world. They have argued that the homogenization of ECE practices is a factoryization of early childhood that undermines cultural pluralism and the field’s equity aspirations. This raises an imperative to …

Reconceptualizing Quality Early Care And Education With Equity At The Center

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Reimagining Early Childhood Classrooms As Sites Of Love: Humanizing Black Boys Through Head Rubs And “ Playin’ The Dozens ”, Nicole M. Madu

Occasional Paper Series

Black boys in American schools are often subjected to crisis narratives that negatively impact teacher-student relationships. However, two Black male early childhood teachers in New York City have reimagined teacher-student relationships which can be used to inform the future education of Black boys post-pandemic. Central to their reframing of teacher-student relationships between Black male teachers and Black boys is a focus on the importance of nurturing social and emotional health. This manuscript highlights how these two Black male teachers foster positive relationships with their young Black boys, empowering Black boys to see themselves as capable learners.

We Are All Learning About Climate Change: Teaching With Picture Books To Engage Teachers And Students, Ysaaca D. Axelrod, Denise Ives, Rachel Weaver

Occasional Paper Series

The topic of climate change and climate justice is politically charged, doesn’t sit neatly within a single subject or content area, and raises concerns of not being ‘age appropriate’ for young children. In this paper we describe how teacher educators in an elementary education program support a student teacher who took up the topic of climate change and climate justice in her 1st grade teaching placement. She designed a unit around a picture book that focuses on the words and work of Greta Thunberg, and used a diverse set of texts to support students’ understanding of the complexity of climate …

The High Lonesome Sound In Little Voices: The Use Of Appalachian Balladry In The Early Childhood Classroom, Lance Piao

Graduate Student Independent Studies

Although both music and poetry are thoroughly-integrated into the Early Childhood classroom, the ballad, their intersection, has not been studied. Appalachian music features a prominent tradition of balladry, a synthesis of several different music traditions. With the increased interest in Appalachian Studies after the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the study of Appalachian custom has become increasingly relevant. From a critical-historical perspective, the ballads, their collection, and their analysis have been used to perpetuate the oppressive structures that have come under increased scrutiny since 2016. This study is a hypothetical curriculum for integrating the study of Appalachian ballads into the Early …

The Best Of Both Worlds: Partnering With The Community To Create The Guttman Center For Early Care And Education, Robin Hancock

Occasional Paper Series

The Guttman Center for Early Care and Education was established in the fall of 2016 at Bank Street College with the intention of providing quality professional development and support to Family Child Care Providers (early childhood educators running small private daycares out of their homes) in Brooklyn, New York. Completely free to all participants, the Center seeks to attract providers, regardless of age, education level or years of experience, who were interested in deepening their understanding of early childhood development. Through a deep touch community engagement strategy and utilization of Bank Street's renowned Infancy Masters Program, early educators are encouraged …

Art & Early Childhood: Personal Narratives & Social Practices

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Living A Philosophy Of Early Childhood Education: A Festschrift For Harriet Cuffaro

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Facilitating A Block Program In Kindergarten And First Grade: A Manual For Kindergarten And First Grade Teachers, Hannah Rau

Graduate Student Independent Studies

Many preschool classroom have unit blocks. Unfortunately, not as many early primary classrooms incorporate blocks into their programs. This paper discusses the power of using unit blocks in a Kindergarten and first grade. The first three sections of the thesis focus on the importance of a unit block curriculum in early primary classrooms by discussing the developmentally-appropriate ways blocks invite problem solving and mathematical and scientific thinking. The final section is a teacher’s manual designed as a guidebook to support teachers who are starting a block program in their Kindergarten and first grade classroom. In this manual, critical components of …

Learning To Teach: Observing And Reflecting, Nancy Nager

All Faculty and Staff Papers and Presentations

This video series, “Learning to Teach,” provides a platform for professional development in early childhood education. It introduces viewers to compelling early childhood classroom footage accompanied by facilitated discussions about observations and teaching practices. You will get a hands-on look at how beginning teachers learn to closely observe children and engage in reflective conversations about children, materials, the classroom environment and themselves.

Descriptive Inquiry At Bank Street: Building Intellectual Community While Responding To Accreditation, Jessica Charles

All Faculty and Staff Papers and Presentations

Over the 2016-17 academic year, Bank Street Graduate School faculty and staff participated in a school-wide Descriptive Inquiry process to examine their programs and pedagogy. As part of the process, faculty met regularly to share their practices and to strengthen their well-established programs in teacher and leader preparation, museum education, and child life. Dean Cecelia Traugh initiated this process, drawing on her extensive experience implementing Descriptive Inquiry in higher education settings, in order to help faculty reflect on their practice, improve program quality, and build organizational coherence.

Conversations With Children About Death, Molly Sexton-Reade

Occasional Paper Series

This paper emphasizes the need for conversations around death in the classroom. Today's children are exposed to information about death through a wide variety of media. Teachers have a responsibility to provide opportunities for children to process this information in ways that are developmentally appropriate - acknowledging children's "magical thinking" as well as experiences children may have surrounding death.

Racing To The Top: Who’S Accounting For The Children?, Celia Genishi, Anne Haas Dyson

Occasional Paper Series

The authors argue that teachers are accountable not to some narrow “top” but to the rhythms and rhymes of their developing students.

Selected Works By Harriet Cuffaro, Miriam Raider-Roth, Jonathan Silin

Occasional Paper Series

Selected works by Harriet Cuffaro.

When Unit Blocks Came To Gardaborg, Kristín Einarsdóttir

Occasional Paper Series

Unit blocks have probably been used in some Icelandic preschools since 1950 or 1960, but a turning point occurred when one of the author's teachers from the Iceland University of Education (Fosturskoli Islands), Jonina Tryggvadottir, returned from studying with Harriet Cuffaro at Bank Street College in New York City.

Introduction: Living A Philosophy Of Early Childhood Education - A Festschrift For Harriet Cuffaro, Miriam Raider-Roth, Jonathan Silin

Occasional Paper Series

This issue of the Occasional Paper Series is a Festschrift in honor of Harriet K. Cuffaro, a Bank Street College faculty member from 1968-1998. A Festschrift—a volume reflecting the values, theories, and passions of a senior scholar in a field—seeks to offer scholarship that builds on these contributions. Harriet Cuffaro has touched and shaped more lives of teachers, scholars, and colleagues than we can possibly count. A teacher in her soul, and an esteemed scholar of John Dewey, Harriet has “unfolded and connected” essential Deweyan ideas and made them accessible and meaningful in the lives of teachers. …

Time For A Paradigm Shift: Recognizing The Critical Role Of Pictures Within Literacy Learning, Beth Olshansky

Occasional Paper Series

Broadens the definition of literacy with the help of children’s drawings and conversations. The author shows how the social practices of literacy are enacted in and through the visual.

Theorising Through Visual & Verbal Metaphors: Challenging Narrow Depictions Of Children And Learning, Sophie Rudolph

Occasional Paper Series

Through a rich description of how young children use drawing to express their emerging understandings of the world, Rudolph disrupts narrow definitions of the child as learner.

Entering The Secret Hideout: Fostering Newness And Space For Art And Play, Shana Cinquemani

Occasional Paper Series

Describes the transformative nature of negotiated spaces between the school and children’s self-initiated drawings.

Introduction: Art & Early Childhood - Personal Narratives And Social Practices, Kristine Sunday, Marissa Mcclure, Christopher Schulte

Occasional Paper Series

In this issue of Bank Street’s Occasional Paper Series, we explore the nature of childhood by offering selections that re/imagine the idea of the child as art maker, inquire about the relationships between children and adults when they are making art, and investigate how physical space influences our approaches to art instruction. We invite readers to join a dialogue that questions long-standing traditions of early childhood art—traditions grounded in a modernist view of children’s art as a romantic expression of inner emotional and/or developmental trajectories. We have also selected essays that create liminal spaces for reflection, dialogue, and critique of …

Nature Preschools: Putting Nature At The Heart Of Early Childhood Education, Ken Finch, Patti Bailie

Occasional Paper Series

Describes nature preschools as places that go beyond the typical preschool teachings within the classroom. Activities at nature preschools may include child-centered outdoor investigations, unstructured play and exploration in rich outdoor settings, large, natural areas to explore, and special programs that might include making maple syrup or apple cider, meeting live animals, and discovering pond life.

Learning Naturally: An Inquiry Study Of Streams In Hawaii, Becca Kesler

Occasional Paper Series

Describes a teacher-guided, place-based inquiry curriculum.

"I anticipated that it would give my students opportunities for exploration, critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, and collaboration, while developing a relationship with the natural world. This is the story I would like to share. My hope is that it will provide other teachers with the inspiration to consider the rich learning opportunities available in their local environments." -- Author

Thinking Together: The Value Of Discussion In The Five Year Old's Classroom, Elizabeth C. Radens, Susan Schwimmer

Thought and Practice: (1987-1991) the Journal of the Graduate School of Bank Street College of Education

Illustrates a kindergarten classroom where the teacher places a high value upon questions - child or adult generated. Discussion is the centerpiece of the program.

"Deep As A Giant" : An Experiment In Children's Language (1938), Claudia Lewis

Bank Street Thinkers

Claudia Lewis shares with the reader the delightful and surprising ways in which her class of four and five-year-olds describe the world around them. They refreshingly bypass grown-up cliches with their own version of description: "Easy as drinking water," "fast as you see yourself in the mirror," "flat as a necktie." Although written in 1938, the reader can easily "hear" the same wondrous language in young children today.

Tools For Life - Lower School Coordinator Laura Guarino's Address To Lower School Families On Curriculum Night, October 25, 2012, Laura Guarino

Progressive Education in Context

In a message to parents of young children, Laura Guarino emphasizes Bank Street School for Children's focus on helping children develop their capacity to be learners, to be flexible thinkers, and creative problem solvers.

Young Children At Play, Anne Tobias

Progressive Education in Context

Describes how young children learn through play.

Squeezed, Stretched, And Stuck: Teachers Defending Play-Based Learning In No-Nonsense Times, Karen Wohlwend

Occasional Paper Series

Describes how playful and inquiry-based engagements in kindergarten and first grade classrooms eventually gave way to the demands of district-mandated teacher evaluation plans that called for targeted reading strategies, seatwork, and instruction using basal reading materials. Wohlend describes the resulting impingement on children's emotional lives and the professional authority of teachers in these midwestern classrooms.

Play In Public Schools, Casey Yanella

Graduate Student Independent Studies

This is a research paper and literature review on the issue of play and developmentally appropriate practice in the public schools of New York City during the era of No Child Left Behind. It begins with an examination of the theory surrounding play in the primary grades, along with the discussion of studies dealing with play in today's public schools. The work includes school visits and an ethnographic description of the models of play environments in these schools. Finally, it also includes recommendations for programmatic actions to be taken in order to reinstate play in public schools.

A Neighborhood Curriculum For Kindergarten And First Grades, Kathy L. Rubin

Graduate Student Independent Studies

This paper is a curriculum study of a school neighborhood designed for children ages 5 through 7. The goal of this study is to provide an opportunity for students, who at this age are beginning to expand outward from the roots of their homes and families, to understand their next immediate neighborhood (their school). They will have a chance to meet people who work in the neighborhood, learn about how we get around and from where things come. And then, from that vantage point the students can begin to broaden their perspective and view of their world.

This study is …