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Full-Text Articles in Early Childhood Education
Community And Connection In The Classroom, Denise Crystal
Community And Connection In The Classroom, Denise Crystal
Art of Teaching Thesis - Written
Connection and community can motivate children and adults to come to the classroom. These relationships can enhance learning in a number of ways. Not only do they bring joy, but they help children feel safe and a sense of belonging helping create an environment that is conducive to learning. A strong teacher-student relationship encourages and fosters learning. This connection is weakened when teachers use punishments, rewards and labels such as troublemaker that isolate students from the community. Community and connection can be fostered through true listening, reflective literature, story acting, open-ended play, and sharing with the community during circle time. …
Positioning Play As Abolition, Kathryn Troutman
Positioning Play As Abolition, Kathryn Troutman
Art of Teaching Thesis - Written
This thesis argues that play-centered, abolitionist classrooms are necessary so that all students can thrive. The current American education system disproportionately harms Black students and is inextricably linked to the Prison Industrial Complex. Abolitionist teaching calls for the tearing down of systems of oppression and the creation of new spaces and institutions that center Black joy. Play is abolition because through play, children develop an awareness of the possibility and the right of freedom. This work outlines the necessity of abolition and the importance of play, followed by examples of play as abolition, and concludes with a vision for my …
Rethinking Power In The Classroom, Evangelyn Santana
Rethinking Power In The Classroom, Evangelyn Santana
Art of Teaching Thesis - Written
When the No Child Left Behind Act and then the Everyone Succeeds Act were signed into law, our educational system began to function on the notion that education is merely preparation for standardized tests. The high-stakes nature of standardized-tests has pushed the narrative that this form of education is what makes children “successful” in life. Under-performing schools are in jeopardy of losing funding and face the possibility of school closures. Our educational system tells teachers they must participate in the “banking model of education” to avoid the blame for the possibility of these repercussions. Paulo Freire describes it as the …
Labels In Learning: An Exploration Of The Effects Of Cognitive, Intellectual, And Social Labels On Connections In The Classroom, Corinne Alexander
Labels In Learning: An Exploration Of The Effects Of Cognitive, Intellectual, And Social Labels On Connections In The Classroom, Corinne Alexander
Art of Teaching Thesis - Written
This paper is a testament to the negative impacts that cognitive, intellectual, and social labels have on connections in the classroom, both by way of students’ identities as learners and access to education. Labels pervade schools and exclude children from exploring, wondering, and making due to students’ identities and educators’ perceptions of their social interactions and academic performance. Whether intentional or not, giving students labels based on their cognitive, intellectual, and social abilities and performance creates separation and allows for maltreatment of students based on who does and does not have certain labels. As educators it is essential that we …
Our Children, Their Stories: Storytelling In The Classroom, Malik Torres
Our Children, Their Stories: Storytelling In The Classroom, Malik Torres
Art of Teaching Thesis - Written
My Master’s Thesis is about children and their stories. It seeks to understand story creation in the classroom and connect it to the cultivation of the broader classroom community. Here, storytelling is understood in its five forms: reading stories, oral storytelling, drawing stories, writing stories, and acting out stories. What threads these forms together is classroom community. In my thesis, I focus on a concept called “the narrative classroom.” A narrative classroom makes space for both play and storytelling; it incorporates the multi-modal process of literacy into a classroom environment centering children and their stories as official knowledge. Most importantly, …
A Call For Strength-Based Teaching, Molly Weinberg
A Call For Strength-Based Teaching, Molly Weinberg
Art of Teaching Thesis - Written
Teaching practices centering a deficit lens of the child do not provide the space needed for every child to thrive in the American public education system today. This is why I call for strength-based teaching. A strength-based approach to teaching calls for the decentering of deficits and the centering of strengths, knowing our students, the room to make mistakes, freedom from labeling, acceptance and value of all student differences while simultaneously honoring all student knowledge as official knowledge, and the centering of marginalized voices. Our school system today relies primarily on state standards and standardized testing to measure intelligence, forcing …