Dealing with Challenging Behaviors: Making the Whole Child Connection
“We must allow teachers and students to interact as whole persons, and we must develop policies that treat the school as a whole community.” Nel Noddings Seeing the Whole Person Nel Noddings, a professor of education at Stanford and widely-published author, pushes for teachers to take a view of the “whole person” of a child. On the surface, it seems simple. Children are humans. Humans are people. People have needs and desires that need fulfillment in order to both survive and
Successful Activities for a Preschool Garden
For teachers and schools just dipping their feet into nature programming, gardening can be the perfect first step. Gardening doesn’t take a lot of space or expertise, is easy to maintain and rewards children with flowers, fruits or vegetables they can call their own. A few years ago, I had the privilege of connecting with Master Gardener Chris Eirschele, author of “The Kid Gardener’s Planting Book.” She reminded me that there are all different types of gardeners and all diffe
Doing the Co-Regulation Dance
Self-regulation is something we talk about a lot when working with very young children, as we attempt to give them ownership over their ability to manage their impulses. As caregivers, we assume that the youngest of children will need the most guidance, as in infancy a child depends upon the adult to manage basic functions like eating, eliminating, getting to sleep, and being soothed when upset. As children grow, we naturally expect them to take more responsibility for the wa
