Starting From the Bottom
This course covered a variety of topics that I reflect on daily in my own work. Those topics span from different learning theories to learning accessibility. Early on, we reviewed Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Remembering these different levels of needs helps with my own interactions at the library helps me empathize and act differently to behaviors from individual children. For example, rather than immediately effecting consequences on a student after school, I first offer them a water or a granola bar to be sure the most basic of levels of their needs are being met. Frequently, this corrects the behavior without me having to address it directly.
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| Maslows-Hierarchy-of-Needs-1 by Nmilligan is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Desire to Learn
Other insights I gained through this course that are influencing my work as a librarian and educator is offering a voice and choice to students. Rather than deciding for them what we will be doing, I ask what they want to do. This was inspired by our reading "7 Things That Happen When Students Own Their Reading" and how the desire to learn from the individual children spread to more peers (Spencer, 2017).
Now, if we're learning about origami and structures as part of a STEAM project, I offer them some different origami figures we can learn. I am also sure to include various styles of learning and activities so everyone has the same learning opportunities. Using the origami example again, different instructional formats are always available. We have books, papers for tracing the lines, videos for examples, and then live demonstrations. As Spencer (2017) points out, this helps them embrace a maker mindset and lets them tie the learning into their own passions, like the guinea pig below based on one of the reluctant learner's own pet!
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| Origami figure chosen by library patron to learn about how folds are used in engineering to support machines and structures! They started with this since it was "easy" and then chose to do more difficult shapes after. |
Since my professional goals as an educator and librarian are not entirely align with professional goals as teachers, I appreciated that the takeaways in this course could be applied to all activities and not year-long classroom activities. While I learned a lot from the book reviews my peers presented on, I was happy to have chosen the book I did. Characteristics of Effective Early Learning opened my eyes to some of the small actions I take in daily interactions and how that can effect early learners before they are even in a traditional and formal learning environment. For example, it is important for adults to fully commit to pretend-play. Knowing this and understanding how this helps early learns has helped me work past my own personal insecurities to give play with children 100% of my effort and commitment (Moylett, 2014). This also ties in with core competencies of social and emotional learning (SEL). By committing to play, the educators are helping early learners learn empathy, becoming socially aware, and also modelling behavior for relationship skills and decision-making (clubXcite, 2020; Wings for Kids, 2020).
This book also really characterized "will, skill and thrill" for me (Moylett, 2014). Now, when planning educational events (such as weekly pre-school story times), I am very intentional about choosing books at an appropriate level (skill) and including enticing activities and environmental attributes (will) and always end with hands-on crafts or games to encompass the learning (thrill).
What Now?
Moving forward, I will be pursuing professional development opportunities in the area of engaging story-times and STEAM activities in the library. I have already started towards this goal with the purchase of several books on immersive experiences in the library and pairing STEAM activities with fictional books. My hope is to start with the early learners but use the experience on learning on all ages up to teens as I begin applying it! We already gave glitter jars a try with teens, learning about water viscosity! It was one of our most-attended teen events since the pandemic started.
References
clubXcite(2020).Social-emotional learning: What is it and why is it important?. https://www.exciteway.com/resource-blog/social-emotional-learning-sel
Moylett, H. (2014). Characteristics of Effective Early Learning : Helping Young Children Become Learners for Life. McGraw-Hill Education.
Spencer, J.(2017) 7 Things that happen when students own their own learning. http://www.spencerauthor.com/7-things-student-ownership/
Wings for Kids. (2020) Core competencies. https://www.wingsforkids.org/sel/social-emotional-learning/core-competencies/
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