control issues
Tuesday, September 9, 2008 at 08:19AM 
We love visitor centers.
For one thing, they have taxidermy. I prefer my taxidermy to look like it was done in the days of Teddy Roosevelt, and most visitor centers are accommodating.
Actually, while spiffy new visitor centers can be awesome too, there is nothing that thrills my heart like 1970s-era headphones and a row of colored buttons. That droning voice — the same guy who did the voice-overs for film strips in the 60s — telling me about the eating habits of this mammal or the significance of that geological formation ... that's my idea of fun.
When we pull up to a visitor center, our kids burst out of the car and race in. They grab free hand-outs for their trip journals. They try to locate and stake out the best taxidermy. They are enthusiasm personified.
I should state here that my kids like to people-watch. They have been known to stare in slack-jawed fascination at people from a distance of about two feet.
Recently we shared a visitor center with a family whose kids were markedly not enjoying the experience. They were being dragged unwillingly from exhibit to exhibit with sullen expressions. This caught the attention of my junior anthropologists, who almost unconsciously began to tail them around the room.
The mom read each sign and label aloud in a booming voice that would have made a theatre teacher proud. Her kids stared at the floor. Her voice grew more fake-animated. “Just look at this! Did you see this?!” The kids continued to study the carpet pattern and grind their fists into their armpits. When mom marched them off to the gift shop in military fashion, I managed to snag mine and keep them from following.
My kids were fascinated. “How could you not like the visitor center?!” “Why were those kids so mad?”
After we left, I realized the visitor center makes a neat parallel to project-based learning. If the parent (or teacher) insists on being in charge and dispensing all the information, the kids are completely passive. They can become nothing more than reluctant victims, regardless of how interesting the subject matter.
When we go into the visitor center, the kids shoot off in different directions. “Hey, look at this!” “Come here! Come here!” Everyone gets to read something aloud and point out something that they knew first. Each person gets to be an expert.
Nothing causes a child to lose interest faster than having no control in the learning situation and having someone else in charge of each nutritional bite of information being spoon fed into them. Nothing excites a child more than having the opportunity to learn something that no one else around him knows.
If we define the parameters of a learning experience before a child has even begun — deciding what will be studied, in what order, what information is important/not important, etc. — then we have taken the reins and delegated our child to the back seat.
If we let our children define the parameters — as they go — then they have the reins. They get to show us around; they get to follow the path that is most interesting to them. They decide how far they will go. It requires parents (and teachers) to give up control of the situation. But aren’t we really here to teach our kids to drive?
Reader Comments (17)
So much here to take in. I remember thinking I was brilliant when I planned my school year by making the final exam first (and even gave it to students the first week to compare with the one at the end of the year), and let that lead my lesson plans.
Yet I know, the #1 problem I observed among students, often my brightest, was a complete lack of passion about anything. So many had already learned to become passive and had disengaged completely.
No wonder my sons, who refuse to tell me almost anything about their day when asked, LOVE to teach me the songs they've learned, etc.
huzzah for procrastinators!
srsly. you are so right. it took a bit for me to give up control. because i be so controlling. but i'm transferring that tendency to other areas of life, so all is not lost.
• • •
dude, remember the bison in the arch museum? we expected that sucker to dissolve into some kind of centenarian powder at any moment.
• • •
isn't J wearing a threadless tee?
xo
http://raisingexplorers.wildchildreserve.com/?p=421
I love your blog :)
christina, i’m pretty sure love of taxidermy is engrained in their DNA. ;^)
and speaking of taxidermy--when my sister was in college, she took a tax. class. we used to collect good "specimens" that we'd find around the farm and keep them in the freezer for her until she came to pick them up. Nothing like opening up a brown paper bag, thinking it was full of frozen cookie dough, only to realize it was holding a little brown bat and a sapsucker. :)
lol re: specimens in the freezer - i like my taxidermy old, molting, and in a lodge, visitor center, or nature center - not mixed in with my popsicles! ;^) (although i could totally see jack getting into that...)
I actually don't even get the chance to bore my kids with anything they are not intrested in...because they are usually sprinting through the museum... then all of a sudden grind to a halt and stay in the "intresting spot" long enough for me to watch my fingernails grow.
Back to that attention span thing! So very intresting how it really all turns around...
my principal said I shoudn't do that.I should just give the materials to the children and let them create themselve inorder to avoid 'factory products.
My main concern is this group of children have no experience of 3D products
further more they dont understand what is 3D.
We are still very new in Reggio Emilla approach programe.We always have conflict in art and craft area .
I will be very please if you could give me some ideas. Thank you.
exploration is great, but reggio instructors feel it’s important to teach technique as well. where an american teacher would think she was supposed to hang back and let children figure it out on their own, a reggio teacher would say “this is how it’s done”. that is not to say they tell children *what* to do, but rather how to do it.
if you are doing a project on airplanes, it makes sense to me that your principal does not want you to guide the children’s work too much. are you talking about a model of an airplane or a large child-size construction?
if you provide plenty of open-ended materials including clean recyclables (boxes, plastic bottles, cardboard tubes, plastic tubes and pipes) and things to attach them (masking tape, duct tape, colored duct tape, colored rubber tape), the children will naturally beginning working in three dimensions. they may or may not make the intuitive leap to get three dimensions from two, if you only provide flat cardboard and paper.
what kinds of conflicts are you having in the arts & crafts area?