Guiding Principles

There are at least five overall guiding principles that are consistent throughout all the classes at the Children's School, from the youngest group of children to the oldest. We are most influenced by theories of educational practice that describe how children construct their knowledge and differ in their stages of development.

The first principle concerns how children learn. It is only through the active, meaningful engagement and experimentation with objects and people that children can begin to construct knowledge, logical reasoning, and develop social relationships. This happens most easily through children's play and socialization experiences.

Many of the curriculum activities grow from our objectives for individual and groups of children and our classroom environment. For example, the dramatic play area affords much opportunity for socialization and language development. Blocks are wonderful for exploration of relative size and shape (geometric relationships), as well as fine motor manipulation. Music and movement offer opportunities for socialization, bodily-kinesthetics, pitch and rhythm awareness, and cultural appreciation. Activities like painting, working with clay, paste, coloring, play dough, and so on, develop interest, fine motor skills, socialization, sensitivity to color, media, form, shape, and so on.

As you will see, our areas of curriculum are integrated and overlapping. Each classroom emphasizes creative expression and problem-solving, while maintaining a balance of teacher-planned activities, and those that emerge from the children's and teachers' interests, abilities, goals and objectives. As children move into the early elementary groups there is increasingly more focus on the acquisition of academic skills, which are needed in order to succeed in any school program.

The second principle relates to the role of the teacher. At the Children's School, each teacher creates an intellectually vital, emotionally safe, and supportive setting in which to encourage every child's overall development. To do so, all the teachers have a solid knowledge of child development as a foundation for understanding and assessing children's growth. In addition, the teachers appreciate the developmental trajectory of the many areas of curriculum and include simple to increasingly more complex activities in each of the domains.

Our teachers, thus, act as mentor-companions, at times observing, reflecting, collaborating, adapting, intervening, scaffolding, building upon a child's emergent questions or ideas, as well as assessing the level and interest of each child in order to make informed decisions. An excellent teacher is both an artist and scientist. This is what the teachers at the Children's School strive to achieve.

The third principle relates to the importance we place on the child's family. Every family is an essential part of our community, and crucial to our genuine understanding and appreciation of each child. At the Children's School, the staff works at creating an ongoing, positive collaboration with families. The parents and staff regularly communicate through frequent interactions, phone conversations, open-houses, parent conferences, parent educational series, written reports, school gatherings, home visits, and parent participation. Getting to know more about the values and cultures within families helps nurture the home-school relationship, and enables children to be open and proud of their family. Similarly, as parents become involved in our school and convey their confidence in us, children feel the partnership, enabling them to feel good about their earliest group experiences.

The fourth principle concerns the individual child. While we believe that children go through stages of development marked by general characteristics, we also recognize the wide range of individual and cultural variation. Each child is unique. Temperament, personality, individual needs, interests, abilities, learning style, ethnicity, family culture, are some of the many ways we come to know an individual child. Our program reflects a respect for diversity, and finds ways to promote the healthy development of each child. In all the groups, the goal is to help every child gain the confidence to reach their individual potential through their meaningful investment in materials, peers, and teachers.

The fifth principle concerns the role of rules and discipline. Regardless of the age group, the value of taking care of and respecting oneself, peers, and teachers, as well as the materials and environment, is conveyed to the children. However, what varies between groups are the expectations teachers have for children's behavior. Having the knowledge of child development helps teachers set appropriate expectations for children's behavior. We know that one of the major tasks of early childhood is the development of self-control. To accomplish this is a process over time.

Self-control involves the ability to be patient, delay gratification, internalize external rules, cooperate, take turns, share, empathize, refocus angry impulses to words instead of physical retaliation. Recognition that self-control does not happen at once, but rather over years, enables teachers to be realistic about expectations. The limits imposed must be necessary, simply and consistently stated, along with an explanation of what the child is supposed to do with a reason why the behavior in question is unacceptable.

The teachers give children support, assistance and nurturance. They help children find constructive ways for expressing their needs and feelings, which are reasonable for their particular levels of social competence and maturity. Limits at any age are extremely important for encouraging safety, security, and protection of all individuals. At the same time we understand that to grow and develop in healthy ways, children need to have opportunities to fully explore their environment. At times this means they will test, challenge, and defy both the materials and people within their environment. The teachers are comfortable with a certain amount of resistance from the children and yet still follow through on limits with respect and acknowledgment of how children feel.

There are many strategies a teacher may use to deal with unacceptable behaviors. Redirection to a different activity, changing the space, thoughtful planning, adjusting the schedule of the day, encouragement and reinforcement of positive behaviors, ignoring negative actions, humor, identifying a child's talents and interests, intervening before the behavior starts, removing a child from an area, staying close to a teacher, are some techniques commonly used at the Children's School.

In sum, each group at the Children's School is designed to be individualized, flexible and relaxed. Through an enriched, challenging, and varied curriculum, children have maximum opportunities to explore through first-hand experiences. We feel that trusting, satisfying relationships with people establish the foundation for each child to fully develop. The Children's School is a place where children are encouraged to take advantage of the full-range of early childhood experiences and yet not be pressured to hurry through them!