Teacher as Stage Manager PDF

## Teacher as Stage Manager The teacher's contribution to play always begins with the physical environment, with stage-setting. Developmentally, physical knowledge comes first. Children need the physical stuff of the world, the "It" out there that the "I" and the "Thou" find mutually interesting (H...

## Teacher as Stage Manager The teacher's contribution to play always begins with the physical environment, with stage-setting. Developmentally, physical knowledge comes first. Children need the physical stuff of the world, the "It" out there that the "I" and the "Thou" find mutually interesting (Hawkins, 2002, p. 52). It's up to adults to provide enough space, enough materials, and enough time, by arranging the environment so the play can happen. What can I do here today? Young children don't ask this question. They do it. Jenny comes through the gate at Live Oak preschool slowly, clutching her mothers hand. On the low wall near the gate, around the edge of the sandbox, there's a beautiful collection of road-building equipment. Bright yellow dump trucks, bulldozers, and graders are neatly spaced along the wall. What 3-year-old could resist, with all that sand waiting to be dug? Dulcie can't. She charges through the gate right behind Jenny, spots the bulldozer, and grabs it. "Mine!" she announces to the world. She plunks herself down in the sand. She bulldozes straight across the hole Marcos has been carefully digging for 5 minutes. "Hey!" he says, annoyed and socks her. She socks him back. The teacher approaches: "Marcos, what do you want to tell Dulcie?" she asks, squatting down between them. But Jenny isn't interested in bulldozers or sand or arguments over territory. She stands beside her mother sucking her thumb, interested in nothing in particular. Her feelings - Do I really want to be here? - are much more compelling for her than anything in the environment. "Want to take off your jacket and put it in your cubby?" Jenny's mother asks, hoping that Jenny will see something indoors that she wants to do. Sure enough, right next to the cubbies there's a collection of large rubber animals, sorted into traditional family groups of father, mother, and baby, parading along the shelf above the blocks. Jenny forgets about her jacket and even about her thumb.