What Children Understand About Community PDF

You have to give yourself and stand up for yourself and be strong!.! ! - Malakai, age 7 Difference enhances life...where one is fundamentally moved—transformed utterly. The end result of this transformation is mutuality, partnership and community. -bell...

You have to give yourself and stand up for yourself and be strong!.! ! - Malakai, age 7 Difference enhances life...where one is fundamentally moved—transformed utterly. The end result of this transformation is mutuality, partnership and community. -bell hooks We speak often of seeking community. Classroom community, school community, local and global community. We, as teacher researchers wondered... what can young children understand about equality and equity within the complexity of community? If we want our students to understand themselves, be able to embrace difference and both experience and invite belonging then: what do we listen for and co- create with the children? Museum Center for Learning Will everyone need the same thing to bloom? Invigorated by the depth of the children’s wisdom the teachers began to craft curriculum around many new wonderings we heard from children: Bodhi: You have to be equal or else it’s not even a community. Tyler: But everyone is not the same, so different people might be different. Sylvie: Maybe should all have the same space but not the same lines. Lauren: Instead of lines [you] might put squiggles. We heard the children wondering: What is fair? In small groups children began to design an image that could express our thinking about community thus far. Museum Center for Learning “Why do we even want to be a community?” -Tyler age, 7 What if someone doesn’t want their color to connect to the color across the circle? Victoria, age 8 Two truths that the children knew and understood were that they were connected to each other and they were different from each other. The teachers wondered: How would studying ourselves impact our experience of community? If everyone was the same their brains would react the same. So what makes us different is our brains act differently. So we’re different. - Lauren, age 7 Museum Center for Learning A Mural that Navigates Uncharted Territory Community isn’t always synonymous with warmth and harmony. Politeness is often a veneer for understanding when in reality it masks uncharted territory. -Linda Christensen The image that expressed our ideas about community became a mural. Most of the year it was “finished” with a large grey circle. This grey being the color that was made when a bit of all the children’s colors were mixed together. Nicholas: It’s the community coming together to make one big [community]. Victoria: [The grey} explains how we come together, each little part and how they mix together. Museum Center for Learning In the process of living community, what relationship had the children uncovered between blending, blooming and belonging? Returning to the above Emmett: Hello. I am Powerman I can question again allowed transform into a bunch of different ideas. I the teachers to wonder fight bad dreams and idea blockers, this is what these children now my friend Mr. Electric. believed about Tyler: Welcome to the brain. I am the king of individuality within the ideas. I keep track of all the ideas and I community. Were they help Powerman fight bad ideas in the brain. satisfied? Had their questions changed? Engaged in a struggle for authenticity the children had studied themselves. They had developed collaborative models of thinking and ultimately expressed (by writing their own play) the Narrator: As she remembered her dream she diversity of information slowly got a new idea. they had uncovered Maliya: I’ll remember that we need everyone to about one another. work together and that everyone is connected. Museum Center for Learning We began to hear a new wondering in the room: What do I have to give? The community is the tree and whenever someone doesn’t do something nice a branch falls off, but when you do something nice it grows back. Like when someone gets hurt, a lot of people come... because they care. The branches are the friendships and the leaves are the care because the branches hold the leaves. The community holds all the care because it’s lots of people not just one person to hold all the care. Nicholas, age 7 friendship + care + courage = community The children begin to see their own gifts in the context of this powerful equation: friendship, the power of care, and the necessity of courage. Together we, the teachers and children encountered what Parker Palmer describes as an “intimacy that does not annihilate difference.” The people are the petals of the flowers: 27 children and the 4 teachers. They are the community. -Emmett, age 7 ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Museum Center for Learning