As I reflect on this year, I am surprised to have learned that the pandemic provided a blessing in disguise for our Temple Shir Tikva Early Learning Center community.
Imagine beginning your first job as a preschool director with the world in lockdown. My dreams of creative classroom communities gave way to safety and sanitizing. Instead of focusing on emergent curriculum, social-emotional learning, moral education, and social democracy, I focused on restrictions, rules, protocols, and procedures.
I wondered how we would overcome the obstacles presented by Covid. What I found is that the combination of creative teachers, imaginative children, natural materials, and outdoor spaces helped us turn obstacles into opportunities.
As a Reggio-Inspired program, we refer to the classroom environment, both indoors and outdoors, as the 3rd teacher, with teachers and parents as the first and second teachers. Thus, the intentional ways in which the teachers prepare the classroom environment promote relationships, communication, collaboration, and exploration through play.
If Covid had not forced us to “take the inside outside,” as a very wise 4-year-old phrased it, the classrooms might look as they always had, with dress up and sensory tables, with shared materials and food. Maybe we wouldn’t have spent as much time outside and I am convinced that while the curriculum would still have been wonderful, it would not have been as magical.
The children ventured into our “outdoor classrooms” for everything from art projects to lunch to large architectural work with logs and sticks. They created habitats for animals, and used twigs, leaves and acorns to make “food.” They hunted for tracks and bear caves. They used the natural materials they collected, and the beauty of our outdoor classrooms, to dive deeply into their curiosities and find wonder in their world. With one class, this led to a deeper study of the Grand Teton Mountain range.
Nature inspired the children and their learning, and they were able to spend long amounts of time on a topic. Some investigations (like the one about animals that inhabit the Grand Tetons) lasted for several months.
The children might remember the months at home, but I think, more than anything else, they will remember coming to school and learning about bison at the Grand Tetons. One day, maybe they will want to go there to experience it for themselves.
Before the school year started, I wondered, would we be able to create rich and meaningful curriculum for/with the children, while also maintaining health and safety guidelines? I very quickly found out that the answer was yes. We brought the inside outside and the fact that the children shaped their own learning -- that's the true blessing of this year.
Stephanie Lerner
Early Learning Center Director
Temple Shir Tikva, Wayland MA
