Evaluations

Discovery Through Documentation:  Learning from the Children’s Point of View

As the school year is underway, I find myself reflecting on my documentation journey. Throughout my thirteen years of teaching, I have tried many different types of documentation tools and displays—documentation panels and bulletin boards, blogs, and various parent portals. Each year, however, the thought of getting a bulletin board changed out every month and journey books completed by the end of the year seemed like an impossible task

Community of Practice on Documentation
A couple of years ago, I had the privilege of participating in a Community of Practice (CoP), sponsored by the Colorado Jewish Early Childhood Education Initiative, where the main focus had been enhancing documentation. I entered into the CoP to make the time I had dedicated to documentation more efficient, deliver aesthetically pleasing bulletin boards, and compose meaningful Remini posts and journey books. Since participating in this cohort, my view, goals, and expectations around documentation have significantly changed. 

New Documentation Goals
Through discussions and constructive critiques by fellow cohort members and our coach, I quickly changed my documentation goal to make learning visible to the children, school, parents, and myself.  This change was like putting on a new pair of glasses when walking into my classroom.  This new goal changed my classroom planning and supported my efforts to track my students’ development. 

Learning through the Children’s Eyes
To meet my documentation goal, I needed to pay attention to what the children were doing and telling me. This can be hard because toddler language is just emerging. I now spend most of my day down on the child’s level, taking pictures from the children’s point of view. This small change has allowed me to document the students’ interest and learning, not simply what I wanted them to learn.  

Making Learning Visible to Children and Families
By taking pictures from the children’s point of view, I capture their attention, focus, joy, intensity, experimentation, and trial-and-error.  These photos provide a dramatic portrait of learning through play.  Using these photos and observations in my Remini posts, on beautiful bulletin boards and in journey books—in a deliberate and intentional way—they easily show the path of my students’ exploration and learning.

Making Learning Visible to Teachers
The change in my documentation practice has also made the children’s learning more visible to me.  Specifically, by viewing the day from the children’s point of view, I can use Backwards Design to examine what the children are interested in and turn those interests into meaningful learning experiences. I also discovered that I could track student developmental milestones and have evidence of those milestones during conferences, including when courageous conversations with parents needs to happen. 

Documentation as a whole can seem very daunting; however, if done wisely, it can have a significant impact on the students, their families, and our growth as teachers.  I still have so much to learn about documentation, and I look forward to the journey ahead and a future filled with additional opportunities to discover.

Jennifer Brehmer
Lead Toddler Teacher
Temple Sinai, Denver, CO

October 2021

You heard from your Early Childhood Director about the program she just held.  She told you 15 families attended; the program timing was spot on; the kids had fun; the parents were happy when they left, and you received no serious complaints.

Your Early Childhood Director feels good about the program, and said it was a success. But was it? What determines a successful event when gathering families with young children? Is it the number of registrations? The number of people who attend? The efficient and cost-effective way in which you run the program?

Measuring success is more than just answering quantitative questions. While these are important, there are other equally crucial questions that can’t be ignored. We at the URJ suggest that it’s time to rethink traditional measures of success. 

Consider working with your Early Childhood Director to think about measuring a program’s success by focusing on RMI: Relationships, Meaning, and Impact.

Relationships
How are you supporting families in building deep relationships with other people in the community who are in the same stage of life? How and when are you encouraging families to exchange contact information so they can follow up on their own? How does the program support a second connection? In what ways can you design follow up connection and community building? How are you collecting information about new, emerging relationships?

Meaning
How do you know if you are creating programs and experiences that respond to the needs and interests that will bring meaning to the families’ lives at this moment? How might we find Jewish traditions and wisdom that speak to their moment, to their need at this stage? In what ways can you determine how families are finding meaning? How are you asking for reflective feedback from your participants? How are you showcasing their experiences to others?

Impact
How are the family engagement experiences we design and create connected to bringing more justice, compassion, and wholeness to the world? How are we bringing Reform Jewish values to our experiences? How are we supporting our families in contributing to making the world a better place? How are we determining impact?

Thinking deeply about relationships, meaning and impact doesn’t suggest numbers and critical fiduciary responsibilities aren’t important, but they shouldn’t be the primary measures.  To learn more about how the URJ is thinking about success, read this article from Amy Asin, URJ Vice President of Strengthening Congregations.

Julie Lambert, RJE , Associate Director, Congregational Innovation, Strengthening Congregations for the URJ

Discovery Through Documentation:  Learning from the Children’s Point of View

As the school year comes to an end, I find myself reflecting on the year and my documentation journey. Throughout my past ten years of teaching, I have tried many different types of documentation tools and displays -- documentation panels and bulletin boards, blogs and different parent portals. Each year, however, the thought of getting a bulletin board changed out every month and journey books completed by the end of the year seemed like an impossible task.

Community of Practice on Documentation
This year, I have had the privilege of participating in a Community of Practice (CoP), sponsored by the Colorado Jewish Early Childhood Education Initiative, where the main focus has been enhancing documentation. I entered into the CoP with the goal of making the time that I had dedicated to documentation more efficient, to deliver an aesthetically pleasing bulletin board, compose meaningful Remini posts, and journey books. Since participating in this cohort, my view, goals and expectations around documentations have significantly changed.

New Documentation Goals
Through discussions and constructive critiques of my earlier documentation examples by fellow cohort members and our coach, I quickly changed my goal of documentation to making learning visible to the children, school, parents, and myself.  With this change in mind, it was like putting on a new pair of glasses when walking into my classroom.  This new goal helped bring change to my classroom planning and supported my efforts to track my students’ development.

Learning through the Children’s Eyes
To meet my documentation goal, I really needed to pay attention to what the children were doing and telling me. This could be hard at times because I teach toddlers and their language was just emerging. So, now I spend most of my day down on the child’s level and taking pictures from the children’s point of view. This small change has allowed me to truly document the students’ interest and learning, not simply what I wanted them to learn. 

Making Learning Visible to Children and Families
By taking pictures from the children’s point of view, I was able to capture their attention and focus, their joy and intensity, their experimentation and trial-and-error.  These photos became a dramatic portrait of learning through play.  And by using these photos and observations in my Remini posts, on beautiful bulletin boards, and in journey books, in a deliberate and intentional way, they easily showed the path of my students’ exploration and learning.

Making Learning Visible to Teachers
The change in my documentation practice has also made the children’s learning more visible to me.  Specifically, by viewing the day from the children’s point of view, I am able to use Backwards Design to examine what the children are interested in and turn those interests into meaningful learning experiences. I also discovered that I was able to track my students’ developmental milestones and have evidence of those milestones during conferences or in times when courageous conversations with parents needed to happen.

Documentation as a whole can seem very daunting; however, if done wisely, it can have a significant impact on the students, their families, and our growth as teachers.  I still have so much to learn about documentation, and I look forward to the journey ahead and a future filled with additional opportunities to discover.

Jennifer Brehmer
Lead Toddler Teacher
Temple Sinai, Denver, CO

Reflective Supervision – An Asset from the Director’s Point of View

Why make the time to meet with each teacher individually?

Time, the resource early childhood directors run out of more quickly than money. It seems there are not enough hours in the day to complete all the administrative tasks, engage in authentic communication moments with families, be a presence in each classroom, and still make time to meet with each teacher individually.

Yet there are so many reasons why planned individual interactions with teachers must be prioritized in a high-quality early childhood education program.  Here are a few:

1. Just as each child is an individual on their own unique learning trajectory, so too is each teacher. As educators, we seek to make a zone of proximal development for every staff person to support them as they increase their classroom skills and personal growth. Creating a shared vision of goals is the first step toward success.
2. Teachers who experience a trusting relationship have the emotional fulfillment necessary to meet the needs of the children in their classroom. Making the time to have conversations, and holding that time as sacred, is the means to building trusting relationships with staff members.  
3. Challenging situations and conflicts among staff members or within a classroom setting do not decrease on their own. Change is more likely to occur when small adjustments are made at regular intervals. This approach also minimizes the potential for the huge blow-ups that come from repeated frustrations left unaddressed.
4. Regularly scheduled conversations provide directors with better insight into the dynamic within a teaching team. Tweaks and modifications made along the way provide the support for co-teachers to bring their best selves to the classroom. They also provide the much-needed venting zone to manage – and normalize – the frustrations inherent in an on-going relationship. However, the conversations should not be filled with complaining but used as an opportunity to problem solve together.
5. Reflective supervision is a window to the parts of the school the director does not get to see. Once built, an on-going relationship becomes an opportunity for staff to share observations about the program. Many of the best modifications we have made to our programs have been the outgrowth of an honest conversation with a staff member.
6. Teachers need to know they have the support of the director and that they can turn to the director for help whenever needed.  No one is in this alone.
7. Most importantly, reflective supervision is a chance for the director to grow. Reflective supervision provides time, space, and guidance for teachers (and directors) to examine their own thoughts and beliefs about children, families, and education.  The opportunity to look inward allows for deeper personal growth.

While finding the time for reflective supervision is an article in its own right, we cannot end this without sharing a few ideas to get started. The ways to create time are as varied as the structures of early childhood programs. The key to success is directors scheduling in time to supervise staff with sacred respect. Ideally, supervision time is built into staff contracts, with 5-10 hours per year added to existing responsibilities.  Supervision time might include half hour windows either before and after a standard school day, meetings during rest/nap times, utilizing a floating teacher a few times per month to cover teachers, or combining classrooms for outdoor play allowing for multiple teachers to rotate through time to meet.  As Directors, we find time to meet with a rabbi, lay leaders, and parents. Let's give our staff the same respect and hold these times sacred.

Fern Katz
Early Childhood Education Director
Sinai Preschool
Chicago Sinai Congregation

Susie Wexler
Director
Early Childhood Program at the Chava Center Congregation B’nai Jehoshua Beth Elohim
Deerfield, IL

Observation vs. Interpretation: A Cautionary Tale

In science, it is important to distinguish between an observation and an interpretation. Observations are behaviors that are measurable and objective, while interpretations are the conclusions we derive from those observations. Unfortunately, it is easy to confuse the two when the observer knows the people being observed.

What does this mean for early childhood educators? Often, we ask our teachers to observe a child. We use a variety of tools to do so, just like the scientists above. How often, however, are the observations we receive back actually interpretations?

Tammy explains observation to her faculty as ”just the facts.” She wants to see solely observable data. Amy describes observation as “taking dictation.”  She recommends approaching the task like a stranger or a videographer, recording behaviors and language only.  Either way, we each emphasize the importance of focusing on what we see and hear and NOT what we feel, think or believe.

What can you do to support your teachers in strengthening their observation skills (and perhaps your own)? 

Share your own classroom observations with your teachers
Model observing without interpretation.  For example, imagine that a teacher asks you to observe a child in the classroom who is disinterested in circle time.  When you are in the room, you note, “During circle time, E wrings her hands, rolls on the carpet and makes gasping noises.”  You note E’s behavior and make no inferences about the cause or what she is thinking/feeling – this is observation.  After sharing the observation with the teacher, brainstorm some accommodations that may help E still her body during circle time. Perhaps you find that with the assistance of a fidget toy or wobble disk, E is able to participate fully in circle time, answering questions and offering her own predictions and expanding comments.

Review teachers’ observations with them
Reading through teachers’ observations with them can help them determine where their observations drift into interpretation.  For example, if you receive an observation report from a teacher that includes, “P was angry when L took his toy,” you may ask, “How do you know that he is angry?” or “Describe to me what happened.” Take a moment to record the teacher’s response, which would likely be something along the lines of “L walked to P in the construction corner. She bent down and took the car from P. P’s face became red and his eyebrows furrowed. P made a fist with his right hand and hit the carpet.”  The teacher’s description is the observation without interpretation.

Practice
Allow teachers to observe in each other’s classrooms so that they are less likely to jump to conclusions based on their knowledge of the classroom dynamic.  Ask two teachers to observe the same small group of children, encouraging them to share their notes to differentiate between observations and interpretations. 

These skills are also useful to develop in parents, allowing them to collaborate more effectively with their children’s teachers.

Remember, seeking observable data before interpreting is a valuable skill for all parts of life. For every observation, there are often multiple interpretations. As Jewish educators, we should borrow a page from our knowledge of text study. And, many times, more heads the better!

Tammy Kaiser MSJE, Director
Early Childhood Learning Center
Temple Beit HaYam Stuart, Florida

Amy Damast PhD., Director
Early Childhood Education Program
Temple Sinai, Summit, NJ

March 2019