Schools in the Pandemic/Stages of Development:

I am working with Nancy Dennis in her 2/3 classroom at Prairie Creek Community School. From what I gathered on my first Wednesday there, Prairie Creek is pretty different from the type of elementary school that I went to. Nancy told me that they follow the Northfield Public Schools schedule, but everything else that they do seems to be pretty unique. I briefly met Simon, the school’s director, but I didn’t have a chance to ask him about the school. Nancy told me a bit about their structure and how they spend a lot of time outside (especially on Wednesdays), which is luckily the day that I am there! During the first six weeks of the school year, they really try to build community and relationships with each other, which is why they do things such as guided recess instead of free recess. Since this is a 2/3 classroom, they cover all subjects in their days. I was there for math, snack time, guided recess, and a science activity. I did not get an exact count of how many students are in the class, but I think there were about 20 there yesterday.

Since Wednesdays are always spent outside at Prairie Creek, it was really interesting to watch the amount of movement the students were able to do. During snack break, some of them rolled around on the ground or ran a couple of laps around the field, rather than being confined to a table indoors. There is so much outdoor space at Prairie Creek! I didn’t even have a chance to go inside and see what it looks like in the school. Outside, they have outdoors classrooms (rocks to sit on), tables, soccer goals, fields, and woods! I didn’t even see it all. In terms of any pandemic hangover, Nancy was talking to me about how last year, all of the students had to be distanced, so now, they are just beginning to get used to interacting with each other again. During their science activity where they were pounding flowers and plants to make color, I could tell that they were still learning how to work in groups and cooperate, especially because they had to take turns sharing a board to pound on. The pandemic certainly put social challenges on students as they were not able to interact with their peers much.

According to Piaget, the students in the 2/3 classroom should be just entering the concrete operational stage, and I assume that they are right between the preoperational and concrete operational stages, and that not all are in the same place. This must be one of the challenges of teaching combined years in class, instead of separating them into individual years, but there are certainly benefits to this, as well, as it builds community and learning in different ways. What I observed on Wednesday confirmed that these students are just entering the concrete operational stage. Their math lesson for the day was to create a human graph by lining up in four lines depending on what each students’ favorite season was. Nancy then had them figure out which season was the most popular, how many people liked summer and fall, and other math combinations like that. It was fascinating to see that some kids really had to focus to count how many people were in each line, while others remembered easily after counting once and were able to do the quick addition in their head, while some had to count each person every time they got asked a new question. This is the age when students are starting to shift from the need to see concrete things in order to do mathematical operations to the ability to think more abstractly. Thus, this observation supports Piaget’s stages, yet we also see that not everyone was in the same exact place.

This visit was a really good introduction to Prairie Creek. When Nancy was talking to me, she highlighted that a lot of what Prairie Creek tries to do is create community. During recess, when students were getting upset about losing, the teachers really tried to emphasize that the game was not all about winning and losing. They also encouraged buddies between the 4/5 students and the K/1 students. Everything that I witnessed on this initial visit gave me a good idea of Prairie Creek’s values, and I cannot wait to learn even more about the school. I thought it was really interesting that most of the kids told me that their favorite part about the school is that they get to go outside a lot!

Look at all of this open space for students to run around!