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At Prairie Creek, I have not noticed any explicit punishment, not even students being removed from activities, but I have noticed general reminders that encourage students to stay on task. For example, Molly is really good at using her body to remind students to pay attention. If she is giving directions or talking to the group and she notices that a student isn’t paying attention, she’ll often move to be next to them, and sometimes put a hand on their shoulder to physically remind them to turn to the group and pay attention. She also does this during all-school gatherings, where she’ll go sit with groups that are having trouble focusing.
I notice that Molly usually tends to use the technique of redirecting rather than punishing. Another example of this is one time Molly saw some older kids rough-housing a bit as the all-school gathering split up. Rather than embarrassing or shaming them or explicitly telling them to stop, she said to them quietly, “remember you’re models right now, there are younger kids around.” Hence, rather than calling them out in front of others, or even getting mad at them, she just gently reminded them to think about how they were acting, who was watching them, and what impact their behavior might have on others.
It seems like in general, Molly tries to predict trouble that students may have in order to reduce instances where punishment to discourage a behavior might be needed. For example, she often gives “active breaks” when she can tell that students need to move around. This is a way to help students focus during activities if they’re allowed to get some energy out throughout the day. Molly also tries to design activities and lessons that students are interested in to keep them engaged and reduce the chance that she’ll have to continually ask students to pay attention to. One example of this was last Wednesday, when it started pouring rain in the middle of a lesson. Instead of trying to fight the rain for students’ attention, Molly seamlessly switched into an activity that focused on the rain, in order to use the students’ distraction as a way for them to learn about something that interests them. Another aspect of this is how Molly often gives students options of things to do in a lesson, this allows students to follow their own interests rather than being forced to do something that they don’t engage in. Hence, I have not observed many instances of punishment at Prairie Creek.
On the other hand, I have noticed that Molly reinforces behaviors that she wants to encourage. For example, she always gives her full attention to students when they participate, and often repeats what they said to the class in order to show that it was valuable and also as a way to make sure the student’s words were heard. Furthermore, she encourages students to make connections (there is a hand signal for this, if someone else is talking and you relate to what they’re saying) as they share their thoughts with the class. She reinforces this behavior by bringing positive attention to it when students make connections. In this way, Molly teaches students that class participation is a good, positive thing.
I think that Molly also uses some classical conditioning in her class, where she has taught students to associate certain behaviors with another. For example, as a way to get her class to pay attention, be still and quiet, and listen, Molly will say “let’s crouch,” and she will crouch along with the rest of the class. The students have learned that when they’re asked to “crouch” they are supposed to pay attention. Hence, students are reminded turn their attention to Molly when she tells them to “crouch” with her, even without her explicitly telling them to pay attention (although this is also sometimes necessary).
When it comes to student learning, I think I am a bit more of a behaviorist at heart, though not 100%. I think that responses to behavior hugely influence future behavior, or at least this is true for my own experience as well as what I have noticed with others. In that way, I do think that the ways in which one’s actions are reinforced or punished really influence how one learns to act, interact with others, and what one believes to be true. On the other hand, I don’t think that learning only happens when it is shown through behavior. I do think that cognitive learning can occur within, even if it does not explicitly manifest in different behavior.
Something that I’ve been noticing throughout my visits to Prairie Creek which relates to some of the things I’ve been talking about, is the way that Molly really deliberately plans her lessons in ways that seem to work really well for student attention levels. She often uses body movement or placement to help students pay attention, and very intentionally divides her lessons up between active time and still and focused time. This gives different students the chance to be successful in her class, and also shows an awareness of student needs. Molly has continually demonstrated how flexible her lessons can be depending on what will be most valuable for student learning, and this is something I really admire about her approach to teaching.
Along these lines, Molly is able to be so flexible with her schedule because requirements that she needs to meet as a teacher aren’t as concrete as those that public school teachers often need to meet. Because of this, teachers at Prairie Creek have much more flexibility built into their learning model. Teachers teach different themes different years, they don’t do the exact same lessons each year because they have each student for two years (as the students move through the mixed-grade classrooms). I really enjoy this organization of learning, because it allows both students and teachers to follow different paths to meet learning benchmarks, which seems to be more interesting and achievable than expecting that each student must learn the same thing at the same speed in order to get to the same place in their education and development.
Attached is a picture of the Prairie Creek playground where students often get to take their “active breaks!”
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I am really impressed by how Molly teaches her class. I admire her patience and flexibility with students of that age level and also how she navigated how the older kids were acting in front of the younger kids.
Your example of the rain and how Molly redirected the kids attention to what they were interested reminded me of videos I have been watching about Montessori education. It’s really interesting and I suggest you look into it because it might be that the school may be taking a similar approach considering that these are younger kids. I just really admire the autonomy that kids have in following their interests and how adult figures build trust by allowing their kids to explore.
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