Sometimes Teachers Just Need To Stand Back

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The Slice of Life posts are hosted every Tuesday by Stacey and Ruth at Two Writing Teachers

          Ingrid, my two and one-half year old granddaughter, spent the weekend with us.  She is a delightfully energetic young child, always going, going, and rarely serene like her new baby sister.  Here is part of our trip to the school playground right by the park behind our house. 

The apparatus is one of those tinker toy-like structures, lots of climbing in various ways and one can climb back down, or slide down on one of six slides.  Ingrid has gained much self-confidence from attending pre-school since September.  This time, she was ready to try most everything except those climbing parts that simply were too high for her.  Remember this is the playground for elementary students.  I watched and reveled in her curiosity.  She went down the slides on her backside, frontside, and head forward, and climbed up them.  This might be because she knows that there are rules about slides and she, with her grandma’s approval, was allowed to try all those forbidden ways this time.  She is in the ‘no’ and ‘why’ stages all the time now.  She also climbed some of the way up on two of the climbing towers that seemed to fit her small hands.

            What struck me as I observed is that I walked around with her, would say things like ‘that bridge bounces if you jump on it’ and Ingrid would eventually get to the bridge, jump joyously shouting ‘bounce, bounce, bounce’.  Then she would look at me and just smile and smile.  She also explored the pea gravel that covers much of this part of the playground.  She picked it up and let it fall through her fingers, she threw it up the slides so it would rattle as it came down, and then she made a big discovery. 

“Grandma, why are the rocks up here?” She meant on the metal mesh floors of the play space.

I said, “Maybe the kids brought it up here on their shoes.” 

She said, “I want to bring it up, too.”  And so she did, but it all didn’t stay, and she noticed that some fell through the little holes.  She sat down and examined the rocks that were still there, went back down and grabbed two more handfuls.  She dropped the rocks, watched some go through and some stay.  She repeated this more than one time. 

I asked, “Ingrid, what are you doing?” 

Her answer: “I’m looking at the rocks that fall through the holes.”  Back down for more.  She sat down and looked and looked, and that is when I took the photo.  She looked up and said, “I need more big rocks.”  She proceeded to go back down, carefully chose a few bigger pieces of pea gravel, and brought them up to drop and see that they did NOT fall through. 

       This learning by doing is such a big deal.  The teacher in me that stood back and watched with just a bit of questioning was having a good time accepting the learning and applying this to my own teaching.  Sometimes, at all ages, it’s better to stay out of the way and let the learning happen.