Agency for children---and the teacher

This post will take me into uncharted territory.  Usually I write about an apparatus I have set up at the sensory table.  But the last couple of weeks I have been writing about the life of a cardboard box in the classroom.  In doing those posts, I began to think about my role in the classroom, and more generally, what type of agency does a teacher really have and how can others see it. 

There is a lot written about giving the children agency in the classroom.  How often do we really give children agency?  Do we really give children agency when we offer children choices so they will learn what we want them to learn?  Do we really give children agency when we work so hard for children to internalize our wants and desires so they see them as their own?  Do we really give children agency when we look for them to substantiate our world view?

Those are heady questions and not easily deconstructed.  One of the ways to deconstruct those questions is to raise the question: What is the role of the teacher in the classroom?

I will try to answer that by moving to another part of the classroom: the large muscle area.  I have a large muscle area as defined by a 5' x 12' blue mat.  This area is always open during the hour and a half of unstructured play time in the classroom.  I chose this area because I think I can easily find an example of the interplay between children's agency and my own.

A couple times a year, I set up a wooden climber and slide on the large muscle mat.  I do that because I know children need to climb and slide---even indoors and even at times other than at gym or recess.  However, there are metal shelves at the end of the slide so I have to cover them with other blue mats so children do not bump into the metal shelves.

 

I'll let you in on a little secret: they never do anyway.  Instead, they liked to launch themselves into the mats from the slide.

 

The children also liked to take the mats to cover themselves for rollicking games of hide and seek.





In essence, these mats became two big loose parts in the large muscle area for the children appropriate for their own uses.  Needless to say, there were many, many uses, but here is one fetching example of how the children used the mats as loose parts.  Two children covered the slide with the two mats.  One child held them in place while the other stepped onto them to slide down.  It was slower than they or I expected.  At the end, she declared: "That's a nice boat ride."


That's a nice boat ride from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

Up to this point, my agency was setting up the invitation for large motor play.  When I saw that the children started to used the blue mats for their own purposes, I made a conscious decision to let them move the mats away from the metal cabinet because they were already regulating their own speed down the slide.  At that point, I became really curious how many different ways the children could use these mats.  That meant that I needed to take a step back to watch.  Not only was I going to watch, but I was also going to document how the children used the mats.

After watching how the children used the mats,  I decided that I could create a new invitation for play in the large muscle area by just setting out multiple mats.  I took away the climber and set out seven mats.  Now it was the children's turn to show their agency.  They did not disappoint.  They stacked them so they could jump.

They laid them all out on the big blue mat so they could pretend to go sleep on Christmas Eve only to wake up to see that Santa had left them presents.

Some of the children decided to try to build a fort with the mats to protect themselves from the bad guys.  As the video below shows, that was not so easy because the mats were flimsy and floppy and took quite a bit of effort to manipulate.


Mat fun from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

With the help of others, though, they eventually did create a decent looking---though quite unstable---fort.

I think it is easy to see the children's agency with the blue mats.  There manipulation of the mats both when the climber was up and when there was no climber was only limited by their imagination, both individual and group imagination. 

Where was my agency in all of this?   My agency can be clearly seen in the initial set up.  From there, though, I do not think it is so clear.  Was making the decision to let the children initially move the mats away from the metal shelves something that can be considered agency on my part?  Can observing and recording what they were doing be considered my agency.  What about the decision to create time and space for the large muscle play?  Can that be considered agency?  I think taking the children's lead by creating a new set up with just the mats surely showed agency on my part. 

If indeed all those things I mentioned fall under the rubric of my agency, I am struck by the realization of how much the children's agency and my agency are intertwined.  It is like a small game of soccer.  I kick the ball to them.  They receive it and dribble with it a bit, sometimes with moves I have never seen.  Then they kick it back to me in an unexpected way or direction that makes me have to shift my stance to receive and handle it.  Maybe I do a few dribbles, but then I kick it back to them in a way that gives them a chance to receive, dribble and kick in yet another new way.  Agency is not something I have or they have.  Instead, it is something that emerges in the context of the room between the materials, the children and myself.  It is not static, but ever changing.

Does that make any sense?

The life of a big box in the classroom...continued

Last week, I began a post that showed the life of a big box in the classroom.  That life began with a fort made from four big boxes set up in the large muscle area of the classroom.

The four boxes were then moved to the sensory table where they were arranged so there was a box on each end and a box on each side. 

After they were removed from the sensory table, one of the big boxes became an extra room in the housekeeping area.

A second big box became a cabinet for the light table to cut down on some of the fluorescent light radiating from the ceiling lights.

 

What happened to the other two big boxes?  Using a utility knife and an old paper cutter, they were cut into bases and shapes for the children to make cardboard sculptures. 

With over a hundred children making sculptures, the last two boxes were gone.  In fact I had to find more cardboard.  That was really not so difficult. 

As it turned out, though, we were not done with gluing cardboard.  I decided to follow the individual projects with a large group cardboard sculpture.  I rounded up some more cardboard---again, not so hard.  I laid out a provocation using a large piece of cardboard as the base.  I glued a long, narrow box in the middle to give the invitation a third dimension.  

This was a group project across eight different classes and over a hundred children.  As you can imagine, it just kept growing from one class to the next.

It grew organically up and out.  By the end, it was about 5 feet long, 2.5 feet wide and 2 feet high.  Interestingly, we had to move it each day because we used this same table for snack.  The top of the light table cabinet was were it resided when it wasn't on the table.  Yet, another use for the big box!

That took a week, but we were not finished.  Next we painted the sculpture.  Before the children painted the sculpture, I spray painted the whole thing with black spray paint.  I only offered two colors for painting the sculpture: lavender and pink.

As the week progressed, the sculpture was easily covered in paint.  In fact, near the end of the week, the children were painting over the paint and adding design elements such as dots and stripes.

This was our masterpiece.  I hung it in the hall for all to see.  Underneath the sculpture, I displayed six pictures to show how it evolved.   Parents and other staff in the building were duly impressed.

In a matter of three months, the cardboard boxes inspired a fort, a sensory apparatus, an extra room in the house area, a cabinet for the light table, and both an individual and a group cardboard sculpture.  In other words, the boxes served as provocations in the large muscle area, at the sensory table, in the dramatic play area, with the manipulatives at the light table, and at the art table.   Not bad for a material that costs nothing.

Did I say I loved cardboard boxes?

 

The life of a big box in the classroom

I like big boxes.  I try to set them up around the sensory table at least once a year.  This past school year at the end of February, I arranged four big wardrobe boxes around the sensory table.  They were arranged so there was one on each end of the table and one on each side of the table.

One of the reasons I like big boxes around the table is that it expands the table and creates inviting spaces that the children can inhabit while doing their operations.  Children can be in a box reaching out or they can be in the in-between spaces created by the boxes.

How does working inside a big box change how children approach their operations?  For one thing, children often kneel in the box as they do their operations because the window in the big box makes it a little more difficult to stand and work.  If a child stands, she has to bend her back and lean over the lip of the table.  Children do it, especially if they want to extend their reach, but kneeling is more comfortable.  How does a child in between the boxes experience the working space and how does that affect his operations or his relationships with others working inside the boxes? 

Before the boxes were set up around the sensory table, they were taped together on the large muscle mat in the classroom to make a box fort. 

The boxes were connected by inside doorways allowing the children to crawl in and through the boxes.  Holes and windows were cut in the top and sides for rousing games of peek- a-boo. 

The boxes had a life before they were set up at the sensory table and they also had a life after the sensory table.  One of the boxes was moved to the house area next to the books.  This became a room within the house.  It became a new place to for the baby to sleep.

 It was an exciting place to share with friends.

It was a place that could be moved just enough to create a new space in which to hide.

It was a place that could be re-oriented to be a superhero cave.

Another big box was re-purposed to be a capsule for the light table.  Three big holes were cut on three sides, but the side closest to the wall was not cut to give the box stability.

The idea was to block the fluorescent light coming from above so the table itself would seem brighter for the children's operations.

Besides making the table seem brighter, it also created the feeling of being inside a space and under a canopy.

It would seem that the life of these big boxes was a study in children's exploration of space.  They willingly and enthusiastically explored the spaces offered them.  Interestingly, though, their explorations of space were byproducts of the operations that they created and recreated within those spaces.

Wait, aren't there two more big boxes?

To be continued...