As an early childhood teacher, I am required to complete a certain amount of training hours each year. The district kindergarten centers in my state provide three nights of training: one in the fall, one in the winter, and one in the spring. The trainings are free, easy access from work and home, and they provide a light dinner. It is very easy to rack up training hours through our district. Generally, they are good training sessions and I come away with good information and helpful hints and tips to take back to my classroom.

Last night I attended the winter training session. Last fall the kindergarten center staff took a survey on what kinds of trainings some of the early childhood teachers would like to have. The result: what to do with children with behavior challenges.

All teachers need help with behavior-challenged students. It was a good session last night … except I received the help and tips last spring from these same district professionals.

I had a student in my class who was very intelligent and educationally above the line, way ahead in the ballgame. Emotionally and socially he was not even in the dugout. This downfall had a great affect on him. He struggled with what do with himself when he didn’t get his way or another student got to a game or toy before he did. He became very aggressive to the point of hurting others. At this time he was 3 years old. He would knock over an entire shelf about 4 feet long full of wooden blocks. He would throw the blocks across the room. When removed from the situation to calm down, he would kick and hit and pinch teachers trying to work with him.

My director and school owner had helped me and worked with me with this student till we had exhausted our ideas and knowledge. We called in help from the school district. One professional came to my class to observe his behavior then we had a meeting with his parents. This was not the first parent meeting. Of course, we met with them before calling in reinforcements.

The district behavioral expert set up some testing sessions for this student –emotionally, psychologically, and academically. The results: he’s a genius. Oh, we knew that. Academically he’s ok. It’s when he is in a group that he loses control and doesn’t understand how to interact with others or wait his turn or control his emotions.

This student has since moved up to the pre-kindergarten class and continues to have emotional and social challenges. There are many days when he has difficulty controlling his aggressive behavior and hits others, sometimes even to the point of putting his hands around their necks.

Now back to the training session last night. The information they gave was good but not good enough for a large group session. It is too difficult to know how to handle children with challenging behavior issues in a large group training session. We must work those things out and brainstorm ideas and techniques on an individual basis. Each child is different. Each child learns differently. My studies of learning styles tell me to investigate how each child learns and go from there to help them with their behavior challenges.

The block-thrower student I mentioned in the above paragraphs learns best on a individual basis and likes the attention of teachers. He can work in a small group of students but large circle time groups are sometimes too much and overwhelming to him.

Other students that I have this current school year learn best in large circle time groups. One boy loves reading words from the word wall and doing letter identification during a large group time but is not much into individual center time and will resort to his all-time favorite activity of playing with blocks and making roads for cars. That’s a good activity for learning social play and constructing, measuring, and building, but not good to do day after day. He’s on track for kindergarten though based on multiple ways and styles he learns.

By the way, I must have made an impact on the block-thrower student and his parents. Even though he isn’t in my class this year, they still gave me a gift card at Christmas and wrote a nice note about how special I was to their son.

Bottom line: It’s all about learning styles and meeting students’ needs where they are and where they learn best.

I am currently reading The Philosophical Baby by Alison Gopnik. In the introduction of the book, she gives a definition of childhood (page 10). “What is childhood? It’s a distinctive developmental period in which young human beings are uniquely dependent on adults.”

In my early childhood class at school, I teach 3-4 year olds all day how to be more independent and do things on their own. Every aspect of a young child’s day is learning. They are learning to use the bathroom on their own. They are learning the sounds of the letters of the alphabet. They are learning how to write the letters of the alphabet. They are learning how to put those letters together to read words. They are learning how to ride a bike and catch a ball and use utensils when they eat. Each aspect of learning builds on the previous learned aspect. Children cannot write an ‘A’ until they know what an ‘A’ is and looks like. They cannot read the word ‘and’ until they know the sounds of each letter ‘a-n-d’. They cannot catch a ball until they know how to hold their hands out in front of them when a ball is tossed their way.

Young children are helpless from the beginning of life. That’s the period of childhood. Childhood is learning and imagination. However, learning takes time. Teachers must start from the very beginning with the basics. They must teach what an ‘A’ looks like, sounds like, and even feels like when beginning the writing process. They must teach what it feels like when a child moves and kicks his feet forward towards a ball.

Adults have adult responsibilities. “Children are protected from the usual exigencies of adult life.” Adults work to make money to feed the family and pay for housing and clothes. They have bills to pay and deadlines to meet. A child’s job is to learn. “When we’re children we’re devoted to learning about our world and imagining all the other ways that world could be. When we becomes adults we put all that we’ve learned and imagined to use” (page 11).

My early childhood students at school have a job to learn all about the letters of the alphabet so they can use those letters to do adults jobs. They have a job to learn all about riding bikes. They have a job to imagine and learn all about animals and dinosaurs and insects so they can become scientists as adults.

Children are the brainstormers. Adults are the production and marketing department (page 11). Children imagine and make discoveries; adults implement those discoveries. Think about teaching a 3 year old how to put his clothes on by himself. He may get one leg in his pants then discover something else on the floor. Now he is more interested in that new discovery and trying to brainstorm ways to use that new thing. Putting on one pair of pants may take 5 minutes for an adult but 20 minutes for a child with all the distractions and discoveries he makes in the process. That is the imagination and learning of childhood.

Learning takes time.

Teaching Around the 4MAT Cycle is a fascinating book describing different learning styles. I posted a blog article describing the Learning Cycle.

The 4MAT Learning Cycle can be seen like a clock with 4 quadrants.

After Quadrant Two at 3:00, we continue moving around the cycle to the bottom at 6:00 where we have Quadrant Three, the “It” quadrant (page 18 of the above book). The “It” is concrete. It is an action, something the student must do. It is something to be practiced, multiple and structured practices. The student must follow steps leading them to expertise in the future.

Finally, we move back towards the top of the learning cycle, back towards 12:00. This is Quadrant Four, the “We” quadrant. Students adapt learning to their world and use that learning to influence their future (page 19). Students extend themselves with their new learning into a wider dialogue.

Teaching Around the 4MAT Cycle is a fascinating book describing different learning styles. I posted a blog article describing the Learning Cycle.

The 4MAT Learning Cycle can be seen like a clock with 4 quadrants.

We begin at the top at 12:00 and move to the right for Quadrant One, the “I” quadrant, in which something is happening to the person’s feelings (page 17 of the above book). The teacher is responsible for connecting the activities to the student’s past experiences. The focus is on the student. It is a feeling and sharing time in which the student is connecting and remembering: “I know how that feels” or “I have been there myself.”

Then we continue moving around to the right of the 4MAT Cycle to 3:00 to Quadrant Two, the “They” quadrant. “They” are the experts, the facts and information (page 18). This is a listening time. The teacher is responsible for making sure all the students get it by telling it in multiple ways using visual and verbal methods.

Check out this book; it’s a great study and guide to becoming an expert teacher.