Further Thoughts About Kairotic Time

By Stephanie Bartlett

I don't think you can plan these moments. Or perhaps the planning comes from the very action of NOT planning our day down to the minute. Had I written my day plan today, it would have looked like this:

8:15 Greet students outside, français intensif, songs, check in with each other

8:30 Play outside

8:50 Enter into classroom, flow of the day on the carpet, ABC and numeracy skills

9:00 Guest educator from the National Music Centre

10:00 Journal about our experience, centre time, snack

10:40 Clean up

10:45 Story

11:00 Au revoir

My day plan looks like we covered the social and academic curriculum, we had an interesting visitor and we enjoyed activity time. This is curriculum as plan (Aoki, 1987/1991). But reading this brief sequential description, you just don't know- it is impossible to know- what we experienced. Read on to discover curriculum as lived (Aoki, 1987/1991). Curriculum as lived can be described as deep learning within an authentic context where both students and educators are fully engaged. The topics or experiences tend to arrive from the interests of the group and unfold organically to provide rich learning that covers both curriculum outcomes and life experiences. 

The idea of kairotic time (Smith, 2014) is when time is almost suspended while we live in the present moment. Chronological time does not matter here. For a previous post describing a similar experience, please click here. With kairotic time in mind, let's revisit our morning.

The lingering effects of the orange sun rise were behind us as we ran to our tree together. I know how much we all love this moment of the day, because we all gather together with bright smiles to greet our friends. Part of our discussion and our français intensif, is to close our eyes and listen to the sounds we hear. Then we talk and share. What does it look like for an outsider to see 19 students lying on their backs for a minute?

We moved seamlessly  from this activity to free play. When it was time to go inside, there is never any reluctance. We gather our things and move inside to slowly transition and meet each other on the carpet.

Here, we ran through our number recognition and flexible thinking about math, as well as our alphabet rhymes. This could be so flat and one dimensional as we practice these very necessary skills but it is so wonderful to see how readily the students represent different groupings of numbers (2 +3 + 5, 5 + 0 +5, 4 + 1 = 5) and how their bodies move to the rhythm of our alphabet rhyme. We then assembled our visual schedule for the day and talked about Monsieur Evan who was going to come in a few minutes. We were excited and wondered what he would teach us about music.

When Evan came in, he  started to talk to the class about patterns in music. His "Repeato Machine" allowed him to say a name of one of our pets into the microphone, and then it would repeat to make a pattern. We started dancing and moving around the room as we learned the difference between listening to sounds and listening to how sounds can be put together to make a pattern.

When we began to colour in our own circles to create our own patterns, this is when I heard "I love this." "This is so cool." "Can you play mine?" "I am choosing two colours. I chose pale green and light green for mine."

We said a happy goodbye to Evan and began  to draw this experience in our visual journals. It always seems so funny when a room full of Kindergarten students is quiet and everyone is intent on their work. Max drew his journal on a log. Autumn lay down nearby. Two tables were full of students working quietly and sharing crayons. Angus took his over to the block centre to rest on a log over there. Often when we write, we discuss the expectations and that everyone should write quietly and whisper so as not to disturb concentration, and there is a level of maintenance involved on the part of the educator to ensure this happens. There was no reason for reminders here. Everyone was fully engaged in representing their favourite part of Evan's visit.

Students then moved seamlessly into their play as I met with each student and scribed their thoughts. Even this was different. Focused, concentrated play as students met and conferred at the Smart Board, drew shapes and charts on  the white board near the blocks, created art and built at the tool table.

We cleaned up at the end of the day with some regret, made sweeter by the fact that Ivy had brought us all cookies. We munched our treats and commented on the story that I was reading.

Walking you through curriculum as lived, shows how we covered many aspects of the curriculum today that are laid out in government documents and school board policy. Sometimes magic rises up to meet us and enhances our day. There is no recipe. I could have followed my curriculum as plan and we could have had a chaotic day as we moved hurriedly from one activity to another. Instead, we floated. The effects of kairotic moments reach beyond our time as a class and I find myself floating through the rest of my day long after my students go home!

References:

Aoki, T. (1987/1991). The Dialectic of mother language and second language: a curriculum exploration. In W.F. Pinar & R.L. Irwin (Eds.),  Curriculum in a new key: The collected works of Ted T. Aoki (235-245). Mahwah,NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Smith, D.G.(2014). Teaching as the practice of wisdom. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic.

Speed Dating an Idea

Written by Erin Quinn

Speed Dating is a concept that came from our professor, Robert Kelly. He wrote about the process in his book, Educating for Creativity: A Global Conversation. I highly recommend this book, by the way.

Speed dating isn't for romance, it's for ideas. Its purpose is to grow ideas and collaborate with others to increase the amount of ideas everyone has.

Step 1: Have your students brainstorm ideas around a topic. When I did this with my students, they brainstormed a list of things they could write about in a book review. When I did this with teachers, we had them share ideas for a task they were designing.

Step 2: Set the chairs in your classroom up in two rows, facing each other. There should be an equal amount of chairs. If you have an odd number of students, you could join in the speed dating too!

Step 3: Have your students choose a chair, bringing their original brainstorming list with them.

Step 4: Set the timer. Depending on what the topic is, the timer could be set for 2 minutes or even 1 minute, or as much as 5 minutes. We did 2 minute intervals the other day.

Step 5: Have the two students opposite each other share their ideas. If one of them brings up a good idea that the other person doesn't have, they should add it to their list. The objective is for each student to grow their list.

Step 6: When the timer rings, have everyone move one seat to the left. The ones at the end of the row will go across to the other side. Continue the idea exchange until you feel your students have enough ideas or they have "dated" everyone.

Design Challenge: How might we redesign the first day of school?

by Stephanie Bartlett

 Think back to your first day of school. What were some of the actions, emotions and experiences that you remember as a student?

Fifty teachers met in late August with CBE Learning Services for a three-day institute on Design Thinking. Participants were given an initial design challenge of “How might we redesign the first day of school?” The dominant themes that emerged from the first round of ideation revealed the necessity of a creating a safe place, the presence of positive and negative emotions, fear of the unknown, routines, the beginning of a journey, friendship and storytelling.

Our group created a point of view statement to help figure out the problem we wanted to solve:

All learners need a way to feel safe because when we belong and feel confident, we are more able to take risks and make discoveries in our learning.

 Why would we want to redesign the first day? The first day is always a new beginning. Teachers create amazing opportunities and get to know you games to help children feel welcome. Paperwork and information gathering is also an essential part of the day. There is always an element of uncertainty and excitement as a new group comes together at the beginning of a school year.

 As I sat down to plan my first day, I reflected on my values as an educator and as a person. What did I want students to feel? What did I want students and their families to know about me? Community is an integral part of my pedagogical beliefs. To teach a child to the best of my ability means that I need to form a relationship with not only the student, but with the parents, so that we can best work with the child. With this belief in mind, I jumped into my redesign.

 I took note of the feedback I received when I told people about the redesign. Comments and questions ranged from negative to positive as they asked me why, pointed out the potential for problems with separation when it became time to say goodbye, or nodded approvingly, saying that it sounded like a refreshing idea. Not one to back away from a risk or change, I forged ahead with my plans. On the day before school started, flowers, plates and snacks were on my to-do list to add to what I hoped was a welcoming classroom.

The most significant change that I made was inviting the parents into the classroom with the students. For the first forty-five minutes of the day, we mingled, shared a snack, and parents explored the classroom with their children. I watched as they sat and played or drew with their children and then began to introduce themselves to other parents.

 When the timing seemed right, I taught everyone our stop signal and asked students and their parents to clean up together and say goodbye to each other. We laughed together when more students than parents heard the stop signal when I used it the first time. We learned to say “au revoir” and then joined each other on the carpet to read a story.

Having a social time to mingle and share food together created the effect I hoped to achieve. Building on the belief that I want to create a safe and happy environment where students can feel comfortable enough to take risks in their learning, this was the first chance of many to model the importance of building a close-knit community. It is my guess that our first experience together smoothed out some anxious feelings of both parents and children. It felt peaceful and invigorating at the same time and I am looking forward to the beautiful year of learning and relationships that lies ahead.