Book Reflections
Please scroll down to read about the books Fellows read and how these titles impacted their growth as school leaders.
Bambini
Bambini provides elements of Reggio Emilia’s Infant-Toddler Centers that have been deeply thought about over the years by many protagonists. Partnered with our work in the Fellowship about both Appreciative Inquiry and Reflective Supervision, the following quote encapsulates how we, as leaders in our schools, can help support teachers to do their best work:
“Unless people are given opportunity to express frustration and resentment, they can fall into negativism, misunderstanding, absenteeism, and burnout. In contrast, when they have safe places, times, and procedures for open expression of emotion, within the limits of courtesy and civility, then they can control damaging impulses and reinterpret them in a constructive manner.”
As we work to help teachers cultivate their reflective selves, they become more able to think about their work in that moment.
“Unless people are given opportunity to express frustration and resentment, they can fall into negativism, misunderstanding, absenteeism, and burnout. In contrast, when they have safe places, times, and procedures for open expression of emotion, within the limits of courtesy and civility, then they can control damaging impulses and reinterpret them in a constructive manner.”
As we work to help teachers cultivate their reflective selves, they become more able to think about their work in that moment.
Creating Schools that Heal
Creating Schools That Heal by Lesley Koplow is the first book we read in the ECE Fellowship. This book was very inspirational and really guided how we look at relationships in our school. Creating Schools That Heal is about emotionally responsive practice, which focuses on supporting emotional development through the physical environment and building relationships. This book addresses the importance of creating classroom and school environments that are intimate, inviting and emotionally safe. According to Creating Schools That Heal, teacher’s role is to become a partner in development to each child in his or her classroom. Koplow talks about the necessity of getting to know the “whole child” to be able to educate them. The emotional well-being of children is a responsibility that is shared among all staff members in an emotionally responsive school. In addition, family involvement is extremely valuable in an emotionally responsive school. This book helped me realize how directors and heads of school set the tone for interactions in schools. This book contains excellent ideas for professional development, and also suggests ways to implement an emotionally responsive curriculum.
How Children Succeed
Written by Paul Tough, How Children Succeed highlights the covenant that exists between quality educational institutions and their students. It tracks the pursuit of best educational practice and how it engenders success in students.
The precursors for academic success and achievement as understood by psychologists have changed over the years. As our understanding of how students achieve success and prevail in adverse circumstances continues to expand, so do the parameters for enhancing the success of marginalized students in the academic setting as well as in the workforce.
As Tough states, “This book is about an idea, one that is growing clearer and gathering momentum in classrooms and clinics and labs and lecture halls across the country and around the world. According to this new way of thinking, the conventional wisdom about child development over the past few decades has been misguided. We have been focusing on the wrong skills and abilities in our children, and we have been using the wrong strategies to help nurture and teach those skills.” (page 26)
Issues he raises in this book that are relevant to our pursuit of quality preschool education include:
He notes that one of the biggest obstacles for young students who are growing up in stressful in environments is not knowledge acquisition but physical and emotional self-management. As Tough states: “Utilizing your self-control in the emotional realm or the cognitive realm, that ability is crucially important to getting through the school day…” (page 140). This skill comes from parents and caregivers and their deep, close relationships with their children. These nurturing relationships foster children’s resilience under stress and reinforce biochemical feelings of attachment through the positive physiological effect of this parenting/caregiving style. A child who forms positive attachments in the early years is able to form strong social relationships throughout his or her life.
This book highlights the powerful and influential role that schools, particularly preschools, can play in assisting young parents to cement strong relationships with their children. Then, schools with older students can encourage the continuity of positive parent-child relationships through the teenage years and help create expectations that are viable for young adults. Success can be engendered by sharing knowledge and scientific findings on how both schools and families can affect positive self-image and achievement in children. If we recognize the covenant between school and parent as a reciprocal relationship at the various developmental stages from preschool through college, we will then be able to effectively create greater success in society across all economic classes.
This book is easily read, entertaining and informative. This book empowers people to pursue positive parent-school relationships.
The precursors for academic success and achievement as understood by psychologists have changed over the years. As our understanding of how students achieve success and prevail in adverse circumstances continues to expand, so do the parameters for enhancing the success of marginalized students in the academic setting as well as in the workforce.
As Tough states, “This book is about an idea, one that is growing clearer and gathering momentum in classrooms and clinics and labs and lecture halls across the country and around the world. According to this new way of thinking, the conventional wisdom about child development over the past few decades has been misguided. We have been focusing on the wrong skills and abilities in our children, and we have been using the wrong strategies to help nurture and teach those skills.” (page 26)
Issues he raises in this book that are relevant to our pursuit of quality preschool education include:
- How do our experiences in childhood make us the adults we become? (page 61)
- If we want to improve the odds for children in general, and for poor children in particular, we need to approach childhood anew, to start over with some fundamental questions about how parents affect their children; how human skills develop; how character is formed. (page 63)
- Evidence supported by neuroscience suggests that schools and family life need to support the development of qualities such as persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit and self-confidence. (page 23)
He notes that one of the biggest obstacles for young students who are growing up in stressful in environments is not knowledge acquisition but physical and emotional self-management. As Tough states: “Utilizing your self-control in the emotional realm or the cognitive realm, that ability is crucially important to getting through the school day…” (page 140). This skill comes from parents and caregivers and their deep, close relationships with their children. These nurturing relationships foster children’s resilience under stress and reinforce biochemical feelings of attachment through the positive physiological effect of this parenting/caregiving style. A child who forms positive attachments in the early years is able to form strong social relationships throughout his or her life.
This book highlights the powerful and influential role that schools, particularly preschools, can play in assisting young parents to cement strong relationships with their children. Then, schools with older students can encourage the continuity of positive parent-child relationships through the teenage years and help create expectations that are viable for young adults. Success can be engendered by sharing knowledge and scientific findings on how both schools and families can affect positive self-image and achievement in children. If we recognize the covenant between school and parent as a reciprocal relationship at the various developmental stages from preschool through college, we will then be able to effectively create greater success in society across all economic classes.
This book is easily read, entertaining and informative. This book empowers people to pursue positive parent-school relationships.
The Leader in Me
Stephen Covey focuses on what we need to be teaching children now so that they learn to be successful as adults. We are moving from the information age, where knowledge is the key to success, to a work force that is looking for a creative thinker with strong analytical skills. Employees of today and in the future have to be insightful and practice good people skills.
The book reiterates Covey’s seven habits of highly effective people:
The book reiterates Covey’s seven habits of highly effective people:
- Be productive and take initiative
- Begin with end in mind and plan ahead; set goals
- Spend time on things that are important
- Think win-win; balance what you want with what others want
- First seek to understand, then seek to be understood
- Synergize--value others strengths and learn from them
- Sharpen the tool--find time to take care of yourself, eat right exercise, etc.
- Physical needs of safety, good health, exercise and shelter
- Social-emotional needs of acceptance, kindness, friendship, and desire to love and be loved
- Mental needs, such as intellectual growth, creativity and stimulating challenges
- Spiritual needs that recognize one’s contribution, meaning and uniqueness
A Letter in the Scroll
A Letter in the Scroll by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks is a thought-provoking book which enabled us to think very concretely about the sacredness of teaching Judaism to Jewish children. It allowed us to look into the classrooms and see all the richness that the Montessori methodology has in our Jewish environment.
After reading this book, we began to think about holiness as it relates to places and spaces. At MMSC, this changed the way we looked at the main lobby and doors to learning. We started with our entry way, which now fashions a beautiful picture of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, with a quote from him under the photo. Our entryway is a holy space through which children enter the doorways and see mezuzahs on each doorpost. The classrooms have Sefer Torahs, Tzedekah boxes, holy objects and artifacts. The environment itself is beautiful, clean, aesthetically pleasing and designed for the child to be immersed in and explore.
After reading this book, we began to think about holiness as it relates to places and spaces. At MMSC, this changed the way we looked at the main lobby and doors to learning. We started with our entry way, which now fashions a beautiful picture of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, with a quote from him under the photo. Our entryway is a holy space through which children enter the doorways and see mezuzahs on each doorpost. The classrooms have Sefer Torahs, Tzedekah boxes, holy objects and artifacts. The environment itself is beautiful, clean, aesthetically pleasing and designed for the child to be immersed in and explore.
A Whole New Mind
The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind – creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers. –Daniel Pink
The main point of A Whole New Mind is to bring the right brain strengths of creativity, intuitive problem-solving, and holistic thinking into the forefront of our minds. For many years, left-brain skills (analytical and logical thinking) were considered the most important and vital to our survival and growth. While left-brain skills are still very much needed, society has undergone many changes that necessitate our integration of our right-brain skills as well. The following questions made us think deeper about our school practices and enhanced our approach to educating the whole child and, by extension, the family.
The main point of A Whole New Mind is to bring the right brain strengths of creativity, intuitive problem-solving, and holistic thinking into the forefront of our minds. For many years, left-brain skills (analytical and logical thinking) were considered the most important and vital to our survival and growth. While left-brain skills are still very much needed, society has undergone many changes that necessitate our integration of our right-brain skills as well. The following questions made us think deeper about our school practices and enhanced our approach to educating the whole child and, by extension, the family.
- What are ways we can use right-brain skills to enhance our approach to early childhood education?
- How can we think “outside of the box” in terms of the importance of the human aspect of all of our interactions?
- What is unique to each of our schools?
- As we utilize our right brains more consistently, specifically utilizing what Daniel Pink refers to as “the six essential abilities,” what potential could we envision for ourselves, both personally and professionally?
- How do we teach our children to be creative thinkers?
- Can we enhance our ability to read facial expressions and body language as a tool for parent communication?
- How can we help create an empathetic faculty and staff?
- How can we use the empathy and symphony “senses” in our communications with parents? Can we use the “symphony” exercises to increase our insight into effective parent communication? How will this help us reach our Reggio-Emilia inspired goal of parents becoming an integral part of our school?
- How can we teach “big picture thinking” to our students? Can we teach it to our parents, as well?