Ask the children

My favorite part of my favorite movie is when Captain von Trapp asks Maria if there is anyone he should ask for permission to marry her. Forget about the permission part - that's icky. What I love is when both Maria and the Captain simultaneously answer "the children." 

As a child I loved this because I am also one of seven children and when this is your situation, it often feels like your opinion gets lost. As a mom, I ask my children things all the time, not just to gauge how they are with a certain thing, but to honor the fact that we are a unit and their voice matters. 

As teachers, we remember to ask children the silly and mundane. Because opinions can been kooky, we are rewarded with great stories to share with others. Yesterday, for example, a kid told me he needed to be in a breakout room alone so that he could change his profile picture. (It's not like changing your clothes, but ok.) During math class we were partitioning a garden to determine the fractional parts of each vegetable, so I asked kids what veggies they would grow. Cheese and watermelon were hotly debated.

Children's opinions about more relevant issues matter, too. Recently with my most challenging class, I asked them to respond to an anonymous poll trying to determine if kids liked the class, the content, both or neither. The results helped me to reshape some things that are hopefully helping. 

In advisory we read an article about schools reopening and what "safe" means to them. They all mentioned safety protocols of vaccination, testing, cleaning. spacing and masking. They also talked about the less tangible parts of safety - not feeling alone, being able to see people, making it easier to ask for help, learning more and not having to rely on the internet for so much. 

One student summarized what many of us are feeling. We've learned so much about what matters in these last ten months, and it would be hard to give up on some of the things we have grown to enjoy... like going to the bathroom when we feel like it and not commuting. This kid said: I want to reopen the school but at the same time i don't, i do because I want to meet other people face to face and my teachers and i don't because i don't wanna be in school for a long time.  Pretty sage, right?

 All week long I have sat in on a project with the school district to help create a more student centered math curriculum. I teach in a large urban district, so I had to squelch some surprise that the overarching theme was to be more student centered. It's hard to do this in a big class, big school, big city, but so very important.

Kids spend a huge percentage of their lives at school. Because they are kids, they get told what to do a lot. This is sorta fair, as we can't orchestrate a world where choice is always available. But what we can do is ask the children what they think and need. 

Some might argue that this is a slippery slope and in asking kids we are making an unspoken promise to do something differently. In a way, we are - and it's important to make visible the connection between their opinions and the changes they see in class. But it's important to keep in mind that sometimes the remedy for kids is just to heard. They can play along with a lot of things - as long as we keep asking what they think, feel and need. 

Another big understanding for adults it this - often kids have a better sense for how things are going and how things might be better. Asking them allows us to make better experiences for them and for ourselves.