A Caring Community of Learners: Creating a Protective Shield
However else one defines schooling, especially in the very early years, it is mostly about face-to-face interaction between children and adults, and these interactions, these conversations, are the process of adjustment, or adaptation. Test scores and other common assessment measures are but blurry snapshots of this process (Pianta & Walsh, 1996, p. 156).Caring communities are defined by Lewis, Schaps, and Watson (1995) as "places where teachers and students care about and support each other, actively participate in and contribute to activities and decisions, feel a sense of belonging and identification, and have a shared sense of purpose and common values." The factory-model school, with an emphasis on competition, hierarchical authority, and a view of teachers and principals as interchangeable parts, still exerts a strong influence on our educational system.
However, based on a synthesis of literature about human growth and development, Argyris (cited in Clark & Astuto, 1994) concluded that hierarchical, bureaucratic work environments are more likely to lead to immature behaviors, such as passivity, dependence, and lack of self-control and awareness. In contrast, schools organized as caring communities have been shown to foster a shared sense of responsibility, self-direction and a stronger motivation to learn, experimentation, less absenteeism, greater social competence, respect for individual differences, and higher educational expectations and academic performance (Clark & Astuto, 1994; Lewis, Schaps, & Watson, 1995; Newmann, 1993).
A central goal of such schools is, in a Northwest principal's words, "to create a positive school climate as seen through the eyes of each child." To do so requires not only careful attention to interactions and relationships between teachers and children and among children, but throughout the school and community as well. Teachers, families, secretaries, business people, senior citizens, family advocates, teaching assistants, foster grandparents, reading visitors, custodians, child development assistants, librarians, police officers, bee keepers, and administrators all make important contributions to the care and education of young children.
Knowing that emotional competency is learned through interactions with peers and adults, school personnel emphasize the crucial role they play as models of attitudes and behaviors. A principal in a Northwest classroom notes, "There may be some place where the expression 'do as I say - not as I do' is effective advice, but school is not the place. We constantly ask, 'How do we talk to kids? How do we interact with kids? What behaviors are we modeling?'" At the same time, children are helped to reflect on their own feelings, and to increase awareness of others' feelings. "Look at her face," a teacher might advise, "How do you think she feels?"
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This document's URL is: © 2001 Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory
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