Wouldn’t it be nice if a diploma or years of experience under our belts provided us with 100% of the knowledge we needed to answer every question and solve every problem that comes our way as early childhood teachers? I wish!
Continuing education is critical to our ongoing success as teachers. If we are not learning, growing, and improving our skills on a regular basis, our practices are in jeopardy of becoming stale and out-of-date. It’s easier now than ever to obtain knowledge–books, podcasts, social media, and research findings are all at our fingertips. I sometimes find myself with so much information I want to learn from that I can’t even fit it all in!
I had an experience recently with a veteran teacher at the school I work at. She has been in the early childhood field for 30+ years and it would be easy to assume that she’s seen and done it all. However, our interaction confirmed to me the importance of keeping up on our skills and seeking out answers when we aren’t sure how to handle a situation.
During our discussion, this teacher (we’ll call her Sharon) expressed frustration that one of her newly-turned-four-year-old students could not write his name independently yet, even after several months of school. I asked her what his name was and when she replied “Kyle”, I immediately thought of the progression of prewriting strokes. The first two letters of his name include diagonal lines, and writing diagonal lines is a skill that develops somewhere in the 4.5 year old mark. *His frustration* at not being able to make those strokes was squashing any excitement he had about learning to write his name. *Her frustration* had led to her set forth some damaging consequences for his apparent lack of interest in writing his name 🤦🏼♀️
Sharon had no idea that a child’s ability to make certain strokes developed sequentially with age. Had she known, it would have saved a lot of frustration for both her and her student. She could have continued to encourage fine motor activities, offer opportunities for name-writing without any expectations for success, and been able to celebrate with him as he made progress. Instead, they found themselves in a power struggle and the little boy was left feeling like a failure at school 😞. My heart ached for this poor boy who was having demands placed on him that he simply didn’t have the developmental capacity to comply with.
I’ll admit that I was surprised that this seasoned teacher didn’t know the timeline for stroke acquisition. Then, I remembered that teachers are still learners and there’s always new information out there to add to our toolboxes. We have to be proactive in seeking out additional knowledge, as well as be open to feedback from colleagues who are willing to share their tools with us.
And, for anyone who hasn’t yet come across this important aspect of emergent writing, check out this handout in my freebie section that shows the general timeline for when children are able to make certain strokes—it’s a great help when considering when they’ll be able to write different letters of the alphabet and why some letters are much harder for them to write than others.