The four key attributes of a great infant teacher

Article written by Heike Larson, LePort Schools

The training of the teacher who is to help life is something far more than the learning of ideas. It includes the training of character; it is a preparation of the spirit.
Dr. Maria Montessori

The most significant relationship in your child’s life is his or her relationship with you. Your connection with your baby is uniquely special, and at some level your child is aware of that irreplaceable bond.

But after you (and your child’s other parent/guardian), the next most significant impact on your baby’s development will come from the childcare provider you choose. She will be a major role model for your baby, and will contribute to his developing view of the world. She will impact his use of language, his social bonds with other children, and other areas of his growth. When you’re not there, it is her he’ll rely on for understanding and nurturing.  When looking at childcare centers, this means that the type of people the center chooses as caregivers will determine how joyful and educational your baby’s time away from you will be.

In contrast to most childcare facilities, who look for caregivers, LePort specifically hires infant teachers. We believe the time we spend with your baby is too important to be viewed as mere childcare: we look for teachers who can nurture your child and help him mature cognitively and behaviorally, in addition to comforting him and keeping him safe.

All of our teachers meet the base standards required at childcare centers: every teacher has completed her early childhood education units; teachers are CPR trained, and undergo a complete background check and health exam. What makes LePort different is that we go beyond this minimum standard.

We look for four key attributes in our infant teachers, both when we initially hire them, and as we develop them while they work with us:

• A passion and love for working with babies.At LePort, we strongly believe that you have to be passionate to do a good job: we want students to be passionate about learning, and we only hire teachers for whom being with children is a passion, not just a job.  This is especially important for our infant teachers. In contrast to the typical childcare center, which often hires low-skilled caregivers, and as a result experience high staff turn-over, we hire people who are excited to be guides in a young child’s development; who view their role not as a temporary job, but as a career requiring thought, reflection, professional growth. We believe this passion is visible in their day-to-day interactions with the babies in our care: come and see for yourself!

• Infinite patience and a calm, centered personality.Providing childcare to an infant is hard work, with many emotional challenges (and, of course, immense joys!). We have found that patience—infinite patience—is essential to working well with babies. Because our infant teachers love this age group, they delight in observing each baby, in discovering his unique temperament, and in responding to his individual needs. This focus on observation, and the knowledge of the importance of the early years, helps our teachers be unfailingly patient (and admirably more calm and centered than many of us are with our own children at home!)

• An explicit, thoughtful approach to nurturing and guiding young children.Our Montessori-trained lead teachers love working at LePort, because we offer an authentic Montessori infant program. In many childcare settings, there isn’t an explicit approach to guide the day-to-day life with infants. What happens in one childcare room may be different from another one next door; and as childcare providers are often short-time employees, it often changes from week to week, or month to month. This can be very confusing for babies, who urgently need consistency to bring order to their world. In contrast, our program consistently applies Montessori ideas, such as following the child, encouraging independence, observing and individualizing instruction, and using positive approaches to discipline.Our Montessori-trained lead teachers guide those staff members new to the program, and help them to consistently implement this positive, respectful and loving approach to caring for babies and young toddlers.

• A thoughtful, educated and intelligent individual.In her book, The Good School, author Peg Tyre quotes a preschool teacher who explains why intelligence really matters for teachers of young children:
  

  The best preschool teachers turn out to be ones who are very smart. “There’s a lot of things that you have to figure out. Preschool can be more difficult than the other grades because a lot of your teaching has to be embedded in other things. Understand that when you are playing with one child you’re working on their vocabulary, and with another child that you’re facilitating social skills and you’re teaching it through indirect ways.”Peg Tyre

  That’s one of the reasons we look to hire smart, university-educated individuals to become teachers, even in our infant classrooms. Yes, childcare providers for babies don’t have to demonstrate mastery in algebra—but they have to be able to think on their feet, to be creative, and to be able to observe and respond to each baby’s needs and personality. They also are one of baby’s key role models, which means they need to speak in simple, yet rich and grammatically correct sentences.

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Hiring the most talented and dedicated teachers, and maintaining a 1:3 ratio isn’t the cheapest way to run a childcare center. To the contrary, it’s expensive. But our goal at LePort Montessori isn’t just to run a childcare facility. Our aim is to offer an enriched, Montessori educational environment as your baby’s home away from home.

This means only intelligent, high-energy, passionate yet patient individuals can qualify to work in our program. Hard to find? Yes—we review scores of resumes and conduct dozens of multiple-round interviews. But then that’s our responsibility: finding the best possible individuals to guide your child during his critical early years. Luckily, with our reputation as the highest-quality, most authentic Montessori school in Orange County, and one who provides an excellent, supportive work environment for teachers, we usually have our pick of applicants!

Why Don't Students Like School?

A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom by Daniel T. Willingham

Anyone who is engaged in the process of teaching and learning in formal settings - as a teacher, as a student, or as a parent - knows that education is a complicated, messy endeavor. Those engaged in trying to make school work better for children try to learn from as many resources as possible. Daniel T. Willingham's Why Don't Students Like School attempts to use insights from cognitive science research to shed some light on teaching and learning. As he says, "We all read stories in the newspaper about research breakthroughs in learning or problem solving, but it is not clear how each latest advance is supposed to change what a teacher does on Monday morning." This book is Willingham's attempt to make those connections clear for teachers, and to help others think about policy arguments around educational philosophy and practice. He explains how students' minds work and how this knowledge can lead to better teaching and learning.

The book is organized around nine "principles" of how the mind learns. Willingham selected these principles because they are significant (they don't change regardless of setting), they are supported by many credible research studies, and they have the potential to significantly impact student learning.

In presenting the principles, Willingham demonstrates one of his own principles in order to make the readers' experience of the book more effective. He suggests that to deepen interest and improve learning about any given topic, it is important to develop the questions rather than just the answers. Thus, each chapter is organized according to a question about learning. Some of his questions are of more interest to teachers specifically (such as a chapter on the effectiveness of drilling and practice), while others may be appreciated by a larger audience, particularly of parents interested in how their children think and those who enjoy reflecting on their own learning experiences. Other questions/principles include: "Why is it so hard for students to understand abstract ideas?" and "Why do students remember everything that's on television and forget everything I say?"

To begin, Willingham offers a basic explanation for how thinking works. People are naturally curious, he argues, but not naturally good thinkers, so the conditions have to be right for good thinking. The book is filled with examples from daily life illustrating how the mind works. In explaining working memory vs. long term memory, he talks about why travel is tiring (because we need to make so many decisions consciously rather than relying on things we already know). The scientific explanations are enlivened with images and photographs, often humorous. In a book about brain science and education, the engaging tone offers accessibility to a general audience. In each chapter, Willingham offers a brief bibliography with less technical and more technical suggestions for further reading on each topic.

The book's weaker passages are when Willingham moves out of his own core competency area of explaining how the brain works, offering accessible summaries of research, and trying to explain why some intuitive or commonly accepted educational theories may not be effective. In an effort to show how powerful his principles are, he seems to occasionally overreach without providing sufficient follow-up or explanation. For example, at the end of a lengthy description of why background knowledge (concepts, definitions, facts, procedures) is essential for future learning, he casually mentions that books, magazines, and newspapers are the best place to develop background knowledge, and television and social networking sites are unhelpful. He claims that scientists verify this, but unlike other claims which are supported with research, he doesn't explain why or provide studies. Without offering reasons for his comment and other statements in support of traditional practice, he comes off as curmudgeonly.

More troubling are his attempts to weave in politics. When he dips his toe into large-scale policy arguments (linking a discussion of learning background facts to the backlash about standardized testing, for example), he offers vague suggestions or dismisses real and legitimate concerns quickly. In the same section on background knowledge, he explains that even if we are concerned that most background information referenced in newspapers has been created by what he himself calls "dead white males," that's what's important, period.

In perhaps the most controversial and interesting chapter in the book, "Should I adjust my teaching for different types of learners?" Willingham takes on the theory of multiple intelligences (and related theories about learning styles). This chapter has received much of the attention about the book, as it takes on a cherished set of beliefs that have been incorporated into general discourse about schools. Children bring different strengths and preferences to school, and they should be honored as individuals and each helped to achieve great potential. Willingham argues that though these beliefs themselves are true, matching instruction to learning styles is not supported by scientific evidence.

He claims that scientists have not determined that there are "categorically different types of learners," and parses out the difference between abilities (our capacity to learn or do something) and our styles (the tendency to think in a certain way). He discusses Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences as the foremost cultural example of different learning styles, and correctly notes that Gardner himself does not support many of the claims now associated with it. Willingham offers the example of a misguided teaching strategy of teaching about commas by looking for objects in the woods shaped like a comma, writing songs about commas, placing bodies into sentence shapes with commas, etc.

Interestingly, at the end of this chapter Willingham admits that he feels like a grinch. He suggests that though science doesn't have much to say conclusively about differentiation, in this case it may be that "craft knowledge trumps science." Sometimes the wisdom of teaching practice is more valuable than science when a teacher is faced with a decision about how to reach or teach a particular child.

Throughout the book, Willingham refers to what he calls "Bubbe psychology" - principles or ideas that your grandmother would know. Near the end, he asks, rhetorically, if a good and sensitive educator (or her grandmother) already knows to pay attention to her students, "can cognitive science do no better than that?" His answer is that cognitive science can "offer elaboration that puts flesh on the bare-bones slogan." Education is too complicated to be reduced to maxims or to policy ideas produced by cognitive scientists, subject matter specialists, politicians, or even experienced teachers themselves. Taking some insights from cognitive science into consideration for those who think about teaching and learning can only help give a richer perspective on important decisions. In this way, Why Don't Students Like School? can offer an important voice to the discussion.