Johnston !

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Kaitlyn Johnston
ECE 451 Section 005
Final Platform Paper
Before stepping foot into 209 Chambers at the beginning of the semester, I was hesitant
about what I could possibly get out of an early childhood education class where we spent a majority of our time making puppets for a film production. I have no interest in teaching pre-elementary school children, the basis of ECE 451, but I have learned so much more than anticipated. From the readings and discussions with my peers and future educators, I have gained insight
into teaching younger students and gathered ideas to use in my classroom one day. I walk away
from this class with more knowledge about working with younger students, and though I do not
plan on teaching pre-elementary children, it is valuable for raising my own kids and the potential
of being placed in a early childhood environment. After taking this class, my teaching philosophy
has expanded to include that young children require differentiated instruction, a supportive classroom atmosphere, and a focus on social and emotional development in order to succeed in the
classroom.
Differentiated instruction has become an integral part of my teaching philosophy ever
since I worked with my former third grade teacher in the classroom last spring. She is a huge advocate for differentiated instruction and teaching to each individual student as a opposed to the
whole class. The Montessori philosophy, described in Edwards Three Approaches from Europe
reading, involves having clear cut domains and curriculum, but the material is individualized for
each child. So while the core material and curriculum is essential the same for each student, the
teacher shapes it to each childs learning needs. No child learns exactly the same as another

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child, and that is why differentiating instruction is so important to student success in the classroom.
Also described in Edwards article, the Reggio Emilia philosophy focuses on providing
the child with multiple learning opportunities and support and has a strong tie to inclusion of
children with disabilities. I am minoring in special education and know that it is so important to
provide these kids with the support and accommodations they need to succeed in the classroom
and in life. They can achieve anything if we give them the proper resources and set them up to
succeed. A quote I found summarizes perfectly what I love about the Reggio Emilia ideal and
will incorporate in my classroom: The Reggio Emilia curriculum is not child centered or teacher
directed. The curriculum is child originated and teacher framed (Siddz). This has to do with
differentiated instruction, something that is so important with any student, whether they have a
disability or not.
On the topic of differentiated instruction, Sesame Street is another reading we did that
displayed the importance of accommodations and individualized learning. The reason Sesame
Street has succeeded and continues to succeed is that the content of the shows is specific to the
cultural values and issues of each nation. Just like how a child in the Palestine area has different
ideas and values than a child in France, two children in the same classroom can have various
learning abilities and capabilities. To ensure that all of these children are successful, we as educators need to make sure we are targeting things that students care about and are providing the right
resources to help them learn. The fact that Sesame Street has had success using a form of differentiated instruction highlights the widespread importance of catering to your students needs and
further emphasizes why I plan to use it in my future classroom.

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Another integral part of my teaching teaching philosophy after taking ECE 451 is classroom atmosphere, which greatly impacts how a child feels in the classroom environment. Children need to feel safe enough to explore their world and comfortable to express their ideas. One
way to ensure this security is to establish a good relationship with parents and administrators.
While this is a very simple idea, it is often not practiced in the classroom but after reading about
the vital role strong relationships played in the creation and success of Sesame Street, its importance became more prominent to me. The producers, researchers, and educational content specialists all worked together to come up with a production that would succeed in each of the different countries. This collaboration is what the relationship between a parent, teacher, and administrator should look like, especially if the child is in need of special education services. All
should be working together to ensure the child is getting the proper support and resources to succeed in the classroom and to foster a safe and supportive community. When the child is young,
he or she is not capable of making decisions regarding his or her education; it is the teachers responsibility to differentiate instruction and work with parents and administrators to ensure success and security for that student.
Another way to create a safe and comfortable classroom atmosphere is by incorporating
Paleys functioning family model, or treating the classroom as a group of people who is subject
to the emotions and conflicts of each person (Paley 106). The teacher serves the role of the parent, dealing with the issues that connect everyone and worrying about the well-being of each
child. The children, in turn, react to the teachers decisions and to the actions of those around
them. I found this an interesting way to look at the classroom structure, but it hold true. Our students look to us for guidance in how to navigate school and ultimately, life. By showing curiosity

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about their dreams and stories, we convey that their ideas and opinions really matter and are important to our classroom and who they are as individuals. By figuring out their fears, we can anticipate when problems could potentially occur and support our students as they work through
their situation and fear of the unknown. This is so important to a successful classroom and also
the social and emotional development of our students, as we spend six hours a day, five days a
week, and thirty weeks a year teaching and influencing them.
A childs social and emotional development is important in the early years as the child is
trying to synthesize the world around them and as an early childhood educator, it is vital to pay
attention to this development. This occurs through individual and collaborative play while also
gauging the reactions of those around them. Edwards Three Approaches from Europe reading on
the Waldorf, Montessori, and Reggio Emilia education philosophies includes a focus on the
childs emotional and social development that I will incorporate into my future classroom. The
Waldorf idea emphasizes bodily exploration and constructive play, and I feel that hands-on activities are important for students to learn, especially in subjects like science and language arts.
These hands-on experiences allow the child to interact with peers and the world around them to
gain a better understanding of the material. Just like Vivian Paley talks about in The Boy Who
Would Be A Helicopter, young children learn about the world best by acting out their fears, worries, and curiosities through play and it is important for educators to play to that strength through
hands-on activities.
Paleys The Boy Who Would Be A Helicopter presented a lot of interesting ideas about
teaching young children and their social and emotional development that I will include in my
future classroom. One of the first quotes from her book in the introduction is every child en-

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ters the classroom in a vehicle propelled by that child alone, at a particular pace and for a particular purpose (Paley, xii). Each child is driven by their own curiosities, fears, and wants and that
in turn affects how they develop and what they learn. Allowing children to work out their own
problems and experiment with playing together fosters this development of social and emotional
abilities that they use to learn the material we teach them.
Similarly in the beginning of her book, Paley makes two important statements about children and pretend play: Pretend often confuses the adult, but it is the childs real and serious
world, the stage upon which any identity is possible and secret thoughts can be safely
revealed (7), and They [children] do not pretend to be storytellers; they are storytellers. It is
their intuitive approach to all occasions. It is the way they think. (17). These two statements
alone cover the life of the child and why we as adults have a hard time understanding it. For
children, there is no difference between reality and play; play is their reality, how they discover
and synthesize the world around them. As a future educator, I need to keep this in mind and give
my students the opportunity to explore in pretend play to understand the world around them and
develop socially. These statements by Paley have changed the way I think about childrens learning; they need to take part in the world around them through play to understand and learn what
we teach them.
The last part of the class that I have found important to include in my teaching philosophy is documentation, as it helps children understand and learn what is being taught in the classroom. As defined by Seitz, documentation is samples of a childs work at several different
stages of completion, including photographs, teacher comments, transcriptions of discussions,
comments, and explanations by the children, and finally parents comments (88). If you are mak-

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ing the documentation for the children to reflect on their learning, it will require more focus on
their questions, comments, and individual work. I will include documentation of group work,
social activities, and students feelings about different projects to focus on their social and emotional development throughout the school year. By making these activities visible for the children, they can see their progress, allowing them to grow in their interactions with peers and pride
in their individual work.
As a general summary of what I take away from this class and add to my teaching philosophy, Ayers To Teach: The Journey, in Comics greatly changed the way I view teaching since
beginning of January. He somehow was able to perfectly summarize my thoughts into words and
sentences that I could not compose before reading his book. The biggest change in my thinking
came from a quote in chapter one: To name oneself as a teacher is to live with one foot in the
muck of the world as we find it -- with its conventional patterns and received wisdom -- and the
other foot striding toward a world that could be but isnt yet (Ayers, 11). This quote made me
realize that we as educators are shaping the future while teaching our students in the present
about right and wrong, positive and negative, and black and white, and how, at the same time,
nothing is ever clear cut but multifaceted and complicated. We do not know what the world is
going to be like in ten or twenty years but we hope that by teaching our students about the world
of the past and present, we can somehow lead them in the direction of making a positive impact
on the world.
Walking away from this class, I have learned more about being an educator than I thought
possible at the beginning of the semester. Though I do not have much interest in teaching very
young children, I understand the importance of taking this class besides the need to cover the

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preschool element of my certification. The way children learn when they are younger, like
through pretend play, is still relevant when they get to elementary school. Children are just like
adults; they will resort to what they know in order to be successful. As a teacher, I need to know
how to play to these learning strengths that my students will come into my classroom with. ECE
451 has effectively prepared me to take on a world of children and pretend play and has made me
confident in my ability to accommodate the needs of all the children in my future classroom, despite the fact that it may not be in an early childhood setting.

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References
Ayers, W., & Alexander-Tanner, R. (2010).To teach: The journey, in comics. New York: Teachers
College Press.
Cole, C., Richmand, B., & McCann Brown, S. (2001). The World of Sesame Street Research.
"G" Is for Growing: Thirty Years of Research on Children and Sesame Street, 147-180.
Edwards, C. (2002). Three Approaches from Europe: Waldorf, Montessori, and Reggio Emilia.
Lincoln, Nebraska: Family and Consumer Sciences, Department of Faculty Publications,
Department of Family and Consumer Sciences.
Paley, V. G. (1991). The boy who would be a helicopter. Harvard University Press.
Seitz, H. (2008). The Power of Documentation in the Early Childhood Classroom. Young Children, 88-93. Retrieved May 4, 2015.
Siddz, M. (2014, March 7). Co-Construction of Knowledge. [Web log comment]. Retrieved from
http://myrasiddz14.blogspot.com/2014/03/reggio-emilia.html