Calhoun's Lower School: What Progressive Education Looks Like

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Alison Max Rothschild ’85, newly named LS Director, talks about what makes Calhoun’s Lower School unique, and how she wants to continue the strong foundation laid by former LS Director Kathleen Clinesmith and build for the future.

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hen someone refers to a “lifer” at Calhoun, most kids and alums know what that means—a student who started at Calhoun in preschool and went all the way through to graduation. But no one matches the “super” lifer status of Alison Max Rothschild ’85. Since the age of three, Alison has spent only four years away from Calhoun—to get her BA at Skidmore College. She returned in 1989, starting as an assistant teacher in the Lower School, and worked her way to head teacher, Assistant Lower School Director and then Co-Director of the Lower School’s second through fourth grades. Now, having just celebrated her 25th year as a teacher and administrator at Calhoun—adding up to a total of 40 years at Calhoun—Alison begins a new phase this September as Director of Calhoun’s entire Lower School program. Here she talks about what she values most about the Lower School’s progressive approach to teaching and learning, and her hopes for the future.

How did your experience at Calhoun as a student inform your role as a teacher?

Photo: Camila Otero

From my early years in Lower School until I graduated, I loved coming to school. I discovered that school can and should be a happy and positive place.

I attribute much of that to the relationships I had with teachers. I felt that they knew me, understood me and would accept and encourage me no matter what. I know what a gift that was for me, and I try every day to return the favor to the kids at Calhoun today.

I didn’t really know I wanted to teach until I actually began teaching. I was working with Lil Lulkin [head teacher in kindergarten]

and it was probably weeks after my first day when I said, Wow—this can be a job! This could be my work! I fell in love and immediately enrolled in the master’s program at Teachers College.

Lil was, without question, the first role model I ever had; she was a wonderful human being and she really took me under her wing.

What’s kept me at Calhoun all these years is the community—the people who work here, the families who send their children here, and of course the students. It is a really special place.

What makes Calhoun’s early childhood program different from others? How does it reflect our progressive mission?

At first glance, our early childhood program may not look that different from others; most good early childhood programs understand and incorporate a lot of the same hands-on materials and concrete learning experiences. But what is different about Calhoun is the lens through which we view children: We have a broader appreciation of different abilities and kinds of intelligences. I attribute that to Kathleen Clinesmith—the other person who I consider a great role model in my life, both professionally and personally. Kathleen has a way of looking at the world and at people that is much more accepting than most

of us. She taught me that we shouldn’t pigeonhole young children; you really don’t know how someone is going to grow and develop.

Now that I have seen so many children move through Calhoun, from preschool through high school, college and even grad school, I know how right she is. It’s not something I could have seen or understood when I was a young teacher. So I’m really careful to pass that knowledge on to everyone who comes to work at Calhoun.

It’s hard to create a curriculum that meets a lot of different needs and challenges, but, certainly, our very small classes and talented teachers help us do this more successfully. We create classrooms that enable children to experience success in a range of activities and experiences at developmentally appropriate times.

Because we are an ongoing school, we’re not preparing kids for an “exit” or to take a test to enter into another institution. That creates a very different experience in our Lower School; it allows us to provide a much broader-based education for our students, attending to their social and emotional needs. We really get to know and understand these children as students and as learners, and can create an experience that meets their individual needs throughout their schooling. We don’t look at children through just a very narrow lens regarding

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“Along with our emphasis on process, we also stress product and presentation... so we talk about students becoming young authors.”

their ability to read, write, add and subtract. Those are critical skills, and we help our students master those skills.

But those are not the only measures of development and/ or success for a young child.

How do you create experiences that meet different needs, cognitively and developmentally?

One of the ways in which our “wider lens” plays out is in regard to our approach to teaching reading and writing to our youngest children.

We’re really trying to establish a love for reading and writing.

We believe, and have seen, that the fastest way to squash that love and desire is to turn these into “chores,” something that a child might not be ready for or successful at.

We also know that children learn differently; Howard Gardner* refers to it as “multiple intelligences.”

Some children are visual learners, some auditory learners, some learn better through kinesthetic activities. So, as progressive educators, we provide dif* Howard Gardner is an internationally recognized developmental psychologist, author and professor of cognition and education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

His theory of multiple intelligences critiques the notion that there exists a single human intelligence; instead, he maintains that humans have as many as nine different kinds of intelligence that reflect different ways of interacting with the world. Each person has a unique combination, or profile, though no two individuals have them in the same exact configuration: linguistic, logic-mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily/kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic and existential.

ferent kinds of experiences to help our children learn in the way that best suits each of them. For example, in a kindergarten class, when we’re doing a phonics lesson, some children will learn aurally by hearing the letters and words spoken by the teacher. Ot­hers will benefit from a paper and pencil activity, where they’ll actually write the letters; that’s both a kinesthetic and visual experience. Some children will benefit from a solely kinesthetic experience, tracing letters in the sand. Our “Sing It, Say It” early reading program essentially teaches children about syllables—the phonetic makeup of words— through familiar songs.

How do you develop reading and writing skills as the children move through Lower School?

We begin by placing a great deal of value on the stories that the children want to tell—whether they are able to write them down yet or not. So we provide a lot of opportunities for them to share their stories in whatever form is developmentally appropriate for that child.

Sometimes that happens orally, with a child telling a story to a friend or a teacher.

Other times, children will dictate a story to a teacher, who will write it down. The children who are ready will do the writing themselves.

By the time the children enter second grade, they are writing stories and “publishing” books-in-progress.

We begin to focus on some of the structural, complex elements of writing—grammar, punctuation and spelling—in third grade, when the students edit their work together with the teacher.

By fourth grade, children are making corrections and edits to their work on a daily basis. They’re beginning to edit their work independently, writing first drafts and second drafts, and then “publishing” their pieces in book form.

At any point, students who are ready to advance to the next stage in their reading, writing and editing are encouraged to do so, with ample guidance and support from their teachers. That’s one of the huge advantages to having small classes.

Along with our emphasis on process, we also stress product and presentation, to encourage children to be proud of their work. So, in second grade we talk about students “becoming young authors.” We do have them write stories and create books that will be presented at an “Author Share Day,” when family members are invited to come in. The students also share their books with the older third and fourth graders. We have a different version of an Author Share Day in third grade, when the presented work is a portfolio of more

polished pieces of writing.

Fourth grade students have a variety of opportunities to share fully edited and published work.

The arts are very important at Calhoun. Is that because of the “wider lens” you mention?

Creativity is key to many of the “multiple intelligences” Gardner mentions. So the arts—and the skills they nurture—are central to the Lower School experience.

In music and theater classes, children learn the art of practice, being part of an ensemble, being a good listener, being a good audience member. In fine art, woodshop and media arts, they gain spatial and technical skills while honing their abilities in observation, interpretation, design and creative problem–solving.

These are all skill sets that come so naturally with the arts programs.

The arts are also interwoven throughout the academic disciplines. Many curriculum units in social studies, language arts, science and math culminate in final presentations that include written work as well as art projects—from drawings and mixed-media sculptures to videos and original song productions.

You often talk about the importance of play and student choice. Can you elaborate?

We give kids a great deal of time to make choices, begin-

31 1 1 Calhoun’s early childhood program is designed to allow for a great deal of playtime, to stimulate intellectual curiosity and nurture socialization skills.

2 Teachers in second through fourth

grades are specialists—whether it be in math, social studies, literary arts or, in the case of Raul Hernandez, science. Here, Raul works with second graders on Calhoun’s Green Roof.

3 Formal instruction in spelling and punctuation begins in third grade.

4 Art is interwoven throughout the academic curriculum. This papiermâché lion was created for a first grade mammal research project.

5S tudying the geography of the United States, third graders take pride in the reports and visuals they create after months of independent research on the states of their choice.

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“The priority at Calhoun will always be the [students’] interactions [with other] children, with teachers, and with hands-on materials.”

ning with our very youngest students.

Our preschool program is designed very intentionally to allow for a great deal of playtime for young children.

In addition to the socialization value, it is great practice for future learning, stimulating brain growth and intellectual curiosity.

Student-directed playtime is also an essential element in helping to develop interests and passions. So we build time into each school day for students to make choices based on their own interests.

For second, third and fourth graders, we have a program called Special Courses. Three times a year, the children get to choose a course they’d like to take from a range of topics—usually proposed by the teachers—in areas of interest that often have nothing to do with the standard curriculum.

An exciting development that’s taken place in the last few years is that students have begun to suggest and “teach” their own special courses.

The first thing that surprises, and sometimes shocks, outsiders, is the open classroom space in the 81st Street building. What is the educational benefit to that design? How do you use it?

Cognitive studies show that brain function is higher when children are moving.

So, unlike a more traditional setting where the kids stay all day in one classroom, our second through fourth graders move, as a group, from class to class and from teacher to teacher. It’s great for the kids to have a “reset” button for each new class.

The open space also creates a sense of community and inspires a great deal of independence and confidence— the kids get a real “command” of their space. And all of this is great preparation for the transition to Middle and Upper School, when kids move from specialist to specialist, but do it independently rather than as a group.

Each of our Lower School teachers specializes in a particular discipline. Would you say that’s unusual?

Yes, I’d say that’s very unique to us. When teachers are responsible for teaching all the disciplines, curriculum frequently gets short-changed—and very often, it’s math that gets short-changed, because a lot of early childhood or elementary education teachers are not that comfortable teaching it. So instead of that traditional model, we have dedicated math, language arts, and social studies teachers for each grade, as well as division specialists teaching science, art, woodshop, Spanish, theater, media arts and music.

It’s wonderful for kids to have multiple teachers.

We feel strongly that kids benefit by having relation-

ships with lots of adults. This model also enables teachers to become experts in their fields. It allows for teachers to collaborate in their area of specialty and develop best practices.

Our teachers are constantly engaging in professional development, both in and out of school. Calhoun sends teachers to workshops as well as hosting our own. Several of our faculty members are asked to speak at conferences or lead workshops.

So our teachers are all very much on the cusp of what is happening in progressive education. I think it’s exciting for our families and their children to be part of a community with that kind of academia associated with it.

The school talks extensively about its commitment to diversity and multi– culturalism. What does that look like in the Lower School?

Very often schools assemble a diverse community and then expect everyone to conform to the culture of the school. At Calhoun, we see that differently; we want to create a diverse community and then have the school community conform to that diversity. One of the ways we do that in our Lower School is to invite families to come in to share and celebrate their holidays and traditions.

I think it helps make our families feel very included.

We also have a diverse population of teachers in the Lower School—including a very large number of male teachers. This has been one of Kathleen’s real intentions as the Lower School Director. We believe it’s beneficial for children to have men and women supporting them as learners, for the same reason that we believe that cultural diversity enriches the learning environment.

What changes do you envision for the future?

Most of what’s going on here in the Lower School is really wonderful. But as with any good institution, we need to be open to looking at how we do things, finding out what needs tweaking and trying new things. I plan to examine all areas of the curriculum and program and make adjustments if and when they are needed. One area of interest of mine is technology. The priority at Calhoun will always be the [students’] interactions [with other] children, with teachers, and with hands-on materials.

We’re not going to provide every student with an iPad in Lower School, because we know that it’s important for young children to have limited screen time. But we’re going to be thoughtful about this and look at ways to use technology that will be powerful and appropriate for our older [81st Street] Lower School children. I’m looking forward to that.