Morning Meeting

Here's a post from Link's preschool. Our goals this school year:

• Participate in group activities sometimes
• Play with other kids & make friends (request and refer to friends by their names)
• Fine motor skills like drawing, beading, building blocks
• Life skills (empathy, apologizing, situational awareness, cleaning up, blowing your nose, covering your cough)

Link is in the solid blue shirt on the right closest to the couch

----------

This part of morning meeting at pre-school, aka circle time.

This year I’ve really wanted to get the children thinking about leadership. In a previous group discussion, it came up that the place where children are most excited, and sometimes have trouble with leading and following, is in lines. It’s a very visible example of leading, so we had a discussion to talk about that role and their experiences. In the discussion transcribed below, as with most of our discussions, my hope was to support their ability to reflect on and converse with one another over experiences they share, to think more deeply about things that they particularly value or dislike, and to build a concept of collaboration as a strategy to create solutions to problems that arise.

Leadership Meeting October, 3

Sean: Does anyone like to be the front of the line? Put up a quiet L.
::a bunch of quiet L hand signs go up::
Sean: Why did I ask you to put up an L?
Lucas: I start with L
Sean: What else has an L?
Ella: I do!
Sean: But what are we talking about now? It starts with L
Hugo: Line!
Lucas: We get to be a line leader! (To Ella)
Sean: What is a line leader?
Lucas: It means follow the leader.
Ethan: Sometimes in my family we follow the leader. Like when I’m riding my bike.
Link: It’s like a train.
Ella: It’s like if a fire is coming. One time my mommy took me on a walk. I have a two wheeler at my house that I can’t really ride on it, I just slow down, and I just slow down if I don’t have a chance.
Sean: Do you like walking in a line?
Lucas, Hugo, Ethan: Yes!
Clara: No.
Lucas: But we are leaders, right.
Clara: We are leaders, too.
Hugo: But we are leaders, too.
Lucas: No!
Sean: Do you have to be in front to be a leader? Do you have to be in line to be a leader?
Ethan: No... Yes. You can have two lines.
::confused looks::
Sean: Can you lead a group? Who is leading this group right now?
Hugo and Link: No!
Ethan, Lucas, and Ella: You are! ::pointing to Sean::
Ethan: We can all be leaders.
Sean: I wanna talk about this more later, but let’s hear what Eleri thinks: Do you like walking in a line?
Eleri: No. Because people push you.
Sean: Hmmm, I don’t think I would like that either. Clara?
Clara: Sometimes people get too close.
Ethan: I like walking in a line. But sometimes no, because when people push you down the stairs, when we’re lining up to go down stairs.
Sean: So, you like lines, but not when somebody pushes you. What can we do to make sure you don’t get pushed?
Hugo: How bout we could be all leaders!
Lucas: I don’t wanna be all leaders.
Ella: I just say “Stop doing that.”
Sean: That’s a great idea Ella. But I’ve accidentally pushed someone in line before, when I got to close to them.
Lucas: One time you pushed me?
Sean: I did? I’m sorry. I don’t want to push you. What should we do about that?
Lucas: We could… ::scoots his body::
Sean: Scoot back?
::They all start scooting back::
Sean: Ok, it looks like lots of people want to try that. Let’s try it! If someone feels like they’re too close to the friend in front of them, they can ask everyone to move back. Lets ask the rest of our friends when they get back if that’s a good idea.

We’re going to revisit walking in line as an example of leadership. I want to get deeper into the discussion of what a leader is, but that discussion can be very abstract and especially for children who may be unaccustomed to discussions like this. I want to make sure that they first understand that this continuing discussion will actually influence what we expect of our community. To do that, we’re first going to focus on the most concrete example of leadership for them. Going forward, I’m very curious to find out how they feel about being in line vs being a leader, and then hopefully I’ll try to expand whatever they decide to other, less obvious examples of leadership. (Then again, they might take the discussion somewhere completely different, and that’s ok, too.)