The theme “Joy and Comfort” encapsulated the characteristics of a joyful, comfortable, and safe home led by adults who were most concerned that everybody got along and that children were well-fed, cared for, and safe. In this type of environment, relationships were built through kinship, play, and experiential learning. Interactional synchrony was achieved when all partook in daily chores for the collective comfort and good. As in a family, each person knows the other’s distinctive behaviors and communicative nuances and learns to get along with and learn from each other in spite of, or because of, these differences. Ms. Arquette and her
instructional assistants, created a relational space that most consistently exemplified the theme, “Joy and Comfort”.
Ms. Arquette’s preschool program had the feel of a well-run family household. One step to the left of Ms. Argus’ classroom on the continuum as depicted in Figure 4.1, Ms. Arquette and the educators in her classroom synchronized both professional and maternal (Warren, 2014) roles on a daily basis to create a family-friendly environment that set the stage for a caring, collaborative and positive learning space. School arrival time was punctuated by the drawn-out appearances of students with parents, grandparents and/or siblings in tow with a gradual gathering of children and instructors sitting on the carpeted floor in the large living room space.
Families, children, and staff gathered in the kitchen every morning. They only separated for the day once personal stories were swapped, news of current and local events shared, or information relevant to the student was exchanged. One student grabbed his mother’s hand and led her to the shared group space where they sat on the carpet together, read books and quietly chatted with friends. Some students sought a quick hug from Ms. Arquette but then dashed off in search of a playmate or a favorite book to leaf through. Other students wandered in slowly half awake and sought a favorite instructor who had a special story and a lap to snuggle in. One child clung a little longer to her mother before tentatively
mixed murmurings of adults quietly reading with students snuggled around them, students and teachers exchanging friendly comments, and the sounds of book pages flipping.
From listening to morning exchanges and observing daily events, it was evident that the lead teacher and program manager planned and maintained close connections with the local community and graded school. For example, Ms. Arquette and the program manager arranged for two to three 7th or 8th graders to volunteer about once a week to play games, read, or play
outside with the preschoolers as “big brothers or sisters”. There was a strong sense that the preschool was part of a much larger learning community. In fact, one morning a week the preschoolers would meet over at “the big school” and partake in a community gym class run by the elementary school’s physical education teacher. The gym was a large and noisy space managed by a teacher who called out rapid-fire and multi-step instructions infused with CRWs. Often times, the teacher’s approach to giving directions left both adults and children from the preschool looking around at each other trying to figure out what to do first and looking to the more seasoned participants to follow along. It was not the best setting for any child with hearing, attention or language comprehension problems, but it did provide my first glimpse into how the older preschool children often served as caring mentors for the younger ones. The first scene opens just as the physical education teacher blows a whistle and yells “go!” and a swarm of children, sprint off the colored line at one end of the gym and run pell-mell toward the other side, wildly dodging four big kids swinging foam noodles.
One of the older boys from PreK looked behind him and saw a younger classmate, eyes as wide as saucers, trying to move out of the way of a big kid barreling toward him. (Sam) grabbed the hand of his younger classmate, and together they ran across the gym floor dodging the swings of foam noodles together. Another older preschooler turned around as she ran and yelled out directions to a younger boy who was trying to copy her moves and diversion tactics. “Don’t run to them!
a new game. The “olders” calmly explained the rules to the “youngers” using simple and short phrases with CRWs such as, first, go under with the associated objects of the game (spatial and action relational CRWs dense here). One older preschooler comforted a younger one who was whining, crying and looked a little overwhelmed. “It’s ok, it’ll be fun, just do what I do”.
The language of kinship (Mason & Tipper, 2008, 2014) was prevalent in this program. This type of relational language was different than Ms. Argus’s class, but it too provoked a dense usage of CRWs dynamically across relational spaces. There was a pervasive sense over my three-week observational period that instructors wished for their students to find joy in learning, and feel comfort and security in their space. This observation was exemplified by the embodied elements that evoked contexts of home-life, such as the: (a) relaxed interphysicality (Mason & Tipper, 2014) between students and their teachers (hugging, acting silly around each other while in close contact, seeking physical comfort from each other); (b) interpersonal language of
familiarity that accepted and celebrated personal idiosyncrasies and unique contributions without judgement; (c) smells of home cooked meals prepared in the kitchen and the associated
comments that ensued (e.g., “that smells good! I’m starving! That smell is making my tummy rumble!”; and (d) language between “olders” and “youngers” that exemplified caretaking in kinship. For example:
“Lineup for lunch!” Susie (a “younger”) didn’t move but stayed lying on the floor with her thumb partly in her mouth and eyes half closed. Mary (an “older”), reaches out her hand to the younger child and says kindly, “Come on you little, time to get up. I’ll bring your sit-upon up.” Susie takes Mary’s hand without
comment, then Mary asks, “You want to be at the end of the line?” Susie nods. [the instructional assistant tells me (smiling), that Susie either likes to be first or last in line, and Mary knows it and is giving Susie a choice]
Older children caring for younger children was encouraged by the instructors. In fact, Ms. Arquette even described the groups of children in her class as “the olders” and “the youngers”. This division seemed to help the teachers create small group activities (such as the community
designing and guiding placement of materials that represented structures of the town, generating ideas, and doing the more complex cutting and gluing tasks) while directing and teaching the younger students how to glue, what to glue, and how to use certain tools. CRWs abound in these group construction projects.
The instructors encouraged the children with particular expertise or interest to use their language and share the information with the younger students. For example, one boy was quite advanced with counting, early math concepts, and everything about farming. He was
encouraged to share this knowledge with the group during meals, small group activities, or individually, for example, while building Legos with another child. Ms. Arquette stated:
“there’s definitely the four [olders] that love to show the youngers what to do, show ‘em how to do things, take ‘em places and hold their hand, help them put their shoes on, show ‘em how to do things.” During these times, the older children used many CRWs that carried utterance salience in addition to replacing nouns with demonstrative pronouns (e.g., it, this, these, those, that) and determiners (e.g., here, there) adding deictic (pointing to location) and iconic gestures (showing how to tie shoes).
This efficient and nonspecific language of familiarity was also noted during the
children’s imaginary play that simulated family life (e.g., taking care of babies, playing house, going to work or shopping at a grocery store). CRWs were densely used when verbal children gave each other temporal or spatial directions or compared attributes even during the squabbles and agreements. Ms. Arquette reinforced this family theme through the choice of books and toys, and stated, “We had a unit on family, I put out family books, I put out the family puzzles, the dollhouse…so those things I intentionally put out so that we could talk about family…since families are part of the community.” The rich relational language infused with CRWs within the
school usually occurred within a 4-5 foot “personal space zone” (Hans & Hans, 2015) while children played near or with each other while moving toys or action figures, stacking blocks, or working on shared projects with various hand tools. Teachers also used CRWs and
demonstrative pronouns while guiding children how to feed the pets when associated items were mutually referenced, for example, “set it over there and then put it in, set it up.”
When I first arrived, Ms. Arquette explained some of the benefits and challenges of a family and community-focused curriculum. She described some of the partnerships the program maintained with the local library, elementary school, and post office. This teacher felt her job was to arrange walking field trips, plan the educational activities, and link the state-wide educational goals with program curricular goals. She stated, “I love the family focus of the program and think the community projects are worthwhile.” However, Ms. Arquette also touched on the stress of knowing each family’s personal situations, and how some of these stressors negatively affected the children. My daily observations between students, instructors, and visiting family members suggested a mix of maternalistic and professional discourse that created a trusting, comfortable and collaborative learning environment. Ms. Arquette stated,
We are so family oriented, and involved with the families that I know these kiddos, you know, like the back of my hand, and I just...well, some of them just need a hug, and some of them just need to sleep for an hour, and some of them need to eat until their tummies are full.
CRWs in relational spaces throughout the day. A “coming together” occurred every morning but in different ways. Some days, morning group began with a gradual transition between quiet reading to a formal organization with children yawning and moving slowly to sit next to their ‘favorite’ teacher, friend or parent, or just stay in a comfy lap. Other mornings there was a flurry of activity to get everyone organized. Either way, this was a time when adults
indicating location and person, for example, “Stand up here, you go before her.”; “Wait! Go get ___then put it on the sign”; “Sit down over here, next to ___.”; Put your sit-upon over there.”; “Before you sit down, put your book away” and “(name) is bringing around the bucket to pick up your books. Put it in the bucket.”
Typically, formal instruction began when Ms. Arquette took center stage by sitting in a chair with children and other adults sitting on the floor in a semicircle around her. The children never sat in chairs during group time. The teacher chair was reserved for any one instructor who was leading an activity, song, or reading a book to the whole group. Ms. Arquette pulled
participants together by leading a memorized greeting song that seemed to vitalize the group. “Hello, hello and how do you do? I’m fine and how are… you?” (they point to
someone and ask) then switch to singing in French. “Bonjour, Bonjour, comment ça va? Ça va et toi? (each child points to another child, some call the other’s name)
Behind Ms. Arquette was a large calendar with large yellow removable number/date cards, smaller printed cards for days of the week and month, and weather-related pictures. Tools of the trade were within reach such as a large pointer, a bin of name cards, and other instructional props. The wall to either side of the calendar was covered with various visual displays
representing scheduled pictured activities for the morning and afternoon, pictured song choices, calendar time assignments and Boardmaker symbols representing different town buildings. The name of the town and other printed labels were placed near pictures. Every space of every wall was taken up by different graphic representations displaying job assignments, children’s book covers, author names, inspirational words and sayings, and enlarged instructional cues. It was difficult to pay attention to any one thing unless someone pointed it out.
the teacher and the visually busy wall behind her. Ms. Ann, Kiki’s paraprofessional, kept Kiki’s attention directed towards Ms. Arquette, simplified her verbal instructions and provided hand and body movements that matched spatial CRWs used in songs. Ms. Ann also provided tactile sensory cues for serial counting and repeated letter names for spelling peer’s names.
The children’s days were naturally divided by major activity times; such as group times, daily “chores” (e.g., feeding pets), mealtimes (i.e., breakfast and lunch), play and science
discovery times, and naptime. The children seemed to have their day memorized, and it was rare that the posted picture schedule was even referenced. Kiki’s day was also divided between individualized therapy visits and personal care, and Ms. Ann carried her between all in-house locations. Ms. Ann naturally produced spatial CRWs every time she moved Kiki, for example, “Up, time to get up and go to ___” “Down on the floor, on your blanket.” “Sit up”, “time to lie down” etc. All children except Kiki could move independently around all school spaces. The following relational spaces were dense with CRWs produced and comprehended by teachers and/or students as they engaged with the associated and situated objects or tools.
CRWs in songs and instructions. In morning and afternoon groups, Ms. Arquette embedded CRWs in directions or songs. For example, one of the songs that used many CRWs was the popular “open shut” song. Gestures and body movements were paired with words as follows:
“Eyes up here! Yesterday, we had a request for the song, ‘open shut’, let’s sing that today.” [she starts by using gestures to go along with actions; children seem really into this song and most participate. Ms. Ann is moving or gently touching Kiki’s bodies parts that everyone is singing about. “Open shut them…give a little clap, clap, clap. Fold them in your lap. Creep right up to touch your chin. Open wide your little mouth. Do not let them in. Falling right down to the ground. Turn them round and round. Slower, slower fold them in your lap.” [Kiki loudly vocalizes and smiles as Ms. Ann sings, taps and her hands on her legs/lap. Kiki is opening and closing her eyes! Ms. Ann doesn’t mention this great event to Ms.
CRWs in transitions. Most teacher directions during transition time consisted of temporal and spatial CRWs.For example,“After we brush our teeth and wash our faces, then we go
outside. Outsidefirst, then inside.” Sometimes Ms. Arquette would offer attributive CRWs as clues to help children pay attention to other’s relational attributes, and whoever guessed correctly could be excused from the group and stand in line for breakfast. For example, “Whoever is the tallest in our class can go”. This instructional strategy usually resulted in children standing up and comparing each other’s attributes before they lined up. Typical transitions out of the group for lining up were dense with CRWs along with demonstrative pronouns and determiners that replaced noun labels. For example:
Ms. Arquette stands up and uses deictic gestures to direct where children should stand: “Benny, you may lineup, you’re ready so you are first. Sam, you go behind Benny. Sally, you’re behind Sam. Corey, you’re behind. “Stop over here. Next, you can go…All of you look ready. Some of you have jobs today. Sam, you’re in the middle today. Start over there today. Put it down on the table. That’s a little one. Go around that.”
CRWs while doing jobs in collaboration with others. In this relational habitus that felt more like a home than a classroom, all but three children (who were siblings and actively ignored, avoided and ran away from doing their jobs) seemed especially proud and happy to be assigned jobs to help or learn from others. One boy, Lenny said, “I love helping!” when he was assigned to help Ms. Alice clean up the kitchen after lunch. Ms. Alice showed Lenny how to wipe the tables, put dishes in the dishwasher, hit the control buttons, and how to sort utensils in the drawers. If instructors were paired with children in jobs, they often commented on the child’s actions using CRWs. For example, “Right, it goes down there. You can put them in here. I move the towel around and around to get those sticky parts off.” Some children seemed especially happy when they heard they were feeding a pet (e.g., “I’m going to have a job!” or “I’m very
name called to feed the bird, or smiling when they got to touch the plant and feel the dirt to check if it was wet or dry. Other CRWs heard during job time included: done, finished, start, stop, go, on/off, here/there, up/down, around, in/out.
It appeared that for most of the children, having assigned jobs made them feel like important members of the group and added to the collective responsibility of taking care of their space. These affective behaviors were observed when they smiled at each other when working together or after the teachers praised their sense of caring for the space they shared. Mary
demonstrated such a response when Ms. Arquette said, “We are really going to need someone to work with those plants today.” Mary stood up from playing on the floor and stated, “I’m getting up for this! I lovebeing the plant carer!” Mary smiled and ran over to hug Ms. Arquette.