What makes a good neighbor?
Our kindergarten year began slowly on purpose*. In the last few weeks, we've been listening for what the children care about and building our curriculum together with them. As we shared in our last curriculum post, the geese have been at the center of that listening. The children notice them on our trips to the Muddy River, talk about them at Playful Inquiry and lunch time, and keep returning to them with new wonderings.
One of those wonderings in particular has come to the forefront of our discussions:
"Are ducks and geese neighbors?"
It is a deceptively big question. It assumes that animals live in relationship with one another, and it asks what being a neighbor even means. We didn't answer it right away. We wrote the children's words down and let them sit with us, and we noticed how this idea might be a meaningful way for us to open the very important question about how we live together — as classmates and as citizens of a larger world.
For kindergarteners, being a good neighbor is big socio-emotional work. It begins with learning about our own feelings: noticing what happens in our bodies, finding words for what we feel, and learning that all feelings are welcome.
From there, we are practicing strategies for managing those feelings, like pausing, breathing, asking for space, and asking for help. We are also learning how to work through conflicts with one another by listening, sharing what happened, asking, “What can I do to make it better?”, and finding a way forward together. It's important to us that children feel empowered to be themselves with all of their feelings, and to positively face the differences they encounter when they come together as a group.
This is where the geese and ducks come in. Rather than teaching these ideas in the abstract, we are letting the birds be our teachers. We're watching closely, and so far we've noticed what seem to us to be neighborly behaviors: they give each other space in the river, let each other swim or waddle by without fuss, and share resources like food and shade. All while being quite different. The children also wonder whether the ducks and geese take care of each other when one of them needs help. We don't know yet (we’ve just begun our research with a trip to the “information store” (library) this week to get books to help us!) and we expect the children will continue to notice things every day at the river that we haven't thought to look for.
Watching the geese and ducks gives us something we can see. It lets the children study neighborliness from the outside before turning the question toward themselves. How do we give each other space when we need it? How do we share a room and make sure everyone has what they need? What do we do when two people want the same thing? When someone is having a hard time, what can a neighbor do?
From there, our thinking can widen. We begin with our classroom community, but then move to our school, then our larger building which we share with many others, and then the busy Boston neighborhood around us. Everyone in each of these communities is different from one another in many ways, and we are learning that a good neighborhood is not one where everyone is the same; it is one where different people, and different creatures, find ways to share space and care for each other.
In watching the birds, we are reminded that we are neighbors to the geese too, part of the same shared and shifting place, and that as we learn to be good neighbors and responsible citizens, we must keep in mind all of the creatures we encounter each day.
So just how will our inquiries into geese and feelings continue to shape one another? Our documentation of the children's play, their drawings, and our conversations will continue to guide us as we take our next steps into this inquiry, and we are just as curious as you as to where this will take us this week.
*Learn more about our slow start in our first blog post, here.
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