From: Sara Milewski <smilewski>
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 21:14:00 -0600

I teach very young children, 3-5 year-olds, in a public school Head Start program. These children are, by and large, oblivious to the goings-on of the larger world. After September 11, my classroom staff and I struggled with how to deal with what our children knew about (and didn't know about) what had happened and how we could deal with our own emotions when we were with them. Most of the families chose to shelter their children from what was going on, so we only talked about it with individual children as it came up in our daily routines.

We did, however, change around our plans to focus on emotions at that time. The children were deeply effected by the feelings, actions and words of the grown-ups around them, even if they didn't know why their grown-ups felt the way they did. Reading light-hearted books about feelings by Aliki, Kevin Henkes and others provided our students with an outlet to talk about how they were feeling and how they perceived their grown-ups were feeling.

Not by coincidence, we have just started our emotions unit again this week.

By the way, "use your words" is a mantra in our classroom, as is "we don't play guns at school."

Just thought I'd share the perspective from the littlest ones.

Peace to all, Sara Milewski Head Start Teacher Green Bay Public Schools
Received on Thu 20 Mar 2003 09:14:00 PM CST