September 2005 | Volume 63 | Number 1

The Whole Child

Valuing Children

Marge Scherer

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What Does It Mean to Educate the Whole Child?

Nel Noddings

No Child Left Behind has put tremendous pressure on schools to raise tests scores and thus show that they are providing every student with a thorough and efficient education. But the law is fatally flawed because it fails to address fundamental questions: What are the proper aims of education? How do public schools serve a democratic society? What does it mean to educate the whole child? Noddings points out that a democratic society demands much more of its schools than producing graduates who are proficient in reading and mathematics: It demands graduates who exhibit sound character, the ability to think critically, a social conscience, willingness to make commitments, awareness of global problems, and ability to make wise civic choices. Education policy must address these aims to meet the needs of both individuals and society.

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Back to Whole

Elliot Eisner

Noted educator Elliot Eisner examines the dominating values guiding our current school reform efforts, namely those that focus on boosting test scores and on standardizing outcomes. Such an approach narrows the curriculum and neglects students' social and emotional development in favor of measurable academic outcomes. Caring for the whole child means recognizing students' individual talents, addressing more than just the cognitive, finding more holistic and meaningful forms of assessment, and valuing the social and emotional life of the child.

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Unconditional Teaching

Alfie Kohn

Public policies that pressure schools to raise test scores have the negative effect of encouraging teachers to value some students—the high performers—more than others. Kohn gives examples of how teachers often send the message that they value students only if they behave well and meet high academic standards. Such conditional acceptance, he argues, can lead to low student self esteem: “When students receive affection with strings attached, they tend to accept themselves only with strings attached.” He describes how exemplary teachers project unconditional acceptance through countless gestures and responses.

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Healthy and Ready to Learn

David Satcher

Today, 9 million children in the United States are overweight, triple the number in 1980, with poor nutrition and sedentary lifestyles the root causes. Overweight and obesity are not cosmetic issues—they are health issues, which often track into adulthood. According to the non-profit Action for Healthy Kids, there is a firm link among nutrition, inactivity, and low academic achievement. Schools can be a powerful source for change when it comes to preventing or reducing overweight and obesity. Some proactive steps can address student health and improve students' readiness to learn, such as forming a school health advisory council, developing a comprehensive wellness policy, integrating physical activity and nutrition into all school programs, and encouraging staff to model healthy lifestyles.

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A Coordinated School Health Plan

Pat Cooper

The author became superintendent of McComb School District in Mississippi in 1997, with a mandate to turn around academic achievement within a framework of caring and inclusion. The district struggled with poverty and waning community support. In a series of community meetings, district personnel and community members explored three questions: What do we not like about the school district? What do we want our school district to be? How do we want to get there? They reached consensus on a new vision statement that revolved around the whole child, and developed a plan of action based on Maslow's Hierarch of Needs and the Coordinated School Health Model. All district schools implemented programs in eight areas: 1) health education, 2) physical education, 3) health services, 4) nutrition services, 5) counseling and psychological services, 6) healthy school environment, 7) health promotion for staff, 8) family and community involvement; and 9) academic opportunity. The program has achieved positive results in academics, discipline, and child welfare.

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Affirming Identity in Multilingual Classrooms

Jim Cummins, Vicki Bismilla, Patricia Chow, Sarah Cohen, Frances Giampapa, Lisa Leoni, Perminder Sandhu and Padma Sastri

English language learners' cultural knowledge and home language skills are important resources in enabling academic engagement. English language learners tend to engage academically to the extent that instruction affirms their identities and enables them to invest their identities in learning. One effective approach to identity affirmation is the identity text, in which a student creates an expressive written, oral, dramatic, or artistic product. Encouraging students to write dual language books in the classroom is another way to show that schools value both the student's culture and home language. Acknowledging and actively promoting students' linguistic and cultural capital creates a pedagogy of respect and encourages English language learners to engage in literacy.

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Uniquely Preschool

Elena Bodrova and Deborah J. Leong

Bodrova and Leong argue that rather than overemphasizing mastery of academic content in preschool, early childhood educators should focus on activities and teaching that build underlying cognitive skills children need to develop before they can take on formal schooling. Oral language, deliberate memory, focused attention, and self-regulation are necessary fundamentals to any deliberate learning. Drawing on the thought and research of Vygotsky, Zaporozhets, and colleagues, the authors discuss how very young children's thinking is dominated by sensation, perception, and impulsive thinking. Children do not naturally develop the underlying thinking skills needed to move from reactive thinking to the ability to focus attention and “learn on demand.” Adults must guide and nurture these skills into being in children, and preschool activities should help make this transition. The authors portray three examples of ways preschool teachers can develop these cognitive skills.

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Social Justice in the Classroom

Jacqueline Grennon Brooks and Eustace G. Thompson

Teachers often fail to respond to young students' spontaneous and earnest comments about many aspects of human interaction. Questions that consider race are typically suppressed—either because these questions seem too dangerous or because teachers feel that they must stick with the written curriculum to prepare students for state-mandated tests. Yet in a multicultural society, it is crucial to help students consider such questions in all their complexity. The authors give examples of how teachers sometimes ignore, transpose, or marginalize students' contributions and how teachers can respond more positively within a contructivist classroom.

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The Modern Multi-Age Classroom

Paula Carter

Two teachers in a high-poverty elementary school in Reno, Nevada, team-teach a multiage classroom of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders. The majority of students are English language learners. To combat the school's 49 percent transciency rate, the teachers request that parents keep their children in the school for those three years. Multiage classrooms offer a number of benefits. Not only do they build strong relationships among teachers, students, and families, but also they provide students with many opportunities to develop positive relationships with one another. Older students bring new students into the fold by showing them how the classroom works. They also coach the younger children. Teaming up to teach a multiage classroom brings support, humor, problem-solving capabilities, and reflection into teachers' lives as well.

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Learning Throughout the Day

George Johnson, Rachel Poliner and Susan Bonaiuto

Many schools are turning to “evidence-based” social and emotional learning (SEL) programs to prevent such behaviors as bullying and harassment, drug and alcohol abuse, and violence. Although research shows that such programs help students develop knowledge about social and emotional decision making, such knowledge does not necessarily translate to improved student behavior on the playground or on weekends. The Needham Public Schools in Massachusetts not only implemented programs to directly teach social and emotional skills, but also changed school structures to give students practice in applying these skills throughout the day. The authors describe how teachers at the elementary, middle, and high school levels used three structures—gatherings, cooperative groups, and school routines and schedules—to better support social and emotional learning.

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Character Education: Parents as Partners

Marvin W. Berkowitz and Melinda C. Bier

Fostering students' social-emotional and character development is an essential but sorely neglected duty of public schooling amid excessive focus on students as academic performers, Berkowitz and Bier maintain. They report finding eight strategies in common among 33 character education programs they profiled in a 2005 study conducted with the Character Education Partnership. Family/community participation is one of the eight elements schools need to improve. Berkowitz and Bier pinpoint two main successful ways parents can be brought into character education meaningfully: as partners and as clients receiving resources to help them raise children as individuals of exemplary character. The authors describe models from the CEP study of how schools can overcome barriers to parent involvement.

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Reclaiming Senior Year

Kathleen D'Andrea

Many high school seniors feel so restless and bored with traditional classes that they choose only easy courses to “cruise” toward graduation, or they cut their senior year short by arranging to leave school early. Monsignor Donovan, a private Catholic high school in Toms River, New Jersey, offers its seniors more indepth study and real-world opportunities to infuse senior year with true learning. The school offers seniors such innovative programs as: Senior Thesis Seminar, which includes job shadowing a professional in each student's chosen career; independent studies in fields like astronomy; a three-day spiritual retreat; and a class in planning community service initiatives for the whole school.

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Building the Habit of Writing

Maureen O'Leary Wanket

High school teacher Maureen O'Leary Wanket asserts that daily journal writing not only improves students' writing fluency and the quality of their essays, but it also strengthens the whole child. Through journal writing, students begin a habit of reflecting on personal actions, values, and morals. The author recommends beginning every class with five to ten minutes of journal writing in response to a teacher prompt. Sample prompts lead students to think about life situations and even academic content in terms of moral questions. The article presents five key benefits of daily journal writing and seven guidelines that make the practice especially successful.

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Using Theater to Address Bullying

Jo Salas

The author describes playback theater, an interactive program that aims to promote dialogue and understanding by enacting and discussing audience members' personal stories. Schools in particular have used playback theater to address the pervasive problem of bullying. Seeing their stories reenacted helps victims of bullying understand their own experience in a new way and prompts their peers to realize what it feels like to be the target of bullying. The program fosters an appreciation of diversity and help students realize their own potential as witnesses to stop bullying.

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Creating Culturally Responsive Schools

Barbara Bazron, David Osher and Steve Fleischman

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AYP Wriggle Room Running Out

W. James Popham

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New Year, New Journey

Joanne Rooney

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Failing Wisely

Thomas R. Hoerr

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ASCD Community in Action

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The Whole Child

Naomi Thiers

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What Parents Think About After-School Time

Deborah Perkins-Gough

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The Whole Child

Naomi Thiers

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Copyright © 2004 by Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development