Letting Kids Write a Learning Script

In many classrooms, one casualty of the nationwide push toward higher academic standards and more school accountability has been the “teachable moment.”

A teachable moment is a wondrous time that many teachers live for, when children demonstrate that they are ready to learn something right then and there--though not necessarily what the teacher had in mind. A student’s impromptu question might lead the class down an exciting, unexpected path, with the teacher serving as eager facilitator and co-learner.

For far too many educators, however, seizing that moment is a luxury they feel they can ill afford, pressed as they are to teach rigorous curricula in too few school days and to boost state test scores.

Luckily for my 7-year-old daughter, Nora, teachable moments are alive and well at Corinne A. Seeds University Elementary School, a laboratory school for kindergartners through sixth-graders at UCLA. Throughout Nora’s two years in Room 11, opportunities for spontaneous learning have bubbled up from the well-used rug where 21 kindergarten and first-grade pupils pop questions and advance theories.

Lisa Rosenthal, Nora’s nurturing teacher, has chosen to run with the kids’ ideas more often than not, aided by math teacher Doris Levy and assistant Rick Lee.

A vivid example of Rosenthal’s willingness to let pupils sometimes lead the way was in full bloom last week, when the children and their compatriots put on their musical play about the life cycle of plants, “Nature Must Go On!” This bilingual extravaganza was the idea of two of Nora’s classmates.

The 43 children wrote the script, composed the music, made the costumes and sets, penned autobiographies for the playbill and created their own percussion instruments. With lyrics like “To be or not to be pollinated, that is the question,” it promises to provoke chuckles and tears from the family-packed audience.

For two years now, I’ve had a parent’s-eye view of the progressive teaching practices that make UES a one-of-a-kind institution. Even as many beleaguered big-city schools embrace highly scripted, “teacher proof” curricula such as Open Court and Success for All--which, to be sure, often work wonders with struggling readers--Seeds UES gives its teachers much freer rein.

If highly scripted programs are anathema, academic goals are not.

Throughout the frenzied weeks of developing and revising their play, the students have been meeting academic standards painlessly. They have done scientific research about everything from flowers to bats to bees to butterflies. They have used measurements to build sets. They have written autobiographies and formed bees from clay.

The pupils have approached every exercise with cheerful determination, and Rosenthal thinks she knows why.

“When children come up with these ideas, there’s so much more of an investment,” she said. “The teacher becomes a guide who takes the children to the next level.” Meanwhile, these little social creatures also come to realize that their ideas matter and that they can learn from one another.

Teaching experts say it is unusual to find the combination of adaptability, flexibility, creativity and responsiveness needed to take advantage of teachable moments.

“You must figure out how to make the child’s interest and the curriculum come together,” said Linda Darling-Hammond, an education professor at Stanford who directs the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future.

With more uncredentialed novices standing in front of California classrooms and more emphasis being put on standardized, multiple-choice tests, many teachers and principals complain that their efforts to create progressive learning environments are being undone.

Darling-Hammond said she fears that California “is going too far in the direction of overprescription” of standards and curricula that often depend on too much memorization of information, rather than the creativity and critical thinking needed for the Information Age.

“In some ways the accountability movement is going to make public schools worse,” Darling-Hammond said. “Parents will flee to private schools that can still offer [spontaneous learning].”