Greatest Invention? Kindergarten

Green Screen Weather

Ms. Meyer prepares her students for a weather report.

Mitchel Resnick of the MIT Media Lab, calls kindergarten the “greatest invention of the last 1,000 years.” And in his latest book, Lifelong Kindergarten, he argues that all schooling needs to be more like it. His point is that the rapidly changing world, only assures us of uncertainty in our future. So instead of preparing students for the world we know now, steep them in an environment where they can think creatively and develop the flexibility to adapt to changing conditions.

This has been on my mind as my kindergarten colleagues (Ms. Meyer, Ms. Theall, Mrs. Nedwick), our librarian (Mrs. Turner), and I wrap up a weather project featuring the greatest elementary school combination ever! Kindergarten students and a green screen.

Teaching and learning is always fun when everyone around you is pulling together and smiling. To the persnicketers, no this culminating project does not make these students weather experts or meteorologists. They may have misspoken or over/understated some weather facts that save lives.

But in this project, their tender brains were inundated with a flurry of activity. Self-checking content information, delivering memorized and unscripted lines, coping with the pressure of performance, in front of peers, teachers, and a live camera, while recalling their preparation for storytelling, including body presence, eye contact, and voice, while balancing on a stool so that we can see more than their heads, and also trying to imagine that the green wall behind them is actually a funnel cloud or snowstorm, and then in the end, hopping off the stool with relief and laughing about it all… my goodness.

Every school day really should be more like kindergarten.