Abstract
The greatest intellectual challenge of our time is not how to design machines that behave more and more like humans, but rather how to protect humans from being treated more and more like machines. (Jackson, 1968: 66)
Samara Madrid, David Fernie, and Rebecca Kantor could also have titled their book
Yet the reframing is important as well. The editors have collected accounts that invite us to understand emotions as social activities rather than internal states. Through this lens we observe the performance of emotion in social relationships of all kinds, in complex community networks, and in a full range of registers and qualities. The result is a set of stories with intimacy, social awkwardness, anger, grief, struggle, caring, and everyday wisdom—a far cry from a controlled pedagogical approach to fostering children’s individual social-emotional skills.
In these chapters, the reader is allowed to glimpse the emotional worlds portrayed in place and in passing time, and then mull over the wider meaning while reading the rich commentaries that follow each chapter. For example, in the chapter entitled “A family, a fire, and a framework: Emotions in the anti-bias school community,” by Caryn Park, Debbie LeeKeenan, and Heidi Given, the reader encounters a child who is already struggling with impulsivity and its social consequences when his family home is lost in a fire. As the family instinctively turns to the school for support, the entire school community feels its way toward the best way to embrace the family through its recovery. As Patricia Ramsey notes in her commentary, the chapter portrays a more intimate approach to anti-bias work than is usually the case. She highlights the empathic, cooperative, and personal approach of the school community, which challenges the distancing and “othering” that often accompanies anti-bias work.
Another chapter that shines in its everyday point of view is “The woods as a toddler classroom: The emotional experience of challenge, connection, and caring,” by Dee Smith and Jeanne Goldhaber. The authors share detailed accounts of children’s caring and empathic interactions with each other and with their teachers in the wild space that became their classroom one summer. As John Nimmo points out in the commentary, the apparent shared risk of the situation was an important aspect of its emotional quality and (perhaps surprisingly) the worth of the experience to the children.
Risk and stress played a different role in David Fernie’s account of five beginning teachers supporting each other through their first year of teaching. For these five “critical friends,” the challenge was to manage fear of failure and stress in order to be able to reflect, plan, and make decisions. In their regular meetings, they found a place to express their concerns with emotional integrity as they helped each other strategize and solve problems. Gradually over the year, their anxiety and stress receded, and they could see themselves becoming the teachers they dreamed of being.
Not all chapters reach such sanguine conclusions. In “Guinea pigs, Asperger’s syndrome, and my son: When teachers struggle to recognize humanity,” Steve Bialostok tells a heart-rending story of his emotional labor as the single father of a child with special needs. Unfortunately, his parenting task was made more difficult by some teachers and other school personnel, who were disturbed by his son’s inability to “perform empathy,” while they ironically exhibited none themselves. During this time period, the author became aware of his emotional exposure in the face of harsh judgment directed toward both himself and his child. The raw quality of these painful experiences is still evident in his account, even though the author is sharing them 10 years after they happened.
A strength of the book is the variety of perspectives portrayed from within communities of early childhood practice, including emotionally honest perspectives from administrators. “Emotional intersections in early childhood leadership,” by Nikki Baldwin, is remarkable in its frank account of the emotional flatness expected of administrators in situations of high emotional arousal. Baldwin concludes that maintaining this flatness by keeping emotions buried requires exhausting effort, which contributes to administrators’ burnout. The intriguing commentary by Holly Elissa Bruno invites us to notice the dynamic relationship between expectations, emotions, and creativity.
Reframing the Emotional Worlds of the Early Childhood Classroom would be an excellent graduate text for courses that explore the social contexts of learning. Individual chapters would be important additions to course readings on family involvement in children’s education, emotional and reflective aspects of teaching, professional collaboration and professional development, special education, and leadership. It is also a fascinating and encouraging book for the teacher educator who may be weary of elaborate accountability measures, technical and bureaucratic educational reform, and educational controversy. The problems and pain encountered in Reframing the Emotional Worlds of the Early Childhood Classroom are human problems on a human scale. The satisfactions are grounded in everyday experience.