Growing Teachers: Partnerships in Staff Development
by Elizabeth Jones

Chapter 5
Change Making in a Primary School: Soledad, Califormia
by Jane Meade-Roberts, Elizabeth Jones and Joan Hillard

Notes From theStoryteller*

*Here the storyteller is Betty Jones, a visiting consultant to San Vicente School, describing two of her conversations with teachers at the school.

First grade

Laura never said a word at teachers' meetings, but in her first grade classroom no-nonsense, "let's get to work" place-she was clear and confident. Her own history of growing up in Soledad and her fluency in Spanish gave her immediate rapport with the children and with their parents.

She didn't invite me to visit her classroom, but she was gracious when I asked if I could come in for a while. This morning a spelling test was in progress. When it was over and papers were being passed in, to my surprise and without my noticing quite how it happened, the room suddenly became a free-choice, activity-centers place. Out from somewhere came paper and markers, Lincoln logs, Barbies, a jump rope, a small trampoline, picture books-and play and spontaneous language took over. Jump-rope rhymes were chanted in both English and Spanish. Laura was reading and talking about books with several children. Children were busy and self-directed; and when cleanup time came, they returned things to their places as efficiently as they'd gotten them out.

"That was wonderful," I said to Laura as the children went out to recess. "They're so competent and cooperative. And this was really language arts, too, with all that conversation in two languages."

Laura was a bit apologetic; she hadn't been expecting approval for just letting children play. "They worked so well at spelling," she explained, "that I thought they needed a reward. We do that sometimes."

"It was lovely to watch," I said. "I'm glad I came in just now. It makes such a nice balance in children's day, between work you ask them to do and choices they make for themselves.

"How is the Spanish language arts going?" I added, as we walked toward the teacher's room

"You know, I didn't think we should be doing that, teaching reading in Spanish," she reminded me. "They have to learn English, right? But I'm doing it because they said we had to. And I think I'm changing my mind. You know Amelia? She's only been taught to read in Spanish, but today when we were looking at those books, she picked up one in English and started reading it to me. I wonder how she can do that?"

"I'm so glad you told me," I said happily. "That's how the theory says it's supposed to work, and I believe it does, but I've never been quite sure. You're gathering data to support it."

Laura's own Spanish-speaking family did their best to speak English to their children at home; they wanted the children to succeed in an English-speaking society. Few Soledad children grow up to be professionals, but Laura did; apparently the strategy worked. Laura is now embarrassed by her limited literacy in Spanish, however, since her knowledge of the language has become an important tool in her teaching, and she keeps a lowprofile as a Latina in a school where teachers are mostly Anglo (although aides, children and parentsare mostly Latino). Through professional challenges and her own direct experience she is developing a more complex view of language learning in a stratified society and of ways in which she can help children grow up with greater pride in who they are and with bicultural competence in a changing society.

Kindergarten

Anne and I have worked happily together for several years. When we first met she was teaching kindergarten as she'd been taught to teach, rotating small groups of children every 15 minutes through four "stations"-math activities, Spanish reading readiness, English reading readiness, and large-muscle activities. As I observed she was enthustastically taking children through the textbook activities prescribed in the teacher's guide, focusing their discussion of pictures while staying open to some of their discoveries. "How many windows do you see in this picture?" she asked. "Let's count them together. One, two..." "Twenty-two!" announced the math whiz of the group. "Really?" Anne asked with great interest. "The book I'm reading says eleven. Let's see how you got twenty-two ... Oh, I see. They're double windows, aren't they, and so you could count them both ways.... "

Anne's teaching partner was working with attribute blocks during this same period. Each child In her small group got a collection of blocks and waited for a turn to sort them in response to the teacher's questions. Fifteen minutes was up, I noticed, before everyone got a turn. Don't they mind? I wondered as I watched them file docilely on to the next station. I'd mind if I were five years old.

Anne invited me to sit with her at lunch in the teachers' room and asked what I'd seen I mentioned how much I'd liked her response to the answer, "Twenty-two." —"You're really listening to children and not just reinforcing gilt right answer. That encourages them to observe carefully and think for themselves." Then I asked a genuine question-carefully, because I hadn't known Anne very long and I didn't want her to think I was criticizing: "Do you find that the 15-minute rotation gives children enough time at each activity?"

Anne heard it as a genuine question, and she thought about it. "Why, yes; but I'm only doing language arts with each small group; I don't know what's happening in the others. Why did you ask?" I explained what I'd seen with the attribute blocks. "Oh..." Anne said thoughtfully.

This conversation, Anne's own experience with choice making at an in-service (see below), the availability of new materials purchased under a Title VII grant, and encouragement from the teacher in the room next door (Jane Meade-Roberts, also hired under the grant) all led Anne to make radical changes in her classroom structure. Over the next year she gave up station rotation in favor of a long choice time, expanded the choice of centers outdoors as well as indoors, and worked out a team arrangement whereby teachers and aides from two adjacent classrooms shared responsibility for setting up learning centers in the patio area and supervising any children who were outside. She found these changes exciting and occasionally scary-was she teaching the children what they needed to know?

She and I were both reassured one morning when one of the outdoor activities was finger painting. It was an often available choice, and children managed it themselves, putting on aprons, swirling paint around on a tabletop, and washing their hands in a convenient bucket. Adults were available with paper to make a print if there was a creation to be saved before more swirling went on. I enjoy watching children being competent and responsible, and I was enjoying watching these children, when I noticed, "Anne, LOOK. They're writing their names in the finger paint! Take a picture or make a print or something, so you can reassure parents you really are teaching writing." She shared my delight, and she did just that.

—Betty Jones

The setting

San Vicente School, where Laura and Anne were teaching, enrolls all of the K-1-2 children (600 to 800 of them) in Soledad, a predominantly Latino agricultural community in California's Salinas Valley. Third and fourth graders go to Gabilan School, fifth to eighth graders to Main Street; high school is in a neighboring community.

The majority of children enter school with little or no English proficiency, and instruction in English as a second language has been provided through migrant education and other funding; however, the superintendent for many years opposed bilingual education. It was not until the early 1980s, when he retired, that an opportunity arose to write a Title VII bilingual program grant to support changes in early childhood education in Soledad.

Joan Hillard, then the district's early childhood curriculum supervisor, coauthored the grant. In the year in which it was funded, she became principal of San Vicente School.

Building a partnership

In the partnership that developed, Joan Hillard as principal; Jane Meade-Roberts, teaching preschool at San Vicente under the Title VII grant; and Betty Jones, hired as a consultant from the faculty of Pacific Oaks College, were the principal players. As the project continued, some of the teachers chose to become active partners, too.

Joan had background as a teacher and a supervisor and solid understanding of theory in early childhood education. Her contribution to the writing of the Title VII grant ensured that it addressed developmentally appropriate practice as well as bilingual education. It included (1) a Spanish-immersion preschool for Spanish-speaking four- and five-year-olds, (2) a first grade readiness checklist for use by kindergarten teachers, (3) staff development, (4) purchase of developmentally appropriate materials, and (5) bilingual support staff.

Sharing responsibility was both a strategy and an intended outcome of the project. In her authority role as administrator, Joan had the power to be a fixer upper, as far as she was able. She was challenged to try to gain teachers' trust so that she could be facilitative as well as directive. In the process of doing so, she delegated many tasks to teachers. And she hired an experienced teacher with no history in the school or community for the new preschool, to whom she assigned responsibilities for staff development and in whom she had an ally who could, in turn, work with other teachers as their peer.

Jane Meade-Roberts had been a bilingual teacher in Los Angeles before earning her M.A. in human development at Pacific Oaks College and going on to further graduate work with Constance Kamii in Chicago. She brought to her new position at San Vicente her knowledge of developmental theory and her commitment to autonomy as the aim of education for both children and adults. In her first year she nevertheless experienced stress:

My previous teaching experience was in bilingual classrooms, and I am a certified bilingual teacher, but I am not a native Spanish speaker, and at first I found it exhausting to teach in Spanish all day. Further, my aides were more linguistically competent than I, in spite of all my professional qualifications. (Meade-Roberts, 1988)

And so Jane called Betty Jones, who had been her graduate advisor at Pacific Oaks, to say, "I'll take you out to breakfast at the CAEYC conference. I need someone to talk to." That March breakfast led to Betty's making an April consulting visit to Soledad, the beginning of her seven-year connection with San Vicente.

The preschool had morning and afternoon sessions and was team-taught by Jane and a former Head Start teacher, with two aides. All but Jane were native Spanish speakers. Because of her involvement in other Title VII activities, Jane was often out of the classroom, and she was worried that her teammates might be resentful. However, in conversation with Betty as facilitator, they made it clear that this was the best job they'd ever had, they were feeling competent, and Jane could come and go as she pleased. That proved empowering to everyone, with Jane needing to let go of some of the being-in-charge she had assumed as the only credentialed teacher on the team. and others asserting their competence as full team members, not assistants.

Telling our stories: Staff development and classroom visiting

Taking leadership in staff development planning was part of Jane's job description. Before the Title VII project began, staff development was planned districtwide. During the first year of the project, Jane, Joan, and the project director initiated site planning, which led to a new style of in-service: a minimum day at San Vicente during which staff had choices among a variety of workshops led by their colleagues, teachers at the school who volunteered to share something that they believed they did well. The choice model was deliberate: If teachers have never had the experience of making choices for themselves, they are unlikely to permit children to make choices; and choice making is an important part of developmentally appropriate curriculum in early childhood.

In the second year San Vicente had its own staff development plan with a series of 17 in-house offerings, most led by teachers and scheduled for 50 minutes after school. Teachers were expected to choose eight sessions to attend. In addition, a minimum day provided two sessions with outside consultants-one on motor development, the other on whole language activities. Betty returned to lead the whole language session, which was set up as, several learning centers from which teachers could choose. Teachers varied in their responsiveness; but one, Anne Solomon, still remembered her experience in a conversation two years later:

That was a real aha! for me. I started a couple of activities that didn't interest me, and so I left them and moved on, still looking. Then I got to the incomplete sentences, and I got so excited that I stayed for the rest of the afternoon and wrote and wrote. I realized that if that's how I learn, kids must learn that way too.

Betty also made herself available to visit classrooms-to get acquainted, to observe, and to do something with children if invited. She was welcomed by some of the teachers.

Both the revised in-service plan and Betty's classroom visits introduced storytelling as a staff-development strategy. Teachers sharing their experiences select, organize, and tell their stories to other teachers, who share stories of their own, reaffirming that they are people with good ideas. Betty shared her observations in informal conversations with teachers and sometimes in writing. Doing activities with children, she wasn't necessarily viewed by teachers as a model, simply as another experience for the children-a new classroom "story" that teachers could observe, critique, and borrow ideas from if they chose.

Betty also wrote brief reports to the principal and to the superintendent after each visit, focusing on examples of creativity and growth. Her stories eventually found their way into the Title VII Program Evaluation, which she was hired to prepare, and into several publications (see For further information, p. 87). Betty, Joan, Jane, and several teachers also presented at conferences, sharing our experience with a wider audience; and visitors from other districts observed at the school. We're doing something interesting and important here, was the message conveyed through all of these retellings.

Grade-level meetings: Teachers work together

Tasks delegated to teachers are frequently accomplished through grade-level meetings. Meetings having to do with textbook selection and child placement continued as they always had. Under Title VII a new task was added: creation of a readiness checklist, which evolved into a developmental profile.

This task was slow to get under way. In the second year of the project, Joan met with first grade teachers to ask, "What do you look for in assessing a child's growth? How do you know if a child is ready for first grade?" Teachers were asked to follow up by making written lists, which some did. Many of the items generated by this process reflected the screening tests and the reading and math frameworks with which the teachers were familiar, and they were stated in deficit terms ("The child can't...").

In the third year Joan turned the lists over to Jane, who enlisted Betty's help. Increased district emphasis on outcomes made it possible for us to reconceptualize the task as developmental assessment of children's strengths, not deficits. We were committed to these principles:

1. Growth takes place in a developmental sequence, in which each stage is important.
2. Different children grow at different rates, and age norms to be met by all children in a group are inappropriate.
3. Each child grows at different rates in different areas of development.
4. It is important to make Piaget's distinction between social knowledge-what teachers teach directly-and logical knowledge-what children construct for themselves through action and interaction.
5. Learning is motivated by assessment that fosters self-esteem in both children and parents.

Kindergarten

Talking with kindergarten teachers, we asked, "What can your capable children do? What can the less capable children do?" Taking these ideas and the first grade teachers' lists, we combined the curriculum areas identified by teachers with the developmental categories we carry in our heads and came up with (1) literacy skills, (2) numeracy skills, (3) physical development, and (4) social skills. We decided that teachers' many social-knowledge items and expectations for acceptable behavior could be subsumed under category (5), ability to meet school/teacher expectations. We decided that curiosity and creativity were high on our list of goals for children's growth and added them as (6). Then we identified subcategories for each category and sequenced behaviors in each. What we were preparing was a draft for teachers to react to and change.

We tried out our draft on Joan, who gave us the go-ahead. Then back we went to the teachers with the request that they try rating half-a-dozen children (their highest and lowest achievers) on the profile to see what worked for them and what didn't. This experience set the stage for a half-day meeting, during a meal at a local hotel, at which we invited teachers to tell us everything they didn't like about the profile. We began, in fact, with a complaints checklist and tallied its results to serve as a take-off point for discussion.

Specific suggestions were made, questions were asked, and disagreements were voiced. The major concern expressed was, "I don't know some of those things about my children." ("I don't even know what some of those things [notably conservation] are.') Since introducing developmental theory to teachers was in fact part of our agenda in designing the profile, we discussed conservation of number at some length at this point in the meeting.

In some of the kindergarten classrooms, teachers made clear, there was no opportunity for children to practice writing spontaneously or to "work competently on notably complex, creative, imaginative, self-initiated tasks" (one of our definitions). All activities were teacher directed, and short time blocks did not allow for complex projects. Teachers' time was spent in leading groups, large and small, and overseeing children's moves from one activity to the next. They weren't free to observe children.

One teacher objected that even if she took time to observe children's social interaction, she couldn't assess their level of competence because they were speaking Spanish. "Could you ask your aide to observe for some of the profile items?" we asked. She guessed she could try. And two of the teachers, after extended discussion, decided that perhaps on Fridays they might replace their usual tight schedule with a long choice time, which would free children to be spontaneous and teachers to observe them in action.

Teachers questioned the logical ordering of some items on our continua; we agreed and made changes. Development of the profile was an actively participatory process, although we retained our commitment to a developmental framework for assessing children's growth. Together we discovered our lack of knowledge in some areas (Is there a sequence in the development of motor skills by four- and five-year-olds? We didn't know). We were especially delighted when a teacher who had used the profile for a while said, "You know what? Social knowledge doesn't scale. There's no logical order to learning shapes and colors and letters and your address." We had learned that by studying Piaget; we admired her for discovering it for herself.

During the fourth year kindergarten teachers again had two half-days at the hotel to review the profile now in use as the report card. Their increasing enthusiasm and increasing questions about the rationale for profile items led Joan to request, and the superintendent to approve. a full-day kindergarten in-service held away from school at a community center in a nearby town. Betty and Jane facilitated the inservice, focusing on developmental theory, which the teachers had said they wanted to know more about if they were going to implement a developmental program. All of the teachers also had planned time to share ideas of their own with the group.

First grade

Upon becoming principal at San Vicente, Joan began to make some changes in the kindergarten staff, and by the third year more than half of the eight teachers were persons she had hired. Furthermore, nearly all were able and willing to use Spanish in the classroom with increasing fluency. In half of the classrooms, Spanish and English alternated daily as the language of instruction at group time. In contrast, most of the first grade teachers were the veterans of the school who had been on staff in prebilingual days. They were, with a couple of exceptions, unenthusiastic about change and especially about Spanish. They saw their own longterm commitment as evidence of greater devotion to the children than was the language fluency of persons hired just because they spoke Spanish. Comments to this effect were made in the teachers' room and in casual conversation. These feelings came out into the open when, in the fourth year, the first grade teachers met after school with the task of extending the kindergarten profile into a first grade profile.

Betty and Jane had had one meeting with first grade teachers the previous year. At that time we took the kindergarten profile as we had developed it and omitted the first two items on the left side of each continuum, leaving room to add two more on the right. At the meeting we divided the profile categories among task groups of two or three teachers and asked each group to write their results on a large sheet of paper. Teachers participated effectively but without great enthusiasm.

By the next year first grade teachers were coping unwillingly with a change in the structure of primary language-arts instruction. Because Soledad was newly implementing bilingual education, the Titl VII grant had been written to provide funding for three bilingual support teachers (BSTs). It never proved possible, however, to find enough teachers qualified to teach Spanish reading who were willing to do so in a push-in program. The job was less appealing than regular classroom teaching, to which BSTs returned as soon as they could. As one explained, "You teach practically the same lesson eight times a day for 20 minutes. It's too structured. There's not enough choice for children or for the teacher; and that's all the Spanish most children get during the day.

A new plan for language-arts instructor in first and second grades was therefore devised. With seven classrooms at each grade level, teachers in three classrooms took Spanish-reading children from their own and other classes while their English reading children moved to other classes for one and a half hours each morning. In several classrooms Spanish was also used at other times during the day. In first grade, however, the plan was complicated by the fact that only two teachers were fluent in Spanish. The third teacher responsible for Spanish reading was a reluctant conscript, assisted by a BST aide and another aide borrowed from the other teachers.

It was in this context that we tried to have a meeting to complete the first grade profile. Sparked by their colleague's extreme discontent in her unsought role as Spanish language-arts teacher, and taking advantage of Joan's presence at the meeting, teachers protested their inability to use the profile with their children. "We are too fragmented. We don't know our children well enough to rate them" because of all the teaming: "Why can't we go back to having BSTs?" (The two Spanish-reading teachers who felt competent in this role had less to say; in fact, they had experienced the BST plan as inadequate and saw the team plan as more effective in meeting children's needs for Spanish literacy instruction.)

The teachers' anger led to a change of agenda, concentrating on the venting of complaints. The whole idea of the profile was questioned: "It's contradictory to the report card, and are we going to have to use both?" There was no unanimity about which they preferred. Finally someone said, "Well, if you're going to make us do this developmental stuff, the least you could do is in-service us in it." The meeting broke up with no progress on the profile.

Betty called Joan that evening with the intent of sympathizing, expecting her to have felt attacked. and instead found her delighted to have a teacher request for inservice, which she could use in asking the superintendent for teacher release time. He had already approved a day's in-service for kindergarten teachers; and faced with the teachers' request, he approved provision of substitutes to enable all first grade teachers to spend all day at the local hotel with Doris Smith, a member of the State Readiness Task Force, explaining its recommendations; several of the teachers sharing their knowledge of whole language strategies; and Betty facilitating discussion of teaming and program planning in first grade. It was, on the whole, a cheerful meeting. At the end Joan said, "Thank you for your participation. And I expect to see some evidence of whole language in your classrooms next year."

There was, as it turned out, considerable exploration of whole language strategies in the first grades following this meeting, and work on the profile resumed, as well, in the next year. First and then second grade teachers agreed on a revised profile for language arts. The same profile applies in both first and second grade, the second grade teachers decided; we don't need to add anything more. Those teachers who were trying a more developmental approach became increasingly dissatisfied with the existing report card; it no longer reflected what they were doing. "Weren't we going to use the profile for a report card?" they asked.

They no longer had a responsive principal ready to support them in this next step, however. Joan had moved into a district curriculum position, and the new principal was unready to consider making changes of any kind.

Sources of conflict

Conflict is an inevitable ingredient in the process of change. It may be useful rather than destructive if it can be used as a source of energy toward constructive change. A major turning point in this partnership took place when the first grade teachers' frustration got openly expressed and the principal, instead of feeling threatened by their anger, saw it as an opportunity to provide them with one of the things they requested-in-service to help them become more competent in what they were being asked to do. She had. in fact, provoked their outburst in the first place by her calculated assignment of a reluctant teacher to Spanish language arts. That teacher agreed to a transfer to Gabilan School for the following year, provided she wouldn't have to teach Spanish. Her move freed a position for a new first grade teacher who was able and willing to teach Spanish; the other first grade teachers, freed from defending her out of loyalty, found themselves enjoying the challenge of change making in their classrooms.

Any external facilitator perceived by teachers as trustworthy will hear a good many of their complaints about the system, the principal, the parents, and working conditions in general. She can decide whether to remain noncommittal, sympathize, pass the word along, or encourage teachers to action. The latter course risks her relationship with administration; trust building and maintenance is a continuing challenge in both directions.

In this partnership our three-way relationship was fostered by real and growing respect for each other's competence in the context of a shared philosophy about early childhood education. We didn't agree about everything; for example, Joan was trained in Gesell testing and instituted developmental screening for all entering children. She introduced a preschool that, in effect, built in an extra year of school for some five-year-olds, and later added a two-year kindergarten that did the same, in response to high retention rates in kindergarten. Betty, with a theoretical bias against retention, was challenged to look thoughtfully at Joan's reasoning, within the social/political climate of the school and community and also with the added variable of secondlanguage learning. Betty found herself wondering, is it unreasonable that children who are becoming fluent in two languages might need an extra year of school? Her colleague Doris Smith, coming to share an In-service and bringing recent experience as a member of the state readiness task force that recommended firmly against retention or delayed school entry, offered challenge from the other side of the issue. It was a good place in which to keep learning.

As principal, Joan practiced the fine art of getting along with a superintendent until he kicked her upstairs into a district curriculum position. Her successor as principal, appointed from within the school, had neither the negotiating skills nor the background in early childhood education to enable her to sustain leadership in the profile-development process. Instead, she put up roadblocks, expressIng her anxiety that the profile might not be congruent with district objectives. The first grade teachers took initiative; they asked the consultant to come back, this time to discuss strategy, and talked about going over the principal's head to the superintendent. Another year passed; another principal, and then still another, came to San Vicente. The profile was not yet the primary report card, but teaching had changed in many classrooms.

Empowering teachers

Empowering teachers was an intended outcome of this project. This represents a radical change in those public school settings where teachers are accustomed to do whatever is mandated while complaining about it and the children, or to keep their doors shut and do their own thing. We saw empowerment in teachers' speaking out to administrators, considering their potential influence on main-office decisions, requesting in-services and consultation, and taking increasing responsibility for leadership among themselves. We saw empowerment in changes made in classrooms as teachers were challenged to explore changes consistent with their individual styles while being more responsive to children's individuality. We saw empowerment in teachers' sharing ideas with peers at in-services, welcoming to their classrooms visitors from other school districts who had heard about the project, and, in several cases, making presentations at professional conferences, encouraged by and sometimes teamed with Jane and Joan.

Anne Solomon, the kindergarten teacher who was an early enthusiast about the project, kept learning Spanish and growing in confidence, and she ended up teaming with Jane in the Spanish-immersion preschool. When Anne married and moved away, she took her experience at San Vicente to another school district, where she has taken an active leadership role while teaching kindergarten. She has organized in-services (Betty came for one), worked with staff to develop their own kindergarten developmental profile and disseminated her learning through conference presentations. When Betty got a consulting request from still another school district, whose teachers had heard Anne talk and who were developing their own profile, it was clear that these ideas were moving into wider and wider circles through teacher leadership.

What was taught, what was learned, and what are the implications?

Over a five-year period it proved possible, given the resources provided by a project grant, to institute significant changes in a public primary school, both in teacher-child interactions and in teachers' initiative in working with each other. Among the things we learned are these:

• Public school teachers can move toward more developmentally appropriate practice if they are given good reasons for doing so and are directly involved in network building and in-service planning and implementation.
• A combination of administrative "fixing" and external facilitation can be particularly effective in initiating and sustaining change.
• Trust building takes time; teachers are justifiably skeptical of the quick fix. It is important that supportive relationships be sustained over several years.
• Classroom visiting and informal storytelling are useful strategies in both trust building and encouraging self-reflection by teachers.
• Conflict is inevitable when teachers believe that their competence or values are threatened. If their concerns are taken seriously, the energy generated by anger is an effective motivator for change.
• Personnel changes resulting from district politics or inevitable staff attrition may permanently interrupt a change process or, conversely, demonstrate the extent to which teachers have made it their own.

For further information

Jones, E., & Meade-Roberts, J. (1990). Assessment through observation: A profile of developmental outcomes. Occasional paper. Pasadena, CA: Pacific Oaks College. 14 pp. $1.75. (Includes the profile as report card)

Jones, E., & Meade-Roberts, J. (1991). Assessment through observation: A profile of developmental outcomes (ages 5-8). In L.Y. Overby (Ed.), Early childhood creative arts: Proceedings of the International Early Childhood Creative Arts Conference (pp. 44-50). Washington, DC: National Dance Association. (Available through NAEYC)

Parker-Whitney School report card (Rocklin District, California). Contact Anne Solomon, 6627 Derby Ct., Citrus Heights, CA 95621

Other suggested readings

Agee, J.L. (1988). Here they come: ready or not. Report of the School Readiness Task Force. Sacramento, CA: California Department of Education.

Almy, M., & Genishi, C. (1979). Ways of studying children. New York: Teachers College Press.

Bredekamp, S. (Ed.). (1987). Developmentally appropriate practice in early childhood programs serving children from birth through age 8. Washington, DC: NAEYC.

Carini, P.F. (1975). Observation and description: An alternative methodology for the investigation of human phenomena. Grand Forks: North Dakota Study Group on Evaluation, University of North Dakota.

Cummins, J. (1986). Empowering minority students: A framework for intervention. Harvard Educational Review, 56(1), 18-36.

Cummins. J, (1989). Empowering minority students. Sacramento: California Association for Bilingual Education.

Genishi, C. (Ed.). (1992). Ways of assessing children and curriculum: Stories of early childhood practice. New York: Teachers College Press.

Kamii, C. (Ed.). (1990). Achievement testing in the early grades: The games grown-ups play. Washington, DC: NAEYC.

National Association for the Education of Young Children. (1988). NAEYC position statement on standardized testing of young children 3 through 8 years of age. Young Children, 43(3). 42-47.

Van Hoorn, J., Nourot, P., Scales, B., & Alward, K. (1993). Play at the center of the curriculum. New York: Merrill/Macmillan.

Reference

Meade-Roberts, J. (1988). It's all academic! In E. Jones (Ed.), Reading, writing and talking with four, five and six year olds. Pasadena, CA: Pacific Oaks College.

To contact the authors, write:

Joan Hillard, Superintendent, Spreckels Union School District, P.O. Box 7308, Spreckels, CA 93962.

Elizabeth Jones, Pacific Oaks College, 5 Westmoreland Place, Pasadena, CA 91103

Jane Meade-Roberts, 815 Capistrano Drive, Salinas, CA 93901.