Another "person" in the room
I designed a display, ‘My Friend,’ in which I hoped to invite children to discover more about each other. Many of our one hundred-sixty children responded. I provided vocabulary words such as, friend, incognito, portrait, happy, likeness, trustworthy; each one rested on pushpins for easy access. I asked them not to include a name, so others could guess; some included portraits.
For another display, ‘The Stranger,’ I hung a black brass rubbing on a yellow and red background of a corpse with worms oozing from its body and both eyes. I prepared more than twenty gruesome word cards including worms, horrify, slimy, grimy, evil, grotesque. Children wrote imaginative poems and stories and, as common practice, copied them in italic; many included illustrations.
Oxfordshire primary school focus on carefully mounted displays of children’s work was new to me including paintings, drawings, clay sculptures, rubbings, projects, storeis, poems. No matter which way a child turned, she would see her work and the work of others. And visitors walking into the front vestibule, children’s work would be displayed alongside flowers in vases and museum pieces on loan.
Creating intriguing displays allowed my colleagues and I to step back and let go of the role of spokesperson for what is to be learned (how I was trained). Children’s creativity showed up. The displays enabled dialogues between teacher and children and among the children themselves. We were allowing them agency, a crucial characteristic. All students—and teachers—deserve to have that.
The conversations helped build community. With so many children, my three colleagues and I each having more than thirty, it was as if the displays and responses became another “person” in the room.
