PVCC Puma Press: March 2005

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	(Photo by DJ Greenfield)
	Left to right: Early Childhood Education faculty, Christie Colunga, directory of the PVCC Child Develpment Center, Rosemary Hooper and coordinator of the Teacher Development Center, Harriet Betts worked together to bring exhibit to PVCC library. The PVCC library will display the $250,000 exhibit, "The Power of Documentation: Children's Learning Revealed," through March, 12.
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“It’s a girl,” Isaiah Lee said, starting at the half-dead bug still trying to move its legs and escape to a dark hiding place.

“It’s a boy,” Christopher counters.

“Girl, girl, girl,” Isaiah Lee insists, joined by a group of her peers.

“He’s smashed,” said Christopher.

“It has two left feet,” Isaiah Lee notices.

“I think he dead. He laying down on his back,” Aaron says.

“If you stop talking, he will get more air and wake up,” says Daaja.

Such are the conversations of three to five year olds, as they discover the world around them. But the world of these preschoolers doesn’t go unnoticed. Their teacher is busy writing notes about her preschoolers’ conversations. Elsewhere, another teacher is video taping her young charges’ activities.

Spying? No, documenting.

Examining young children’s conversations and activities reveals the learning that comes from their active, engaged work and play. All teachers involved in professional learning communities use documentation of children’s activities to assess their progress, plan curriculums, measure their effectiveness and to reflect on effective teaching techniques. Until recently, this documentation stayed within the confines of the local school.

The Power of Documentation: Children’s Learning Revealed exhibit takes that documentation and shares it with the public: parents, professional educators, school administrators, students and anyone else with an interest in early childhood development. Through a grant by the McCormick Tribune Foundation, Children’s Learning Revealed was developed and designed by Chicago Children’s Museum and the Chicago Metro Association for the Education of Young Children. Judy Harris Helm, Best Practices, Inc., was the consultant on the project. You can visit this $250,000 exhibit in the PVCC library until March 12. The exhibit is along the north wall of the library near the periodicals section.

"The other thing the exhibit shows,” said PVCC’s Christie Colunga, Early Childhood Education faculty, “is how documentation can meet the rigorous demands for accountability in early childhood programs. We can document learning and show that how we teach young children meets the standards and guidelines required by local, state and national entities.”

In a typical preschool environment, the teacher learns of the children’s interest and documents that interest with hand-written notes or tape recordings. Then she or he becomes a facilitator, who uses the children’s interest to help them learn more about their world and themselves.

For example, one children’s group conversation resulted in a large book titled, “A Bug and a Spider.” It has one-sentence pages, and water color paintings to complement each page. Some of the paintings are a bit difficult to decipher; but the important thing to remember is that the paintings are the children’s representation of what they observed. No one guided their hands; no one said, “Do it this way.”

Another example of children’s learning revealed involves three cardboard boxes, paper plates, construction paper, juice cups, pens and crayons. These materials were needed to build a snowplow.

There are many more similar success stories such as “Splash,” a story about a fish. The story came from the imagination of one child. All of the other children in class then pooled their efforts to make a book based on their classmate’s story.

According to the display panels in the exhibit, the learning that took place while these projects were developed includes these skills:

• Increased ability to observe and discuss common properties, differences, and comparisons among objects and materials;

• Spatial sense: understanding of directionality, order and position of objects;

• Imagination: using various art media to change imagination to reality;

• Reasoning and problem solving (creative thinking) to set goals and following through;

• Making connections between objects, pictures and words.

• Learning even included the basics of developing stories: beginning, middle and end.

Colunga, and Rosemary Hooper, directory of the PVCC Children's Learning Center, saw the first Power of Documentation exhibit in Chicago in 2003.

Impressed by the exhibit, Colunga and Hooper immediately set out to bring it to PVCC. They wrote a grant proposal to MCCCD in 2003, and were awarded $6,200. Another $14,000 was raised through networking and fundraising.
The result of their efforts is the exhibit now on display in the school’s library sponsored by PVCC’s Teacher Development Center, The Children’s Learning Center and The Early Childhood Education program. Harriet Betts, coordinator of the Teacher Development Center, monitored the transportation of the exhibit to PVCC; oversaw its setup and schedules visits to the exhibit by special interest groups.

The opening reception held on Jan. 13 was attended by over 80 individuals, and an additional 300 educators have seen the exhibit to date. Many schools and school districts from all over the Phoenix metropolitan area have also toured the exhibit.