Mountain Village School News

... and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful one hundred percent!"–Dr. Seuss, Horton Hatches an Egg Many of our teachers have been aspiring to be more like Horton the elephant lately! This week four of us attended a workshop on intentional language presented by Scott Noyes. We reviewed eleven phrases commonly used by teachers in the classroom, dissected their meanings and how they sound to children, and talked about how to say what we actually want to convey. The phrases included "Good boy", "Isn't she cute?", "That didn't hurt", "No thank you", and "Tell him you're sorry." Any one of those phrases would be a ripe topic for writing about–and if one of them piques your curiosity feel free to ask Hannah, Amanda, Shannon T., or me about it–but today I'd like to focus on "Tell him you're sorry." As a teacher it's hard to see a child I care about make a mistake that ends up hurting anoth...

It's that time of year again when everyone's nose starts running... and running... and running. In the scope of children's daily lives, how we keep those noses clean might seem like a trivial thing, but at MVS we think it's actually a pretty big deal. Sometimes when an adult tries to help clean a child's nose, the adult holds the child's head still and quickly swipes a tissue across their face, then both child and adult continue on their merry ways. But if you were the child in that situation, how would that make you feel? Your nose is clean but having someone touch your face is a rather intimate interaction; it's just been rushed through and you're expected to brush it off and move on. The good news is that there is another way. Rather than hurriedly imposing our priority of nose wiping on the child, we can instead offer to help, invite the child's participation in the task, and share in the comfort of helping someone in a way that is respectful ...