Ann Brown's Secret Life; Her Love of Music
NCCL NEWSLETTER: Most people probably know that you were the driving force behind NCCL. I am so interested in how you decided that this was the kind of school that needed to exist.
ANN: I got my Music degree and Elementary Education degree at the same time from Washington University. I knew my then-husband was going to be a graduate student in New York City and I wanted as many options open as possible for teaching. WhenI went there I tried to get into the New York City public school system and it took me a year to get even a substitute license. For the first year I taught three-year-olds in a very posh church nursery school over on Park Ave. The second year I taught 6th grade in the South Bronx, kids who had all been held back at least once, or who had just come from Puerto Rico and couldn't speak a word of English, or who were extremely troubled. I was assigned the bottom class of the sixth grade. It was a truly horrifying experience at 23 years old!
I learned to care very much for the kids. The rest of the teachers in the school said, "They're unteachable. Give up on them. That's the only way you'll survive!" The principal was afraid to come into my room. These kids had been through about 6 or 7 teachers who kept quitting so I--it's not a plus or a minus, but I never quit anything--I told them, no matter what happens you have me all year. And just about everything happened, but I stuck it out.
But it was just more than I could handle. As an escape I got pregnant because I couldn't say, I'm leaving these kids. I had this dream of going into poor areas of the city and being Super-teacher and changing lives, and it was just horrifying. It was February and my husband said, "Gee, this is the first week you haven't cried." So it took it's toll.
Then I found part time jobs with the baby.
A friend I had made who was finishing her Masters degree at Teachers' College started feeding me exciting new books that were coming out. At the end of the 1960s there was just an outpouring of ..... Whatever happened to John Dewey? What are we doing in ourschool systems? And after my year in the public school system I knew something was wrong. At the same time I had a great aunt who died and left me money. This friend of mine was saying, "Let's start our own school. Let's start our own school," and I just got swept along.
She was observing me in my nursery school and I started making changes in my teaching. That was a cathartic experience, because I realized at that time I was a benign controlling teacher. The kids loved me, but I was teaching without really listening to them. So I started making big changes in my teaching. And the church really didn't like it.
NEWSLETTER: Can you tell me what you did?
ANN: I threw out the outside schedule, except for group time and greetings kinds of things. I would just put out choices and let them go from thing to thing. Then I would see what they were interested in and expand on that. At that time the nursery schoolapproach was very scheduled. I even made story time a choice. If they didn't want to listen to the story they had to choose a quiet activity. And then I started noticing the kids who never came to story time. So I'd sit and talk with them, find out what were they interested in. I'd go to the library and find a book they were interested in. It was mind-blowing for me. And it was difficult too, because I had to face that I was a pretty bad teacher in the approach that I was then learning. I was being a manipulative, nice, controller.
So my friend kept visiting me and giving me books to read. And we started looking for empty store fronts....
NEWSLETTER: Has NCCL changed in ways that surprised you?
ANN: The main change was the development of the approach to education to fit varied age groups. Most of the literature was in preschool and in the 5-7 ages, but we were convinced that it would work for older kids. My idea was to start the school with ages 5-7 and feed it from the bottom. But one of the first teachers I talked to about starting the school -- I'd barely gotten through the first sentence of what I was thinking of and she said, "I'll teach with you for nothing if my kids can go here." Well, her son was 5th grade age. It just so happened that the people who were willing to work for nothing had older kids, so the first year we started with kindergarten through 6th grade.
In some ways we're way more structured now than when we started, and in other basic ways we haven't changed an iota. The approach has changed with the times, and with the parents' needs--but as far as small classes, listening to kids, trying to be as flexibleand child-oriented and not political-approach oriented, it has stayed the same.their needs are, changed over time?
NEWSLETTER: How have the needs of the parents, or what they say their needs are, changed over time?
ANN: Well, we've cycled. The late 80's was the most stringent, back-to-basics time. Lately we've been able to feel a bit less pressured about that. But mostly the trend since the 70's has been much more academic-prowess-proving. Parents want to see that their kid can have creativity and achieve at the same time.
NEWSLETTER: How does that attitude on the part of parents change what you do in the classroom, since it seems to me that you were giving the kids lots of content ever since the beginning?
ANN: The younger kids' program hasn't changed much at all. It's the older kids' program that has. I taught the older kids, and we would have the writing, reading, and math program in the morning and then the afternoons were free choice class. We created a new schedule every two months based on what they wanted to learn in the afternoons. And that is just gone.
What has stayed is Workshop Week, which we just refuse to get rid of. And kids will come back who are in their thirties and say, "What I remember is Workshop Week." Workshop Week is what used to be in the afternoons all the time.
We also do a lot of parent education, showing them that it really is okay. We show them older kids coming back, achieving and all of that. In the 70's, the parents were so against the structure of the system that whatever we did was great.
NEWSLETTER: What do you think are the most important things that kids learn in Group One?
ANN: To keep loving learning, and to care about themselves and about each other. The skill teaching is the easiest. That just comes. The kids want to learn to read and write and do all those things.
Anybody who teaches kids should be pretty excited about what they're doing and love learning. Most of it is listening and--whenever we've talked about teaching--humility and flexibility! No matter how much time you've put into preparing something, if it falls apart, and a kid has a better idea, go with it! Most of the time the kids have better ideas about where to go with something.
NEWSLETTER: Does that become automatic or do you still work on that consciously?
ANN: No, it's automatic now. I definitely had that cathartic couple of years of looking at everything I did, and pulling back. Before I made that change I loved children, and teaching was an okay career, but after I made that change teaching just becamesomething I lived for. Because every day is different, and every day you don't know where it's going to go.
NEWSLETTER: Do you think there are certain kinds of students who would not do well at this school? Or do you feel like it's an approach that works for everybody?
ANN: I do, I do! But kids we have been unable to keep here are kids who on the surface don't care about having friends. I say "on the surface" because I don't think anybody in their core doesn't care about that. But we count a lot on peer pressure, andon self-responsible behavior. In fact, kids going from here to high school say they're treated more like kids in high school than they are here.
Kids that people would say, "Well, they just need more structure," we take that child and try to gradually develop them away from needing that structure. We don't assume that his whole life this person is going to need structure, because who wants that? But that's what the army's full of, I guess.
NEWSLETTER: If you could encourage parents to do something to complement what the school does, what would it be?
ANN: A home where kids' interests and thoughts and feelings are discussed openly, and where their interests are pursued. Where the child knows that, no matter how busy their parents are, they're the most important thing--that would be a good balance tous.
NCCL Newsletter, April 2000
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