Developmentally Appropriate Practice

A few days ago I finished listening to The Godfather on audiobook. Lately I have been listening to books at night to help me wind down. It has been very enjoyable and has given me the opportunity to listen to some of my favorite fiction books. I typically choose books that I have already read for two reasons: the first is that if I fall asleep and "miss" a section of the book, it doesn't matter too much because I already read it and hopefully remember it. The second is that it gives me the opportunity to listen to some of my favorite fiction books that I haven't found the time to re-read. After a few days of this I realized that having someone tell you a story is quite calming. It takes your mind off of any problem that might keep you up and allows you to escape into the book. I now understand how my daughter feels when we read her a book before bed and she falls asleep before we finish!

Moving on to The Godfather...

This book is one of my favorite stories ever written. This book has everything in it. Family, betrayal, love stories (if you’re into that kind of thing), and lastly, redemption. The great thing about it is that you can read, watch, or listen to this book multiple times and still pick up a few new things that leave you in awe. It has been great to revisit it after a few years. So great in fact that I found myself sitting on the edge of my seat as this book came to an end. I will not ruin it for those who haven’t read it but Michael Corleone makes a few bold moves after his father's death and in doing so, becomes a legend!

Some of you that know the adult version of myself may also know that I am an avid reader. But as a youth, that was not the case. Back in the day, I did not read. It was something that I was not interested in at all. Sports and riding bicycles were more my speed! As I look back, I assume the lack of interest in reading was heavily influenced by what we had to read in school. The required reading that was given wasn’t interesting to a young boy and I often skipped it. Or, better yet, I would visit the website sparknotes.com to get all the information that they had available. {Sidenote: After doing a quick google search I noticed sparknotes is still an active website which led me to silently nod my head in approval. This site has probably helped more kids understand Hamlet than any other site known to man! Kudos to them!}

But I digress.. 

The point is, reading wasn’t interesting to me because the stories were not exciting. They were hard to understand and written in a way that you practically had to look up every other word. Because of this, reading left a bad taste in my mouth. If every book the school asked me to read was lame than I assumed all books were lame and put off reading. Moving on to the present day, I have come to understand that not much has changed. I couldn’t tell you how many times I have asked a kid about the book they were reading and the response is typically a negative one. Their sentiment was not much different than the middle school version of Chris. After listening to their complaints and giving them time to share their opinions I often say, “Reading doesn’t stink. The books you choose to read for school might but reading in general is not a bad thing. Why don’t you read stuff that interests you?” They then look at me like I have four heads and say nothing. 

As I got a little bit older, probably towards the end of high school, I decided to give this thing called reading another opportunity. This time, the books I read will be on my terms! Some of the first books that I chose involved sport stories or were books that were made into movies that I liked (cue The Godfather theme song). During this period of my life I was a big fan of mafia movies so reading The Godfather was a good place to start. This led me down a path of reading other Mario Puzo books like The Sicilian and The Last Don and to be frank, I believe it may have lit the reading torch for me and since then, there has been no looking back! 

Since having a child, I really became interested in reading about education and more specifically, early education. That being said, I recently finished a book titled Giants in the Nursery by child psychologist David Elkind. The goal of this book is to examine the evolution of developmentally appropriate practice (DAP) in the history of early childhood education. For the record, I had no clue what DAP was prior to reading this. To explain DAP in short, it is exactly what it says it is: developmentally appropriate practice for each child. In order to make a style of teaching developmentally appropriate, the instructor must take in consideration the child's social, physical, and cognitive development. There is not a “one size fits all” approach to teaching. It needs to be malleable.

Most of the concepts in Elkind's book, some of which date back to the 1600’s, makes absolutely perfect sense in theory. It is putting the child first and at the end of the day, isn’t that what it is supposed to be about? Implementing these theories seems to be where we run into problems. Stories from parents, teachers, and coaches lay things out in a very different way. On the side of education, it is the insistence on doing well on standardized tests that defines success in their eyes. This happened in the 1800’s when schools forced their students to learn Latin and study the classic Greek and Roman writing. Eventually, someone asked, “How is this going to help them become high functioning adults?” This type of questioning led to changes, one of which was the beginning of DAP. After a few centuries, it seems we may have forgotten this lesson. 

I recently spoke with a local school administrator and one of the topics brought up was how to connect with kids. I immediately thought of DAP. As a coach, you need to understand who you are working with. You need to get to know the kids and treat them all the same. You need to learn their names, say hello when you see them, ask about their families, friends, what they did over the weekend, and so on. You need to treat the first string player the same as the fourth string player. Lastly, you need to show them that you care. It is building a connection that will lead to a positive relationship with whoever you work with. No connection equals no change. 

​Chris Fluck