Supporting Children

ou are mentoring a college-age student (Francesca) who has just started taking child development classes and has never worked with children before. Please reflect on your readings on guiding behavior in the Program Guidelines Guiding Behavior/Family Engagement and in Chapter three, Teacher as Mediator, in our textbook.
Read through the following scenarios and consider how Francesca is responding to the children. Pick three and discuss how you would talk to Francesca about her interactions with children.
One two-year-old child grabs a toy from another child and the first child starts to cry.Francesca rushes over and consoles the crying child. She then turns to the other child andsays, “That’s not nice, we don’t gab toys from our friends. Please say you’re sorry!”
Two four-year-old girls are throwing buckets of water on the slide. Francesca tells themto stop. The girls run back to the sink, fill up their buckets and, before Francesca canstop them, they throw more water onto the slide. Francesca takes their buckets and tellsthem to find something else to do.
Francesca asks a three-year-old to help her put out the chairs for snack time. The little girllooks down and her feet and say something quietly. Francesca repeats her request forhelp with the chairs, but the little girl continues to look at her feet. Francesca asks her tolook up at her so she can hear her words. The girl continues to look at her feet; Francescabegins to put the chairs out by herself as the girl stands nearby with her eyes down.
Francesca is leading circle time for a group of five-year-olds. She is teaching them anew song. Several of the kids keep rolling around on the rug and Francesca keepsinterrupting herself to tell them to sit still. One girl keeps playing with another girl’s hairand the girl yells about it every time. Eventually, Francesca has one of the girls switchseats. While she is doing that, two children get up and run out of the circle. Anotherteacher goes to get them while Francesca begins to teach the song again. One child yellsloudly, “I hate this song!”. Francesca ignores her and continues to try to teach the song.
During snack time with three-year-olds, Francesca is passing the snack around andtalking about the food. One girl loudly declares, “I really like this snack, who made it?”Francesca tells the girls that she prepared it and says thank you for the compliment. A boysays that he likes the strawberries, but thinks the carrots are gross. Francesca says, “youdon’t like carrots?”“No I don’t!” says the boy.“Some people like carrots and some people don’t. Thanks for letting us know that youdon’t like them,” responds Francesca and offers the boy another strawberry.
A kindergarten-age girl runs over and shows Francesca her drawing. “That’s beautiful!” sheexclaims in a warm voice.