Interruptions are an expected issue when working with children. Sometimes they want to tell us about their new pet or what they did over the weekend. We can corral these relational sharings into set routines or handle them quickly with a caring response. But they also have ideas and questions about the world, relationships, and events that just can’t wait until a more convenient time. Dr. Ruth Wills, an experienced primary school teacher and lecturer in Early Childhood Studies, talks about when and how we should value children’s interruptions as moments for deep connection and learning.
Transcript
Erin:
Welcome. I’m Erin Reibel, and my colleague, Karen-Marie Yust, and I are talking with Dr. Ruth Wills, a lecturer in Early Childhood Studies in the UK. Ruth is also a primary school teacher with many years of experience in the classroom.
Karen-Marie:
Ruth, I imagine that children sometimes interrupt your lessons with questions that seem off topic. How do those of us who teach know when it might be actually productive to switch gears and follow a child’s lead?
Ruth:
Yes, it happens quite a lot. So I work in a primary school, but I’ve also done church-based work as well. And I think that in both settings, interruptions happen quite a lot. Sometimes children interrupt because they’re bored or they’re distracted and they just want to maybe be entertaining or be silly, and those interruptions might have some value. But there are other interruptions that I think you can sense from the child when the interruption is sincere and is relevant to that particular child. As in, they will ask a question that might be related to what’s going on, but it has a depth of meaning that I think is important to that particular child. Sometimes I pick that up through body language or through facial expressions. Other times, just with the kind of feeling that is behind the question or the statement.
Ruth:
And I think with many years of experience, as you’ve just said, you learn to read those cues of whether the interruption is coming from a really meaningful, important place or not. And one of the things that I feel quite passionate about, really, is that when the children have questions that relate to what we’re trying to teach, but they need clarification or they want to take the discussion in a different direction, that we actually acknowledge that and that we value the child and their own questions because that’s really important to them. So yeah, it’s a case of, with experience, I think, being able to read the children to kind of work out what’s behind the question or the interruption and to respond accordingly.
Erin:
Ruth, can you talk a little bit more about the value of honoring children’s interruptions?
Ruth:
Yeah, I think, like I said, when we value children’s interruptions, we’re actually valuing the child. One of the problems that we have with state education in the UK, and probably in the US and across the world, is that education is now really performative. And so it’s all about outcomes, and what do we want the children to know? What’s the knowledge and the skills? And we have to fulfill a curriculum which is inspected and measured. And often teachers have just got this idea that we’ve got to get to the end of the lesson so that the children know or can do certain things. But often that bypasses their own sense of being, their way of thinking, their way of processing their learning. And when we have this really linear approach with a beginning-to-end approach, that’s missing out the child, it’s just about the knowledge and the skills.
Ruth:
So I think when children ask questions that might be difficult or interrupt a lesson, often there’s a reason behind that, and that’s because they need to make sense of something for themselves. And then to value that interruption is to value them and to acknowledge them as learners. And as learners, that’s as much a part of the learning process as the content or the knowledge and the skills. So I think it’s really important. Particularly human rights, children’s rights, say that children have got a voice and we need to listen to them. And children don’t always interrupt, so I’ve asked questions with their utterances. Sometimes it’s with their behavior, and they’ve got lots of different ways of communicating. But often I think the interruptions are communicating something that says, “I need to know more. Can you help?”
Karen-Marie:
I think a lot of teachers and group leaders have experienced that sort of tension between when do I know if it’s a legitimate interruption or when is it a way that I can really honor what a child wants to know? Could you share an example of a productive interruption, just to help our teachers and group leaders understand what that looks like?
Ruth:
Yeah. So in school, so I’m a teacher in a primary school, and predominantly I teach music and creative arts, but I also, through the creative arts, I can bring in issues of culture and history and the environment. So it’s not just a kind of a skills-based music lesson. My music lessons will have lots of different influences. So one lesson, we were looking at the civil rights and learning civil rights songs. And so we were singing civil right songs in the class. And one child started to cry. And sometimes children might think that’s funny and they might want to make fun of that child, but in this situation, the atmosphere in the room just went, “Whoa.” It was like we were arrested in our activity. Everything went quiet, everything went still. And I said to the girl, “Are you okay?” And she said, “It’s just not fair. It’s just not fair.”
Ruth:
And then another boy, these are 10 and 11-year-old children, another boy then stood up and he said, “It’s not fair. It wasn’t fair then, and it’s not fair now.” And he then started to talk about how the behaviors of people towards ethnic minorities in history are still being replicated today, and that there are people in our school community and our local community that are being treated differently because of the color of their skin. And so my music lesson, I had to park the music lesson to then spend the rest of the afternoon talking about issues of justice and inclusion and diversity, and why Black Lives Matter is important, why Black History Month is important, why we have certain books on our library bookshelves, and to really tease out this kind of idea of intolerance. And that all came from just singing some songs.
Ruth:
Now, we’re lucky in the UK because we have what we call spiritual, moral, social, and cultural education, so SMSC. So even though I didn’t meet my music targets for that lesson, I could still argue that we were doing SMSC. But I think certainly in that situation with those two children, it would’ve been utterly wrong for me to say, “Sorry, guys, we’ve got a music lesson. We’ll talk about it after school.” It really was important that we listened to the voices of those children and honored their responses and their reactions, even though it meant that I didn’t finish my planned lesson.
Erin:
Ruth, thank you so much. I really just appreciate your insights into these interruptions. Thank you for being with us today.
Ruth:
Yes. You’re very welcome. Thank you.
Karen-Marie:
Thanks.
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