May 10, 2007

Last week, Antioch School Younger Group teacher Kit Crawford read ‘Mr. Popper’s Penguins’ to her group of first- through third-graders. She retires this year.

By Diane Chiddister

When Kit Crawford and her husband, Jeff, moved to the area about 30 years ago, they sought a school for their two young children. After trying a public school that didn’t work for their son, Jason, the couple next tried the Antioch School.

Jason was in first grade but he wasn’t ready to read. But the child’s reluctance was no problem for then-Antioch School Younger Group teacher Bev Price, who adhered to the school’s philosophy of trusting the child’s own learning process. She didn’t push him. Rather, when other first-graders began learning to read, she respected Jason’s wish to play outside instead. Gradually, he began to come closer, standing in the doorway and watching while the other children pursued reading activities. Finally, he came into the room. According to Crawford, Jason then learned to read in a month.

“He was ready and he wanted to learn,” she said. “That experience set him up for life and let him know he can learn what he wants when he wants.”

After watching how well this process worked for her child, Crawford became a believer in the Antioch School philosophy. Five years later, she began teaching there. This spring Crawford will retire after teaching at the Antioch School for 25 years. To honor her, the school community will fete Crawford on Saturday, May 12, with a “Tea Party of Sorts” from 2 to 4 p.m. at the school, 1160 Corry Street. Everybody is invited to come.

For the last 10 years of her tenure at the school, Crawford, like Bev Price before her, taught the Younger Group, which covers grades one through three. Longtime Antioch School kindergarten teacher Jeanie Felker, who retired a year ago, said she always felt good knowing that the children she had come to love in kindergarten would next have Crawford as a teacher.

“It was wonderful to send them to her,” Felker said in a recent interview. “I knew they’d be seen and valued for who they were.”

Crawford’s Younger Group classroom is “a room full of places, ideas and resources to explore,” according to Antioch School Older Group teacher Chris Powell, who teaches grades four through six.

The room is “rich with traditions that have developed over many years: the Younger Group Circus, the Younger Group Sleepover and the Younger Group store and restaurant, among others,” Powell wrote recently. “The children come into the Older Group from the Younger Group happy about school and themselves. They love to laugh and learn and to be together.”

To Crawford, the Antioch School’s core philosophy is the belief that children naturally want to learn, and will do so eagerly if given the opportunity to follow their own learning process.

“When I come to school each morning I come ready to believe in the child and in their learning,” Crawford said in a recent interview. “They don’t disappoint me. Every day affirms that belief. You just keep opening the world to them.”

But the Antioch School also places great value on creating community, which is one reason that at the end of a recent school day, as every day, Crawford could be found reading a story to the Younger Groupers, who were clustered around her and each other in their classroom.

“We start and end the day together,” she said. “There’s something about the children being in a circle, a cluster, a gathering, that’s a physical metaphor for being part of a community. It’s saying, ‘this is what we’re about.’ ”

Feeling a part of a community helps children feel safe, Crawford believes, and that safety gives them the freedom to explore. It also creates a sense of responsibility that helps children care about how they treat each other.

“All these subtle things are learned from it,” Crawford said about the end-of-the-day story reading. “If you belong to a group, then how you act is important.”

Ten years ago, Crawford didn’t expect to teach the Younger Group. Happy in her work teaching science and art to all of the school’s children, she wasn’t tempted when longtime teacher Price retired from the Younger Group. A search process followed, which yielded a new Younger Group teacher, Maureen Redmond, who took Price’s place. But only a month or so into her new job, Redmond found that she had a brain tumor, and went on medical leave. Someone had to jump in to teach the Younger Group kids, and Crawford decided that she could do the job. But only for a short time.

But something unexpected happened as Crawford experienced the joys and challenges of being the Younger Group teacher.

“I got wrapped up. I learned to love it. I couldn’t leave,” she said.

Crawford became a believer in the Antioch School’s tradition of grouping the first, second and third grade children together in one group, just as the fourth, fifth and sixth grades are grouped together in the Older Group, taught by Chris Powell. The multi-grade classrooms offer children an enriched learning experience, Crawford believes, in which they see not only their own learning but the learning of those both older and younger. Doing so allows children the opportunities to expand their reach, to dream big and also to affirm their learning by teaching those younger, she believes.

“First graders sitting there listening to the Pooh stories and looking at other kids loving literature — they become lovers of literature too,” she said.

And the teacher of a multi-grade classroom has something most teachers crave, she believes — the time to know a child very, very well.

“It gives me time to really pay attention, to know how that child’s learning is moving and to respect that,” she said.

Nothing about teaching has become old to her, Crawford said, and each day is still full of new learning. But being an Antioch School teacher takes a lot of energy, and Crawford feels herself slowing down. So it seems a good time to join Jeff, her husband, who last year retired after teaching many years at Central State University, and lead lives a little less hectic.

“I don’t feel done,” she said. “I’m still excited. I still love it. And that seems a good time to stop.”

The school community recently ended a search process to replace Crawford, and last week hired 15-year teaching veteran Linda Greene, who lives in California, to teach the Younger Group next year. Crawford plans to work with Greene over the summer to help make a smooth transition, she said.

The school community will miss Crawford for many reasons, according to Powell, who wrote, “I will miss her wisdom, her creative problem-solving and her observations of how the children she sends to me learn best. I know she will be missed by the children and parents as well.”

All Antioch School current and former parents, students and friends are invited to attend the gathering on Saturday. A scapbook is being assembled to present to Crawford at the gathering, and interested persons are invited to submit photos or letters. They may come by the school to do so, or e-mail to info@antiochschool.org. For more information, contact the school at 767-7642.

Contact: dchiddister@ysnews.com