Why do I like to invite professionals to our classroom.

When young children start going to school it is a great challenge for them: new environment, new adults who did not belong to their immediate circle of attachment, new friends, and new rules. Starting school means expanding your environment and your opportunities to experience the world. For this reason, schools plan a curriculum adapted to the needs of the little ones, that is, what things children should know and why taking into account the society in which we live.

That is why I think this unit that IB proposes is so important: “How we organize ourselves”. This is an inquiry into the interconnectedness of human-made systems and communities; the structure and function of organizations; societal decision-making; economic activities and their impact on humankind and the environment. For Pre-k I have chosen to work the “Jobs in our community”, I want to convey to you the importance of the different roles in our community. I want them to become familiar with different profiles in our community and to value their contribution and work to the functioning of the community.

One resource that I love to use to get children engaged is inviting professionals to our class to explain what their job is. It is a way of bringing the community to the classroom and making the learning process more meaningful. But it is also a way of making children see that the community goes beyond their home and school, it is a way of expanding those contexts to which they are accustomed and giving value to other people who are not part of their circle of trust and attachment.

In this unit, we are having the privilege of having some exceptional guests to help us understand our line of research a little better. We have been working on this unit for 4 weeks and each week we have learned about a different profession: Doctor, Nurse, Chef, Construction worker, and this week teacher.

The school nurse showed us her stethoscope and maybe at the beginning the children were a bit scared but soon they realized how fun was hearing through the nurse’s tool and pretending to be doctors to take care of our dolls and toys.

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With the school’s chef, we learned 2 recipes, and was very nice to have the opportunity to help mom and dad at home cooking and chatting with them about safety in the Kitchen. And you know what? We can also find chefs in the kitchen of the restaurants we go to with mom and dad. Constance keeps saying her favourite job until now is a chef because she can cook at home too.

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Last week was the Construction Builder week, Danny and Henry were on fire! In fact since then Danny brings his excavator from home every day. And he makes me send mom and dad pictures or the large machine toys I brought to the school.

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This week was the turn for the teacher’s profession, we have been learning about what does a teacher does. We had the opportunity to invite some of the wonderful teachers we have at our school to our classroom and they prepared a special class where we learned about numbers and Music. But we also went to the library and we went for a field trip around the school with the school bus! So exciting!!! Today Elsa and Anna said their favorite job of the ones we are learning is teacher, wow!

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Next week will be gardeners and we still have firefighters and Police officer to do. I hope you are as much excited as we are and you enjoy the daily post in Seesaw. At least we can see in their faces that they are enjoying. Maybe one day Anna, Tikki, Sean, Samuel, Constance, Henry, George, Anne, Elsa, Lena, and Danny will remember Teacher Nayali and Teacher Beryl playing with them and maybe they will say: “Ahh, that was the first time I thought I could be a teacher or chef or doctor” or whatever they want to be.