Melodie’s Teacher Stories: The Little Agam Girl

Galina, a recent immigrant to Israel from Russia, is very busy with the bears and dolls in her bright and spacious kindergarten in Rehovot.

She plays in all of the inviting centers –  a mini-kitchen with pots and pans and plastic croissants, a doll house area, a dress-up corner with shoes and hats, plants and salamanders, colorful books and blocks, drums and cymbals.

During circle time, the two teachers talk about clouds or frogs or read the children an interesting book.

They are not very happy that Galina doesn’t participate. She shows little motivation to listen or learn or interact with the other children or the teachers.

The City Supervisor asks the teachers to rank the children on a scale reflecting which of the children are smart and motivated.

The two teachers write Galina’s name at the bottom of the list.

The teachers agree that she is without a doubt the weakest learner in the kindergarten. They even find it difficult to get her to talk at all.

Several months into the Fall term, the “Agam Program for Visual Cognition” is introduced into Galina’s kindergarten by the staff of the Weizmann Institute of Science.

Yaacov Agam, one of Israel’s most famous artists, is the author of a program to help children develop their visual thinking.

Children learn a “visual alphabet” by engaging in structured activities such as manipulating all sorts of large and small colorful, plastic elementary shapes including circles, squares and triangles.

The children are helped to create and find shapes all over their kindergarten.

Galina’s two teachers are surprised that Galina shows special interest in these activities.

They are even more surprised that she is the only kindergartner who notices the circles of light shining between leaves outside.

She points out the almost-straight lines of trees.

She seems highly motivated to draw, cut, paste and shuffle all sorts of circles, squares and triangles.

The teachers notice that Galina is the first to see squares on the chairs, rectangles in the windows and lines on the stairs.

And then the teachers notice other changes.

Galina is playing more with the other children. She sits and participates during circle time.

And most remarkable – Galina has started to speak in Hebrew.  She asks to hold the salamander and raises her hand when they ask who wants to be this week’s plant monitor.

When the City Supervisor asks the teachers to rank the preschoolers after two months with the program, they now write Galina’s name first, as the quickest and most motivated learner.

She’s also now a bit bubbly.

The teachers are stumped. How did Galina suddenly get smarter? Was it that Galina liked the shapes so much? But she also really liked the dolls and the blocks.

Was it that Galina had two more months of using Hebrew, or maybe she matured in two months?  But the other Russian-speakers did not increase their Hebrew so much and the other children made few remarkable changes in only two months.

And why was this quiet child now a bit bubbly? These two experienced teachers thought that withdrawn and weak children remained basically the same, even at the end of a year.

If we could ask Galina, what would she say happened in the last two months? She surely wouldn’t know to say, since she’s only 4 years old, but perhaps she would have some strong feelings.

The teachers asked her to show the other children the circles of light under the trees outside. She liked doing that.

The teachers stood near her and said nice things while she was arranging bright green triangles into squares. She liked that, too.

A little boy was impressed when she showed him some shapes of light on the sand. She really liked that.

Galina didn’t know about the City Supervisor or the ranked list.

But the changed rank of her name, from last place to first place, would have been a reflection of her teachers’ changed beliefs about her. Clearly they thought about her differently and related to her differently now.

And Galina would have surely felt the difference. So she could dare to raise her hand in circle time. And use her Hebrew.

Her natural enthusiasm bubbled up.

The Agam Program set out to develop children’s visual thinking.

On the way, it strengthened one little girl’s fragile self-concept.

And got two good teachers to re-think what being smart is all about.

Image Credits

p.2 kindergarten room http://ganhamdaim.haganenet.co.il/pub/ganhamdaim/Uploaded/%D7%99%D7%A2%D7%97%D7%99.jpg

p.4 children in circle time: http://busybeesedh.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/circle-time.jpg

p.6 children with Agam figures: https://stwww1.weizmann.ac.il/agam/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2016/12/Capture.jpg

p.11 Agam circles make Mickey Mouse:

https://stwww1.weizmann.ac.il/agam/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2016/12/implementation1.jpg

p.12 Agam material on floor:

https://stwww1.weizmann.ac.il/agam/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2016/12/materials3.jpg

p.13 2 girls with Agam circles:

https://stwww1.weizmann.ac.il/agam/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2016/12/implementation5.jpg

p.28 girl showing shadows to boy:  http://www.brighthorizons.com//~/media/bh/corporate/familyresources/efamilynews461x409/teaching-children-to-help-others.ashx

p.30 enthusiastic dog:  http://www.findadogminder.com.au/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/dog-happy-2-300×227.jpg

p.32 shy jaguar: http://www.pixoto.com/images-photography/animals/lions-tigers-and-big-cats/the-shy-jaguar-4786680194662400.jpg

p.34 smart cat:  https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/b2/a3/ba/b2a3ba11cf520098a271e6fc8315072b.jpg

Special thanks to the staff of the Department of Science Teaching at the Weizmann Institute of Science who researched the Agam Project.