"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Ever since I learned to read, I have raced through the pages of books. In elementary school, I obsessed over stories about Amelia Earhart and Sacagawea before moving on to choose-your-own-adventures (the literary precursor to video games). In middle school, I secretly read the Sweet Valley High series and devoured classics like Little Women and anything by the Brontë sisters. In high school, I got into the cool complexity of Milan Kundera books and the beautiful, magical worlds of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. But my all-time, best, favorite book—the one I go to year after year—is The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. This year, my son was the perfect age for me to read it with him—a gift in and of itself. But like every time I read the story, new wisdom emerged—and the words took on new meaning as I thought about the implications of its message for early childhood educators.
At the start of the school year, along with everything teachers are doing to build a classroom community, many of them are busy implementing observation-based assessments to get to know each child in their class and to assess their knowledge, skills, and behaviors upon school entry. A primary tenet of this kind of formative assessment is that one observes objectively. So, rather than recording an observation that says, “James built a great block tower,” your observation reads, “James spent 35 minutes building a tall block structure using all of the square blocks (he identified the shape),” perhaps with a photograph attached. Factual. Objective. Specific.
Accurately gathering information about children’s knowledge, skills, and abilities is critical to measuring and, in turn, understanding a child’s path over time. Taken together, individual pieces of factual, objective documentation generate valid and reliable data to inform your understanding of an individual student’s unique strengths or challenges. The more accurate your assessment data, the better informed you are about what, when, and how to teach each child specific skills and support his or her individual development.
But formally observing children—documenting their learning and development over time—should not be the only kind of observation we do in the classroom. There is a time and a place and purpose for factual, objective observation. If we consider the wisdom of The Little Prince, there must also be a time and a place and purpose to observe children with our full hearts and the complete breadth and depth of our emotions.
On a recent visit to a preschool classroom, I watched as a teacher observed a group of children at the Toys and Games table. One child was using bingo cards and colored cubes. He filled two lines with green cubes and then accurately counted them. The teacher photographed it and dictated a quick note about color recognition and counting. The child’s beaming face went unobserved. Another child at the table was playing half-heartedly with star builders. When he noticed the teacher observing he began knocking them off onto the floor. The teacher made a quick note about following limits and expectations. Then she reminded him of the class rule about taking care of materials and supported him to clean them up. He moved on to the Block area and she went back to observing. An hour before, I watched that same little boy fight back the tears as he said goodbye to his dad who was leaving to go on a business trip.
It is only when you bring love, empathy, and caring into your observations of young children that you can truly know them. You can relish in the joy of their accomplishments, celebrating all of their hard work on that block tower. You can feel the sadness of their loss, reflecting it in the tone of your voice when you hold them after a difficult goodbye with their dad. You can feel the sting of being excluded, talking through a conflict on the playground when they weren’t invited to join in a group game. And you can draw on that emotional understanding in your future interactions with them.
Objectivity matters. But subjective, heartfelt observations allow us to see what is truly essential—the path to building strong relationships with each child that we have the privilege of teaching. It is these relationships that will carry us through the school year and allow teachers to build the kind of classroom environment where every child can feel safe, cared-for, confident, and successful. After all, “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”