Music and Physical Play: What Can We Learn from Early Childhood Teachers in Kenya‪?‬

Sharing classroom practices across international borders can add new dimensions to anyone's teaching methods, no matter where you call home. With this idea in mind, the authors (two U.S. early childhood teacher educators and a Kenyan-born U.S. early childhood teacher) have corresponded for several years through e-mail with a small group of early childhood teachers in Kenya. We have asked those teachers about their classroom beliefs and practices in an effort to understand their perspectives about our field (Freshwater, Sherwood, & Mbugua, 2007). In addition to the e-mail correspondence, the Kenyan teachers shared their classroom experiences and methods through videotapes. As we watched the tapes, we were struck by the children's and teachers' high level of physical activity while they played their musical outdoor games. We thought about how we might apply what we observed on the tapes to early childhood teaching in the United States. The purpose of this article is to give teachers the opportunity to enrich their use of music and physical play with the valuable strategies used by the Kenyan teachers. We present these strategies through vignettes that capture Kenyan early childhood teaching practices in a way that is meaningful to teachers outside Kenya. The vignettes we have constructed are based on a compilation of observations from the videotapes, our e-mail correspondences, and the U.S./Kenyan teacher's knowledge of life in Kenya. (Names and some details have been changed to maintain anonymity.) Each of our vignettes is followed by an explanation of why we think the described experience is worthwhile for children. Next, we address what we, as teachers and teacher educators, have learned from the Kenyan teachers. Finally, we discuss how these strategies might be adapted for use in other countries.