Expression and discipline converge

Gloria Kingsbury, the founder and director of Happy Hollow School in Framingham, Mass., shares her thoughts on teaching:

"Work and play should not be differentiated in the learning process of children, because play is a child's way of learning. As a child uses toys and objects to represent things, she or he begins to understand the symbolic process of reading and writing."

"Never is a child removed from a room. Never. Never. Never. The situation has to be handled then and there."

"Painting, as coloring, is always available to the children, and more than any other mode of expression, allows the child to release his or her inner feelings.... Nowhere is a child's personality so apparent as when he paints.... Most of what children of this age paint is accidental and unplanned. Only occasionally does a child start out with a plan and execute it. Regardless, each and every one is a work of art, and there is always joy in the doing - this is the most important thing."

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