Back In Kathmandu: Blocks in the Classroom

I am very fortunate to be spending time once again at the Rato Bangala School in Kathmandu, Nepal. As I’ve written in earlier blog entries, I’ve been involved with this school for over twenty years now and so have had the privilege of observing an educational institution develop from nothing more than an idea into a fully functioning school serving grades 1-12. On this trip I’ve been especially lucky. My own mentor from my early years of teaching at the Bank Street School for Children is here, invited to do an assessment and revision of social studies curriculum in grades 1-8. Judith Gold has had many years of experience working in schools in the US and around the world. She has an extraordinary ability to zero in on key curriculum areas that need improvement and then to lead teachers and school leaders through the process of reflection and revision. With Judith on site, there’s a lot of change in the air at Rato Bangala. The most ambitious of these changes has been the return of blocks to grades one and two.

Blocks have long been a staple in many primary grade classrooms. Most use the classic “unit blocks” developed by Caroline Pratt in the early 20^th century. Ms. Pratt was firmly convinced that through work with blocks children are able to recreate and build on their experience, providing opportunities for deep and meaningful learning. A basic set of such blocks features fifteen shapes, all designed to be mathematically proportional with the simple rectangular “unit” (1 3/8” x 2 3/4” x 5 1/2”) that is the core of the collection.

Using blocks as part of regular classroom practice requires real understanding of the possibilities of this rich material and a commitment to significant time for block work. An adequately sized block corner takes up a lot of space, it requires regular periods of open-ended time that is not devoted to more traditional instructional methods, and teachers need to be able to tolerate the sometimes noisy hum generated by children busy with blocks. For these and other reasons, blocks have disappeared from many classrooms over the years. The same has been true at Rato Bangala, where the unit blocks that were built by local carpenters over fifteen years ago had been relegated to a tiny separate storage area, not connected to the life of the classroom. When Judith toured the school just after her arrival in Nepal, she decided to take on the challenge of “bringing back the blocks”.

More on the details of this adventure in my next post …