First reflection on role of the teacher: entertain or facilitate

Ohttp://www.janetlansbury.com/2013/05/stop-entertaining-your-toddler-in-3-steps-2/

In this link, Janet Lansbury discusses the role of the parent in play with toddlers.  As I was reading through this for use in my infant-toddler class, I was struck by the thought that we know how important it is for young children to gain independence and gain a sense of autonomy in their toddler years.  Janet discusses that an adult who steps back but is an active observer of children at play as explorers and meaning makers of the world is more crucial to learning than engaging more actively in their play and on the whole, directing children's play.  We know this as being essential for toddlers and yet here we are in an educational environment where teacher's are still the director of learning in preschoolers, elementary and even high school.  Play in young children becomes active, hands-on engagement in high school where students become intrinsically motivated in their own learning and managers of knowledge and yet curricularly, we are far from allowing this to happen in our schools.
Are we as Janet Lansbury discusses entertainers or teachers?  I have observed this repetitively that teachers feel they need to entertain children and always keep them active by directing all they do.  I was currently discussing this issue with a teacher who was in second grade, but is currently in preschool.  She struggles with the curriculum of her school, complaining there is no role for play, children need to get ready for kindergarten.  And so she has taken it into her own hands to "teach" the children in her classroom by rotating them every 12 minutes during what she still calls "center time", directing all that happens with in their centers in the name of learning and kindergarten preparation.  It is time we question how we define kindergarten readiness.  If we continue to direct and entertain children the ability to self-regulate, engage in sustained focus on a task and persist through tasks, just to name a few, will fall short.  I had to point out the irony to this teacher who then discussed how many behavior issues she had in the classroom.  If we control everything the children do then how do we just assume they will be able to control themselves and regulate their engage behavior.  Just like the parent whose child can never engage in solitary play because the parent always feels they need to play with them and entertain them, the teacher who feels it necessary to completely control the curriculum can not expect the children to suddenly be able to manage their own behaviors or to really learn.
But when we step back and actively engage ourselves in the process of observation children are provided the space to engage meaningfully in the process of learning we not only see that half of what we thought we needed to "teach" them they already have mastery over, but we help them to develop key social skills that are the true key to success not only in kindergarten, but life.