What It Means To Balance

The kids were balancing along planks that had been set up as bridges between two points. Most of them were managing it just fine, but a few lost their balance and had to jump to the floor. After several minutes of this, one of the kids announced, “If you don’t want to fall, I know how.” He spread his arms out to either side, then began to walk carefully across a plank. “If you hold your arms like this, you won’t fall.”

He had discovered a fact of physics that we all learn in childhood, usually through the trial and error of play. Some day, he may be formally “taught” the concept in a classroom, perhaps including a formula and certainly with some scientific jargon, but since he has this head start, since he already “knows” how it works in real life, it will come much more easily for him.

This is one reason why play in early childhood, and lots of it, is so important. Too often, traditional schools start with the abstractions of algorithm or sentence structure or phonics. Without the sort of underlying understanding that comes from having actually experienced what these things describe in the real world, most children struggle far more than they need to, taking years sometimes to learn things that they could have “learned” in a day or two. No wonder they come to think of school has hard: it tries to teach them things backwards.

If we want our children to grow into well-educated adults, and by that I mean people who actually understand beyond the kind of rote memorization required by traditional schools, they must play, and play a lot. Now, I’m of the mind that this is how we should be learning throughout our lives, but there can be no doubt that when it comes to the early years, play must form the foundation.

Within minutes, arms spread wide, the children followed their friend across the planks, knowing, deeply and with their full bodies, what it means to balance.

  

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Becoming A Community Of Experts

Not long ago, I wrote about releasing the butterflies we raised from caterpillars. What I didn't mention was that we also had front row seats to lady bug larva pupating and praying mantises hatching from their egg cases. As with all things we do around the school, some of the kids were only mildly interested, while others were super excited. And then, there was one boy who was out of his mind with anticipation and joy.

He already had a passion for small critters of all sorts, including insects, spiders, garden molluscs, worms, and anything else one might find on leaves or under rocks, an interest that grew in the place that had previously been occupied by dinosaurs. But our classroom insects seem to have accelerated and amplified things.

Our class begins its day on the playground, but he could do nothing before rushing into the classroom to check on the bugs in their habitats. He took it upon himself to give daily (if not more frequent) reports during circle time on the insects' progress, including his theories about what we could expect in the coming days. He noticed when the pray mantis finally began to hatch within seconds of the emergence of the first one. He wanted to try various kinds of "food" to see what they preferred. His parents read to him at home and he enthusiastically added his new information to our classroom discussions, sometimes refuting the literature that had come with the eggs and larvae.

Every teacher has taught students like this, ones given to a single-minded intellectual curiosity, kids who are driven to "go deep" into whatever it is that has captured their imaginations. It can last for weeks, months, or even years, sometimes to the point that parents express concern, using words like "obsessed," worried that their child's focus is too narrow, that they are missing out on everything else. But it's a misplaced concern. There is no right or wrong way to satisfy curiosity: some of us tend to be generalists, while others are more inclined to specialize. The important thing is not what trivia we memorize, but rather to, through out self-selected interests, have the opportunity to fully develop our own unique way of knowing, to learn how we learn. Some go broad, some go deep, and most of us do a little of both.

For the last couple of weeks, this boy's enthusiasm has spread to his classmates. Whereas we were once only casually interested in "bugs," there is now at any given moment a bug safari taking place on our playground, with our resident expert playing the part. They'll call out to him, "I found a slug!" and he rushes to the scene. They gather around, forming a voluntary audience for his impromptu lectures, asking questions, starting their own bug collections in imitation of him. His passion has gone viral.

We started as a community with one bug expert, but we are rapidly becoming a community of bug experts, not because it's what some adults determined we should be able to regurgitate onto a test in order to continue along an education assembly line, but rather because it's what we have decided, together, to become, a community that shares passions, learns together, and grows together.

I've published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

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That's The Real Work Of Teaching

When parents complain, "He doesn't listen to me" what they really mean is that their kid doesn't do what they want them to do when they want them to do it. Believe me: they are listening to you. They are almost always listening to you. You just might not like the choice they made after listening to you.

Of course, some of the time, they simply don't understand us, they're not ready to "get" what we're saying to them, like when I talk to young two-year-olds about knocking down other people's block constructions, but more often than not they are listening, then choosing something else.

We know they're listening because our own words come back to us, channelled through them, often days or weeks or even months later. I remember when my own daughter first cursed traffic from her carseat. We know they're listening because they repeat word-for-word, usually at a holiday party right in front of everyone, the remark we made about the harvest of hair growing from Aunt Millie's nose. I know a child's been listening when she can repeat, word for word, the argument her parents had that morning over a piece of dropped toast.

We know they are listening when they insist on wearing their unicorn bicycle helmet ice skating, like a four-year-old did, saying, "I'm going to wear my helmet because I might really fall instead of almost."

We know they are listening when they turn to us and say, like a three-year-old did, "When someone does something mean to me I talk to them to stop."

We know they are listening when they are courteous to their friends, like a two-year-old was when he said to a classmate, "Hello Anna. My name is Elliott. Let's play!"

And we know they are listening when they put their arm around a sobbing friend, like one two-year-old year old did to another, saying softly into his ear, "You're crying about something. I'll take care of you."

They are always listening. Not just to the words we say to them, but those we say in their presence to others. That is their real classroom. When we adults take that seriously, that's when our children begin to make us better people, the kind who think about the words they say and the tones we use with the people in our lives. They make us work to become the people we've always wanted to be if only because that's the sort of person we want them to be.

Children don't learn anything from obedience other than how to command and obey, a dubious education at best. They learn everything else by listening and watching. Real learning requires processing, repetition, time, and experience to fully comprehend. It takes place on their schedule, not ours, which is why it can seem as if they are not listening. But they are, know it, and strive to be the person you want them to be. That's the real work of teaching.

I've published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

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"No, That Would Be Lying"

Back in early April, I was clowning around with the children, making some obviously untrue declarations in the interest of silliness when one of them, suddenly full of righteous fury, turned on me, "You're lying!" I replied that I didn't think I was lying, but she insisted, "You said something that isn't true. That's lying." When I appealed to the other children, they sided with her.

I asked, singling out my accuser, "Okay, so I heard you say you were Pikachu the other day. Were you lying?"

She thought on this for a moment before answering, "I was pretending to be Pikachu. It was just a game."

"But I wasn't trying to trick you. I was just joking."

She didn't consider my point for even a second, dismissing me casually, "You were lying." The rest of the kids nodded their agreement. Later that day, we all agreed to not lie, something we formally added to our class's list of agreements, more commonly referred to as "rules."

This dialog has continued as a series of interesting debates and dialogs for over a month now. Mostly, the kids have been calling me out, but they've also accused on another. They seem to agree that pretending does not fall under the dark cloud of lying, although one can, apparently, lie within a game of pretend. For instance, not long ago there was a flare up over one boy insisting that an old pan lid was his steering wheel. His accusers said he was lying because they had previously designated that particular object as their stew pan. When I suggested that maybe he didn't know it was already a stew pan, a suggestion that he adopted as his own defense, some of the kids asserted that it didn't matter, while others felt that it couldn't be a lie if he didn't know, one girl insisting, "He didn't lie, he was just wrong." After more debate, a general consensus arose that being wrong wasn't the same as lying.

During a subsequent, calmer discussion, I said that I felt like it was only a lie if someone was trying to trick someone else, like if someone gave me a bag of candy to share, but instead I told everyone I didn't have any candy and ate it myself. Some of them, on the spot, accused me of lying, certain that I actually did have a bag of candy to share, but others had their own stories. "One time my sister told me she didn't take my stuffy, but I found it in her room." Another said, "My friend said I was a Martian and I'm not."

They have made progress over the month, slowly coming closer and closer to a consensus on what constitutes a lie, as opposed to pretending or joking. I've avoided lecturing on the subject, although, as in the above example, I've tried to contribute my own thinking on the matter when it seemed appropriate.

Yesterday, I was walking down the hallway with the girl who had originally accused me of lying. She explained, "Lying is like when you break something at your house and then tell your mom and dad that you didn't break it."

I answered, "Couldn't you just pretend you didn't break it."

"No, that would be lying."

I've published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

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Truth And Beauty

My wife, Jennifer, was lately marveling at how joyfully our dog, Stella, rolls in whatever grassy lawn she comes across. All of the dogs we have ever adopted have done this, and we've long speculated that it's because they have found something particularly "stinky" and want to take the perfume of it home in their fur, with of course "stinky" being translated into dog language as "heavenly."

The theory of natural selection would suggest that there is something useful, or adaptive, about dogs acquiring particular odors, perhaps indicating that they are strong hunters or that their rolling about joyfully is evidence of their superior health, both traits that perspective mates might seek to pass along to their offspring. But there is also the chance that natural selection has nothing to do with it. It could be that wearing particular stinks is purely an aesthetic choice, one that has no utilitarian purpose whatsoever. Indeed, even the great Charles Darwin himself proposed that ornamentation may have evolved separately, through a process he called sexual selection:

Females choose the most appealing males "according to their standard of beauty" and, as a result, males evolve toward that standard despite the costs. Darwin did not think it was necessary to link aesthetics and survival.

We don't have a lawn at our school, but when we take children to one of the nearby public lawns, they behave in many ways like Stella. They tend to fall into the grass, rolling in it, digging in it, grabbing at it by the handful, and, naturally, picking any little wildflowers they find, collecting them into bouquets they deem "beautiful." Now one could argue that since flowers are often harbingers of food in the form of fruit, that humans have evolved to be attracted to flowers for utilitarian purposes, and that collecting them to carry home might even be a way to communicating the location of said fruit to the rest of the tribe, but scientists are increasingly coming around to Darwin's long neglected notion that animals sometimes, if not frequently, develop traits, like magnificent plumage or resonate voices or the tendency to roll in stinky stuff, simply based upon the fact that they have, as a species, determined those things, like those wildflowers, to be beautiful.

According to the theory of sexual selection, the expression of one aesthetic over another is largely arbitrary. A female that favors a mate due to a certain look/scent/sound/dance over another might not do so for any discernible reason other than that she digs it, which tends to lead to offspring that feature, or favor, that particular trait, meaning it gets passed on even if it doesn't have anything to do with "survival." It is the creation of beauty, apparently for beauty's sake.

I used to jokingly divide the books in my home library into two general categories: truth (non-fiction) and beauty (fiction), and while I meant it whimsically, we do tend to behave as if there is some sort of natural tension between the two. Literacy and math, for instance, a pair of more utilitarian aspects of education have been elevated in our public school curricula while the arts have been dramatically reduced, or even in some cases cut entirely, being deemed unnecessary, even frivolous. But this is a false comparison: truth and beauty are in equal measure manifestations of life's purpose, which is to seek to understand itself.

Truth is how we try to understand the external world, while beauty is how we try understand our internal one. Expressions of beauty, be they the feathers of a peacock, the splay of a sunflower blossom, or the layers of an oil painting, are how living things express the part of reality, of ourselves, created from within. As soon as we are capable, we begin to create beauty. I'll always remember how our newborn daughter played with a kind of gurgling sound in the back of her throat for weeks, sounding something like, "Agggggguuu." She did it over and over in her contented moments, making that sound both because she could, but also, it seemed to me, because she liked it, creating beauty for its own sake.

Beauty is not frivolous, even if it is also arbitrary. Indeed, it appears to be one of forces that define living things: its pursuit a companion to our quest for truth. It is not mere ornamentation, but rather something fundamental to life itself and any education that places truth over beauty is one that neglects half of what makes us human. Be it gathering flowers into bouquets, expressing ourselves through dance, or passing it along in our genes, it's only by engaging beauty that we will ever understand the world within ourselves.

I've published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

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A Mere Product Of History And Habit

Children don't like school because to them school is -- dare I say it -- prison. Children don't like school because, like all human beings, they crave freedom, and in school they are not free.  ~Peter Gray

On my first day as the teacher at Woodland Park, a parent warned me about her child, "Paul is an escape artist. He's quick and he's clever. You'll need to keep an eye on him all the time."

My throat was immediately blocked by my leaping heart. I envisioned Paul slithering under the gate or getting lost in the dark, off-limits, back hallways of the building in which we leased our space, a prospectively inauspicious beginning to what I was hoping would be a long teaching career. 

Paul did not try to escape that day, nor in the days ahead. In fact, and I suppose I ought to be knocking on wood as I write this, in my 17 years during which I've been daily coming to this preschool, we've not once had a kid even attempt to make a break for it. Oh sure, there are the occasional two-year-olds who simply want to go where mommy is going, following her to the door or the gate, and perhaps standing there for a time to miss her, but that's not the same thing as trying to escape. Indeed, according to parents of the children I teach, most kids are disappointed to awake on weekends to learn that it's not a school day.

I still think of Paul's non-escape quite often. It had simply not occurred to me that a child would want to escape our school. But isn't that the stereotype? Kids hate school. Around our place that isn't the case. In fact, I've not found it to be true in any of the progressive, play-based cooperatives with which I've been associated. And honestly, I've not found that to be generally true with kids pretty much up through elementary school. In fact, I had several of my former students who are now K-2 come to visit with their younger siblings during the days both before and after the holidays, and they all still "like" school. They like their friends and their teachers, they enjoy showing off the things they're learning. It's going well for them, it's clearly engaging, and over the years I've found this to be true with most of my former students . . . until they hit about middle school.

A few years ago, I was talking to a former student who was just finishing sixth grade. She had recently figured it out and it pissed her off. I can't recall her exact words, but she was quite cynical about the whole thing: tests, and studying, and learning about stuff you don't care about and will never "use" just for grades, and all so you can do it over again the next year. I've heard similar rants from other middle schoolers. My own daughter hit it at about 11-12 years old as well. Me too. It's around this age that children begin to see it for what it is. They've gained the wisdom to understand that they have no choice about if and where they go to school, nor what and when and how they're going to learn. And I have no answer for them when they ask, "What does this have to do with my life anyway?" It's a valid question, one that is not sufficiently answered by saying it builds character.

Some kids thrive, of course, while most make some sort of peace with it, but some want nothing more than to escape, be it under the fence or into the back hallways, if only because they crave freedom, the freedom to learn what and how they learn best. I might suggest that much of what we ascribe to adolescent surliness is largely attributable to this: they've had this epiphany about school and, like my former student, this whole school thing looks like a huge sham. Even the kids who do well in school come to see that it's all a game they're playing, a series of hoops through which they have to jump to satisfy their teacher or the administration or the school board or their parents. When do they get to satisfy themselves?

It's surprising how few of them actually do make a break for it.

It's a pity because children are born passionate about learning. That's what play is, at bottom, the drive to learn. That drive doesn't go away when they hit kindergarten, but we slowly begin to take it away by our insistence that learning is work. This system of education that we've been using for hundreds of years isn't backed by centuries of research, it isn't a product of careful testing and tweaking. It is, rather, a mere product of history and habit, just as is our assumption that many children will hate it. Even the kids who came to visit me over the last month at Woodland Park, those who report they still "like" school, told me they were excited to have "ten whole days off." They didn't feel that way in preschool. 

One of the legacies of Paul's mom sharing her fears about him with me is that I am rigorous about making Woodland Park a place from which they will not want to escape. I want the children to feel free, free to learn what and how they will, to play without coercion or a sense of "duty" imposed from without. No one has ever wanted to escape from freedom.

I've published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

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We Are Born To Seek Connection

The girls straddled the swings in the manner of riding ponies, facing one another, chatting while swinging lazily in unison, back-and-forth, maintaining a conversational distance.

"I live in Seattle."

"I live in Seattle too!"

They gaped at one another, sharing their mutual surprise at this extraordinary coincidence.

"I didn't always live in Seattle forever. I use to live in Philadelphia."

"I didn't always live in Seattle forever either. I used to live in California."

Their expressions reflected shared disappointment.

"But then we moved to Seattle."

"But then we moved to Seattle too!"

"Now we both live in Seattle!"

"Yeah, we both live in Seattle!"

We are born to seek connection, at every level, in every moment that we are together. As I watched the girls celebrate their amazing discovery, I found myself reflecting on how far I often find myself from this ideal of human interaction, how in life's self-important busyness, I too often treat my fellow humans as mere tools for achieving selfish ends, sometimes even avoiding connection. How sad it is that we forget to connect and how much more miraculous our lives would be if we would allow ourselves, in every interaction, to recognize that we both "live in Seattle," and simply be amazed that we, whoever we are, are riding our pony swings together in the same place at the same time, and what a wondrous thing that is.

I've published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

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