Mysteries Make Us Curious

Anthony White (detail)

Tim Berners-Lee wrote, “In an extreme view, the world can be seen as only connections, nothing else. We think of a dictionary as the repository of meaning, but it defines words only in terms of other words. I liked the idea that a piece of information is really defined only by what it’s related to, and how it’s related. There really is little else to meaning. The structure is everything. There are billions of neurons in our brains, but what are neurons? Just cells. The brain has no knowledge until connections are made between neurons. All that we know, all that we are, comes from the way our neurons are connected."

Berners-Lee would know a thing or two about connections: he's the British computer scientist who invented the World Wide Web in 1990. His invention embodies the idea that information becomes meaningful through connection, one page linked to another.

As an educator, however, I'm far more interested in how he applies his insight to human cognition. Neural connections clearly matter, but brains are more than wiring diagrams. Connections come and go. Synaptic strengths change over time, use, and circumstances. Neurons and neural populations have dynamic electrical and chemical activity. Neuromodulators (like dopamine) and hormones (like cortisol) are involved. Glial cells have a role. The rest of our bodies, our sensory systems, and the environment in which we find ourselves also play parts in our thinking, not just within, but also without ourselves.

And each of those things is itself subject to, and entwined with, other processes and systems. And even all of that leaves untouched what philosophers call "the hard problem" of consciousness: why any of this should result in the subjective experience of being us.

Berners-Lee is not alone in the effort to put a bow on the effort to explain what we are by locating the mechanism. It's not "just cells." Our typical approach to science education is forever trying to “solve” the mysteries, to shut the door on this or that question by turning it into an answer for a test. This leads us to the reductionist pursuit in which we attempt to break everything apart, to simplify it down to its component parts, as if understanding all the parts amounts to understanding the whole. The mystery persists because the moment we remove one thing to look at another, we change everything. The moment we take an "objective view," we find we've merely traded one narrow perspective for another. There is no "place" outside the process upon which to stand; we are always an active part in it.

Still, I keep coming back to his core assertion that the world can be seen as connections. It would be a mistake to try to solve the mystery by simply asserting, "Everything is connections." It's too tempting to conclude, Ah yes, consciousness is a process. Democracy is a process. Learning is a process. Life is a process. Next.

What's more interesting is the mystery, the wondering, the recognition that no matter how mind-blowing the insight, it's only one perspective in a universe of perspectives, none of which provides the whole picture.

It's the mystery that makes us curious, that drives us. It's the mystery that provides the inspiration to even bother opening our eyes each morning. If everything is a process, if everything is a connection, if everything is a relationship, what a strange and wonderful world! It's a world without things, without complete answers, without an end, only more beginnings.

I have often made the outrageous assertion that we are born knowing everything only to unlearn most of it as we grow into adulthood. And what if that's the strangest thing of all? 

One of our most enduring stories involves losing a perfect Eden or paradise followed by our desire to return to it. We see in each new child that promise, that perfection of being exactly who we are exactly where and when we are. In that first moment, change is not part of our reality because there is no "once upon a time to compare it to." It's all change, including them. Our stories tell of being cast from the garden, being cast forth into an imperfect world. It's only from outside that we see we were once in paradise. From there, we see ourselves in a world of change, of process, of systems combining and colliding, and out of this comes the unsolvable but always compelling mystery.

Perhaps we weren't cast from Eden as much as we learned to imagine ourselves outside it.

Modern schooling too often focuses on declaring the mystery dead by drilling answers into children, answers that might be from some perspectives correct, but most definitely incomplete. Answers are closed doors. Mysteries make us curious.

******

Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in ways that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

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!

Where Courage Comes From

Everyone over a certain age has a 9/11 story. Mine is that I was with my wife on a Holland-America Alaskan cruise. 

We were set to begin our third year of preschool with our daughter Josephine. This was the year that I would be approached by my mentors Chris David and Val Donato to consider becoming a teacher in the North Seattle College cooperative system. I don't need to go into details, but when the news of the terrorist attacks reached us, the ship stopped dead in the water, somewhere off the west coast of Canada, a metaphor for so many things.

Our daughter was staying with her grandmother who, wisely, kept the television turned off. My brilliant mother-in-law was inclined to anxiety, so it was probably a blessing for both of them. We returned to find a cheerful and blissfully ignorant four-year-old who had spent those first few days of aftermath, living a cozy, protected life, something of which those of us paying attention to the news had been robbed.

Hysteria is the word that comes to mind when I reflect back. But in those surreal times -- those impossible, mind-blowing, faith-stomping times -- hysteria was a perfectly valid response. I'm grateful that our daughter was spared it, as the rest of the world lurched about in fear.

A week or so later, we returned for the first day of our final year of preschool together as daughter and father. The parent community had discussed how we were going to approach current events. We weren't going to bring them up, but if they came up, and we expected they would, we had agreed that we would listen, only answer the specific questions that were asked as honestly as we could, and be prepared for emotional and behavioral responses. I had also learned that most of the parents felt their children had so far had very little exposure to the news. 

On that first day, I watched two boys fly "planes" (toy cars) into their block towers, over and over and over again.

The world gets through to our children and when it does they do what they need to do to make sense of it. 

Other than that, however, the events of 9/11 didn't play a significant part in our preschool classroom that year. We had all, more or less, "protected" our children from the dramatic images. In fact, looking back, I've come to understand that one of the things that convinced me to become a preschool teacher in my own right was this experience of it as a place where we could shut out the "noise" and focus on our little community of parents and children. It was a relief to escape the "real world" into the even more "real world".

A couple years earlier, we experienced an even more traumatic event. I had been walking along our school hallway, holding the hands of my daughter and another two-year-old girl when a significant earthquake hit. We had, as a community, "trained" for this. I knew that I was to usher children under tables, and stay away from windows. 

As we rushed into our classroom and under a table, Josephine was asking, "What's happening? What's happening?" When I told her it was an earthquake, my voice was soft and soothing, even as the walls around us shook. "I don't feel it!" she complained.

Other parents had done their jobs as well. I recall looking around the room to see adults calmly chatting with children, smiling, even laughing. Our teacher announced, "Good job, everybody! We're all safe!" And then we all spontaneously started applauding. 

It was only then that it dawned on us collectively that the ground was still shaking and we'd not even thought to protect ourselves. There was a dash for the floor as we attempted to crowd in with the kids. I remember Josephine saying, "This is cozy!"

After the shaking stopped, we followed our protocol, which was for the designated adult to check the hallway, then outdoors for hazards, before signaling the rest of us to assemble in the parking lot. We emerged from the building, every adult with children holding our hands, lustily singing our favorite circle time songs together. Across the lot was an office building. I stood so Josephine couldn't see that direction because the adults there were in a full-on, weeping and wailing panic. Hysteria, a perfectly valid response.

We, however, were singing, lining up, counting heads, making a kind of holiday of it all.

Why the difference? 

We had people who needed us, and we had something to do.

Caring for others, being responsible for fellow humans, is the ultimate source of all courage, especially when it emerges from community. Indeed, I would go so far as to suggest that community produces courage. We didn't experience hysteria, I think, because it wasn't called for: it wasn't a valid response and together we buoyed one another to a kind of human greatness. We were there to serve others who needed us, who were counting on us, and we did not, would not, let them down.

I often think that many of us spend our lives without experiencing ourselves as necessary to one another. We feel alone. We feel embattled and harassed. A fertile ground of hysteria. Those of us who work with children, who are parents, know the immense power that comes from selflessness, the confidence, the real, nurturing strength of a community caring for one another.

We protect them. We serve them. We, nor they, are alone. We come through for them because the alternative is unthinkable. Perhaps courage isn't the absence of fear at all, but what becomes possible when someone else is counting on us.

******

Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in ways that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

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!

What I Told Parents to Expect of Our Play-Based Preschool

At the beginning of each new school year we held mandatory parent orientation meetings where I told the assembled parents that I would not be teaching their children literacy, although they would be laying the foundations for literacy through their play, their dramatic play in particular; every time we read to them or tell them stories, or when they tell stories to us; each time they get excited and say, "Hey that's my letter!" or "That's your letter!" I won't be teaching them, but they'll be doing exactly what they need to do to read when their brains are ready.

I told them that I would not be teaching their children math, although they would be practicing their math skills every time they counted something out, put things in order, arranged things in groups, worked a puzzle, made or identified a pattern.

I told them I was particularly uninterested in teaching STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) skills so they would be ready for those "jobs of tomorrow," although again, through their play they will be engaged in teaching these things to themselves. When one studies children at play, it's impossible to not see them as scientists or engineers, asking and answering their own questions, engaging in experiments, figuring out fundamental truths about our world and the other people. 

I told the parents that I'm singularly uninterested in vocational training. The proper career aspiration for a preschooler is princess or superhero. The jobs for which their children will be applying two decades from now do not yet exist and anyone who tells you they can predict the employment landscape that far into the future is blowing smoke. The jobs our adult daughter found herself considering did not exist when she was in preschool. The careers my high school counselors suggested that I pursue would have left me unemployable. But more importantly, we don't educate our children so that they can take their role in the economy, but rather so that they can perform their role as citizens and community members.

We always talk a lot about "community" at our parent meetings. In fact, nearly everyone who spoke would find that word in their mouth, not because it was a coordinated effort, but because it is the real foundation of what we do at our school. We're a cooperative which means that we are owned and operated by the parents who enroll their children and these parents will attend school with their children, serving as assistant teachers. We are not just a community of children, but in a real sense, on a day-to-day basis, a community of families, assembled together around the common goal of supporting our children as they learn the foundational skills of citizenship.

At it's most basic, this means that we strive to form a community in which our children can practice living in a world with other people, learning how to get their own needs met while also leaving space for others to meet theirs. Nothing is more important, not just for individuals, but for our larger society. A good citizen is someone who thinks critically, who thinks for themself; a good citizen is someone who asks a lot of questions and who questions authority; a good citizen knows that it is not just their right, but their responsibility, to speak their mind, even when others disagree; a good citizen likewise knows that they must listen, especially when they disagree; a good citizen knows that they contribute to society in ways far more vital and varied than as a worker bee. It's from citizens with these traits that strong communities, strong democracies, are made.

I told our assembled parent community that their children will be learning these things as they play together, creating their own community, and that it wouldn't always be pretty. Their children will come home covered in water, mud, paint, snot, and even upon occasion, blood. Their children will find themselves embroiled in conflict. They will be learning through joy, yes, but also tears. They will, as they must, mix it up with the other children, sort things out, make agreements, and help one another. They will teach themselves to be self-motivated, to work well with others, and begin to understand the importance of being personable, all of which are, not accidentally, the most important "vocational" skills of all.

I told the assembled adults that our job is not to teach them anything, but rather to love and support them as they perform their inquiries, test their theories, and figure out what works for them and what doesn't. We're not there to push or command or mold, but rather to create a safe space in which the children can play, together, in the context of their community.

******

Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in ways that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

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!

I'm a "Bad Teacher"

Yesterday, I wrote about a dialog with a boy who gave me insight into myself as a teacher. That reminded me of similar story:

A five-year-old boy once accused me of being a "bad teacher." He wasn't mad at me. It wasn't intended as an insult. He was grinning as he said it, but he offered it more as a statement of fact than a joke.

I've had children tell me that I'm "supposed to be a boy," "you smell stinky," and "you're a big, fat guy." Learning the unvarnished, unblinking "truth" about yourself, at least from one person's perspective, is one of the "perks" of being a preschool teacher, but I'd never been told I was a bad teacher. 

"What do you mean? I'm not a bad teacher."

"You are a bad teacher."

"Why am I a bad teacher?"

"You never teach us anything."

"That means I'm a good teacher. I get this place ready and then you all come here and teach yourself things."

He was in the midst of a project he had been working on for a week. To an outsider, it probably just looked like he was gathering junk from the playground and putting it in a big heap, but we all knew by now that he was building a machine. He hadn't yet decided what this machine did.

"But you are supposed to teach us."

I thought about this for a moment, watching him fit the guts of a defunct clothes dryer into his machine. "Maybe you're right. What should I teach you?"

"I don't know." 

"Do I get to pick what I teach you?"

"Yes, you pick."

I said, "Did you know that my fingernails are dirty? See?" I held my hand out to him. "Now you know that. I taught you."

"You didn't teach me. You have to teach us about something like . . ." He paused to think. "You have to teach us about science."

"Okay, Did you know that everything is made out of atoms."

"I already know that."

"Gravity is the force that keeps us from floating away."

"I already know that."

"Dinosaurs are extinct."

"I already know that."

"What can I teach you about? You already know everything."

"I do. I know everything."

"Well, that's good because I don't know everything. Maybe you should be the teacher."

He quietly worked on his machine for several minutes before saying, "I don't know everything."

I nodded, "But you know a lot. How did you get to know so much?"

This was a question that required his full attention. He stood on his pile, his eyes rolled upward, his forehead furrowed. Finally, he said, "I taught myself."

"Wait a minute, you taught yourself?"

"Yes, I taught myself."

"Then I guess I'm a better teacher than you thought."

He laughed. "You're a bad teacher."

"Well, at least you're a good learner."

"I am a good learner," he confirmed while shifting a wheel-less wagon bed into place.

I said, "Maybe you're building a learning machine so you can teach me."

"It is a learning machine, but I can't tell you how it works. You can use it when I'm done." He then peered at me earnestly and added, "And then you will learn."

******

Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in ways that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

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!

"You're More of a Joke-y Teacher"

I've sent hundreds of kids off into the world from the Woodland Park Cooperative School. For most of them, I was their first and only teacher, which meant that, for better or worse, I'd had both the responsibility and opportunity to shape children's expectations for what's to come. Some of that was conscious, like our curriculum of questioning authority, but most was just an unconscious manifestation of my personality and the pedagogy I've been developing over decades.

I often say that after my wife and daughter, all of my best friends are five-years-old. After all, these are the people with whom I've been hanging out, daily, for the better part of three years. We'd been together through highs and lows, made life stories together, shared inside jokes, and trusted one another: the stuff from which best friends are made. That said, I know the friendship will fade, at least from their side, once they've moved on, but I hope the feeling of that relationship stays with them as they encounter their future teachers. 

Few things gratify me more than when alumni return to visit and enthuse about the wonders of their new teacher, and most of them do, even sometimes telling me that they like their new teacher "better." It doesn't hurt because I know that this new relationship is built upon the one we had. Naturally, I want them to like their current teacher. By the same token, there are few things that hurt more than when one of these children tell me they don't like their new teacher or, worse, that they wish they could return to preschool.

The whole subject is bitter sweet, of course, and my feelings would be just the opposite were I being told these things by their parent, but it's a central part of every teacher's job (or should be) to provide an experience for children that is right for them right now. I try to do that when the children are preschoolers and that's all I can do. When I speak with children who have moved on, that moment has passed for us. It's now someone else's job to provide that "just right" experience and if they're doing it right, they've earned the title "favorite."

One summer a former "best friend" enrolled in our summer session. As we were re-discovering our friendship after a year apart, he told me that he had liked kindergarten. I asked, "Was your teacher nice?"

"Yes, really nice."

"That's good," I joked, "because you had a really mean preschool teacher."

It took him a beat to realize I was talking about myself, but when it clicked, he laughed. "You're not mean!"

"Thanks for saying that. I try to be nice."

He thought for a second, "You're not that nice!" It was his turn to tell a joke.

"Hey!"

We laughed. He was then quiet for a moment, a smile still playing on his lips, eyes rolled up as if looking into his brain, then, "You're not mean or nice, you're more of a joke-y teacher. That's why I like coming here!" Best friends tell you the truth, especially when they know it will make you glow. His future teachers are the luckiest people on earth.

******

Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in ways that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

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!

That Feeling of Understanding

Years ago, a friend involved in the business of "up cycling" wound up with a collection of junk with which even he couldn't figure out what to do, so he passed it all along to the preschool, where, I assured him, the experts would make something of his nothing.

Among the detritus he delivered to our playground was part of the tub assembly of a dismantled washing machine. I only knew what it was because he told me. It was a kind of circular-ish cauldron with a large opening on one side and a smaller one on the other, to which was attached a rubbery skirt. It was large enough to fit two, maybe three, small children depending upon which end you turned up.

As one does, I imaged how the children would react to it. Perhaps they would ask "What is this thing?" For them, I was prepared to answer, "It's a thing you can play with." But since most of the kids were already accustomed to odd things showing up around the place, things with no names and no pre-determined purpose (i.e., loose parts), I knew that most wouldn't bother with adult mediation and simple declare it's name and purpose.

And I was right.

"It looks like a space ship."

"It's a bathtub."

"It's the wheel from a giant machine."

One girl inverted it on the ground and sat inside it with the rubbery bit around her waist like a kind of bodice to declare it her "ball gown."

And it went from there. Over the course of the next few weeks, I spied it being used as a window in a fort, a small boat at sea, a volcano, a bird's nest, and a drum. One group attempted to hang it up as a swing. Another filled it with sand. Yet another arranged sticks in it like flowers in a vase. As I told my friend, "Young children are the ultimate up cyclers."

As humans confronted with a new thing, our first instinct is to try to find an apt metaphor for that thing. It is, in many ways, the story of human development. Our ancient ancestors explained earthquakes, for instance, with the metaphor of giants or gods stomping on the earth. As I've written before, even our most basic English verb "to be" is ultimately derived from the ancient Sanskrit words for "to grow" and "to breathe," which is to say metaphors for this amazing thing we are still trying to understand -- existence. And this is exactly what children do when confronted with new things, like this tub. They try, individually and collectively, to arrive at a metaphor for the new thing by substituting something more familiar until they find that feeling of familiarity.

That feeling of familiarity is indistinguishable from the feeling of understanding.

Even such seemingly only-the-facts things like science and math are conducted and understood through metaphor. A thunderstorm understood as friction and sparks and vacuums, of air smashing together to create noise, isn't actually those things, but rather something like those things. Indeed, the entire scientific process is one of finding better and better metaphors that approach, but never quite reach, full understanding. Likewise, those numerals we use for ciphering are metaphors of familiarity that allow us to better understand.

If the goal of education is understanding (rather than merely correct answers), then play with loose parts in their broadest sense, without adults constantly trying to inject their own metaphors into it, is the gold standard. It is that feeling of understanding we are after and that only comes through thinking about new experiences through the filter of metaphor until we find one that feels right, or at least partly right, at least for now. And then, as we play, we discover new and better metaphors, additional and supplanting metaphors, that lead us farther and father along our lifelong journey of understanding. 

******

Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in ways that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

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!

Nasty, Uncontrollable, Hopelessly Feral

"I really can't stand children." 

It's a sentiment I occasionally encounter upon informing a stranger of the work I do. It always rocks me back on my heels a bit, given that I'm most often surrounded by adults who find the company of young children to be preferable to that of their peers.

All adults have theories about children, even those who spend little time with them. After all, we were all once children, so, at a minimum we have those years of experience from which to cobble together our theories about what a child is, does, wants, and needs. And some consider children to be nasty, uncontrollable, hopelessly feral things that will one day, fingers crossed, outgrow it. It's as if they conceive childhood as some sort of larval stage during which these pre-humans feed themselves voraciously of the precious leaves of life before they pupate (perhaps within the chrysalis of university) emerging finally as adults.

As long as they are not cruel to children, I tend to respect these people even as I disagree with them. Their theories cause them to largely avoid children, especially young children, standing aloof in their presence, ignoring them if at all possible. They tend to choose professions and habitations far removed from where children play and when they're compelled to interact with them they do so as if they are little adults, not speaking down to them, employing their full vocabulary, not caring really if these ignorant children comprehend, not even expecting them to respond, at least not in a "rational" manner. Children confound them and, because of their theories, they lack the prying curiosity that attends so many of the interactions children have with other adults.

In most circumstances, children ignore and avoid these adults in return, not out of any sort of animosity, but simply because the indifference is mutual. Sometimes, however, young children love, from afar, these adults, not only because they don't pepper them with the usual questions about what they want to be when they grow up and their favorite subject in school. They appreciate that they aren't talked down to or coddled. Their cheeks are not pinched and their heads are not patted. In other words, they perceive they are not being treated as children, but rather as people. And so long as this adult with the mis-guided theory about children isn't outright mean to them, they often find this treatment refreshing. 

It should also be mentioned that adults who harbor this brand of theory about children, should they be offended or harmed by a child, are unlikely to punish, correct, or scold them, but rather respond by giving them, at most, a few pointed words of disapproval, before turning their backs, the way they would with a wayward adult over whom they have no authority other than their dignity. 

These adults don't "understand" children and so their interactions with them tend to be free of the urge that so many of us have to help or teach or otherwise better them. This is why I respect their opinions.

You see, most children, most of the time, spend their days among adults whose theories about children are constructed on cuteness, naiveté, and ignorance. These adults, with the best of intentions, tend to talk down to children in high-pitched sing-song voices reserved only for children and pets. These adults loooooove children, petting and pampering them, which is all well and good, but it too often comes with these notions of helping, teaching, correcting, and generally behaving as if this theoretical child cannot function without constant intervention from loving adults.

John Holt wrote: "It is condescending when we respond to qualities that enable us to feel superior to the child. It is sentimental when we respond to qualities that do not exist in the child but only in some vision or theory that we have about children." 

In his book Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior, anthropologist Christopher Boehm, based on 339 fieldwork studies, concluded that our hunter-gatherer ancestors "are universally -- and all but obsessively -- concerned with being free from the authority of others." Indeed, we have evolved as a species to resist the imposition of hierarchy, even when it comes to interactions between adults and children. Too often, those of us who claim to love children do so, at least in part, because we like the feeling of being superior. We help, teach, and correct these theoretical children "for their own good," not because they have asked us to help, teach or correct them, but because we feel it is our right (which is often mis-framed as a responsibility).

The truth is that children are nasty, uncontrollable, and feral. They are also cute, naive, and ignorant. All of us are. None of these traits proposed by our theories are the exclusive domain of childhood or adulthood. In the end, there is no such thing as a theoretical child and none of our theories are correct. Or rather, none of them are entirely correct which is why I often prefer the approach taken by the "I really can't stand children" crowd. There may be something horribly broken within these adults, but to the degree it allows them to leave the kids alone, to not not impose their unsolicited help, teaching, or correction upon them, and to not assume the posture of superiority, is the degree to which their seemingly stance really is for the children's own good. 

******

Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in ways that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

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!