If We Had Webcams

I apologize to all the Woodland Park grandparents who didn't receive a cute, handmade craft from the grandkid over the holidays. We don't make a lot of that kind of thing around here and I always feel a little guilty each year as we head into the break without having created much of anything to box up for the grands. 

As compensation, you're invited to visit us any time at all, even without advance warning. We'd love to have you. We'd love to show you what we're doing instead of making cute things for you. 

Of course, I know that isn't much of an offer for those of you who live far away and only see the grandchildren a few times a year. What I'd really like to offer you are webcams.

This isn't the first time I've expressed a wish to have webcams installed around our classroom in such a way that every corner of both the indoor and outdoor classroom can be observed remotely. And since I’m being wishful here, I’d also like microphones installed over each of our stations so that our conversations can be selectively overheard by those same internet observers.

I would love for the parents and grandparents of Woodland Park students to have the ability, while in the midst of the drudgery of their morning at the office or of housework, or while miles away on business, or simply geographically separated for large chunks of the year by an accident of our mobile society, to have this ability to peek into and remotely share their treasured preschoolers’ lives.

I know at first blush this sounds a little Big Brother-ish and there isn’t a teacher’s union out there that would agree, I’m sure. And I know there are many teachers who would freak out at the prospect of having remote parent eyes and ears upon them as they go about their work, but as a teacher in a cooperative, that’s already a condition of my employment. It's already a condition of the kids' enrollment. Our every move is already observed by the children's parents because each of them is right there with us at least one day a week, working as assistant teachers.

So for us webcams just seem like a natural extension of what we're already doing.

If we had webcams, grandparents, you would see why we don't often get around to making cute things for you. You would see instead how we, for instance, played with styrofoam packaging, pipe cleaners and liquid water color on the table we call "the art table." You would have seen that it was messy without being particularly popular. You would have witnessed how many of the kids struggled to insert the wire ends into the foam. You would have noticed that the most engaged kids were really most fascinated by spilling paint on the table top, then using paper towels to soak it up, taking control of their own learning.

You would have seen that the whole mess went outside where it enjoyed a surge of interest for a few minutes, but then got set aside on a table where it remained for nearly two weeks until the children re-discovered it just before our holiday break and went about, on their own initiative this time, mastering the skill of inserting those pipe cleaners into the styrofoam.

If we had webcams you would have something cute from preschool not just for the holidays, but all year long. If we all wanted webcams, I bet we could find a way to get them . . .

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