Where Community Begins

I was passing a table at which four boys were eating snack. They were discussing a classmate, a boy with sensory challenges that often manifested in ways that disturbed and even hurt his classmates. One of them said as I passed, "He's a bad guy." That stopped me in my tracks.

"Yeah," a friend replied, "He's a real bad guy."

And another, "He hurts me all the time."

The poor boy had one defender in the group who added, "He never hurts me," but his opinion was overwhelmed by the prevailing sentiment. As I stood there, they came to an agreement that they weren't going to play with him.

As a teacher, it was upsetting to hear. Yes, he had hurt these boys and others. They had every right to be wary of him, even to shun him. That said, this was a preschooler with a diagnosed condition, one that caused him to behave impulsively. He wasn't a "bad guy," of course, but there was no doubt that he frequently did bad things: things that hurt and frightened other people.

I went home that day knowing that we adults needed to do something. There is always going to be a little hitting and shoving around a preschool, but obviously, despite our best efforts, we had not succeeded in keeping the other children safe from this particular boy. Because of that, the kids, or at least the four boys I'd overheard, had decided to take matters into their own hands, labeling and then shunning, "natural" consequences that come right out of our hunter-gatherer past. But obviously, this was a natural consequence we could not allow to stand, not in a school setting and not amongst children.

Ultimately, our "solution" involved the kind of transparency that is one of the hallmarks of a cooperative school. Since all the parents work in the school as assistant teachers, all of them were already aware not only of this boy's behavior, but the underlying condition that caused it. We had already been attempting to mitigate things with a plan of action, but it was clear we were falling short, so after much discussion, some of it tense and tearful, we decided the best thing to do was to extend our transparency to the children, to share this boy's challenges with them, to explain how he wasn't a "bad guy," but that his brain sometimes made him do bad things, like hurting other people. And instead of having these discussions at school where we feared they would have the affect of shaming the boy, we placed the responsibility upon each family to talk about this boy and his challenges with their own children at home. We provided resources as a fallback, but we left it to each family to find their own way of discussing it.

This was, to say the least, a challenging emotional process for the parents of the boy who was not a "bad guy." His mother shared some of her feelings with us, but I can only imagine her private anguish. It was often crushing for her to sit in those parent meetings where we discussed her son's behavior hearing from her peers what the other children had experienced and what they were saying at home. It was almost unbearable to hear her own beloved child being labeled "bad guy." Yet, she understood it too, he had done "bad" things to those other children. She later shared with me, however, that the process had also been cathartic. She had often worried about what others were saying about her family behind closed doors, but now, with it all out in the open, she had found compassion where she had feared accusation.

As the weeks passed, families had their discussions at home, helping their children understand and how they could help him. Things got a little better. We coached the kids to be firm with him, even proactive:

"I don't like that!"

"You can play with me if you don't hurt me."

"You are hugging me too hard!"

"Don't knock down my building."

The hurting still happened, although perhaps not as much as before. But more importantly, the children began to show more compassion toward him when he was impulsive because we had helped them actually understand their classmate beyond the cookie cutter label of "bad guy." Sure, they still yelled at him, got angry, and cried, but they were far less prone toward shunning. I'll never forget one girl saying to him, "I know it's hard for you to do, but if you don't stop pinching me, I'm not going to play with you." It was a kind of perfect balance between compassion and self-preservation.

This process would be a difficult, if not impossible, thing to do in a standard school where "privacy" and "confidentiality" concerns override those of transparency, but that doesn't mean that parents' hands are tied. The school may not be able to be transparent, but parents can be. We found that one of the most powerful tools at our disposal was one-on-one play after school, at homes where a calmer atmosphere made the boy less inclined to his impulsivity, where the children could form a different kind of bond than was possible at school, where they had the opportunity to make deposits in the "good time bank," so that when problems arose there was a balance to fall back upon. But perhaps most importantly, it gave the parents a chance to get to know one another which is where compassion grows best.

In other words, it all came down to relationships and it started with adults of goodwill, a partnership between educators and parents, because that's where community begins. This is the whole idea behind my 6-week course Partnering With Parents (see below). Please join us. The world needs more villages in which to raise our children.

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Sometimes it seems like the most challenging part of our job is dealing with parents. At the same time, we all know that it takes a village to raise a child. As preschool educators, we don't just educate children, but their families as well. For decades, I've been working in a place that puts the tricornered relationship of child-parent-educator at the center, and over that time I've learned a great deal about how to work with families to create the kind of village every child needs and deserves. I've assembled what I've learned course called Partnering With Parents in which I share my best thinking on how educators can and should make allies of the parents of the children we teach. Click this link to register for the 2025 cohort and to learn more. Discounts are available for groups. Registration closes at the end of this week, so act now!

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!

The Real Purpose of Learning is Joy

One of the big ideas behind play-based learning is that humans, and young children in particular, are learning all the time. 

When an infant lies in its crib watching shadows on a wall, for instance, we assume they are learning. We see their gaze, we witness changes in the movement of their appendages and we take that as evidence that they are learning. They don't need an adult to hang over them making silly sounds or to dangle a woodland animal mobile over their face in order for learning to happen. By virtue of the fact that the shadows are holding the infant's attention, we can surmise that the baby's curiosity is aroused, which is how the human learning instinct manifests. When the sun goes behind a cloud and the shadows momentarily disappear, we observe changes in the infant, their arms and legs stop moving, their eyes search, their gurgling momentarily stops as they try to understand, to find what is lost. And when the sun remerges, we once more see the changes, the evidence that learning is happening.

What exactly any individual infant is learning from those shadows on the wall is anyone's guess, and we would probably guess wrong anyway because the moment we try, we must put our guesses into words, and language is something a newborn hasn't yet acquired. There are no words for what that baby is thinking, so it is impossible for us to know what they are learning, and frankly, it's none of our business.

We waste everyone's time when we try to put a pin in learning, to assign a purpose to it. This is a concept that we adults often have a hard time comprehending, I think, this idea that not only is all learning deeply personal and individual, but it is also ultimately unknowable to anyone but the person whose curiosity and, therefore, thought is engaged. They may be able to tell us what they have learned or are learning, but most of the time, like with our infant, learning has no purpose other than joy and that cannot be turned into data.

We are born to seek joy and learning brings us joy, thinking brings us joy, understanding brings us joy. To the degree that we've made learning hard work is the degree to which we cheat our children. 

That learning, in an evolutionary sense, makes survival more likely, is a happy accident, just as our opposable thumbs and capacity to cooperate with one another are a happy accidents. We don't possess these traits as a species for the purpose of survival, but rather they are traits that have survived within us. Survival itself is a happy accident.

We have evolved curiosity and the capacity to pursue the satisfaction of our curiosity, like we evolved hunger and the capacity to pursue the satisfaction of our hunger. And just as we don't survive without hunger we don't survive without curiosity. But in both cases, the urge, the instinct, is about pursuit and satisfaction, not survival; not utilitarian purpose, but rather the one purpose that really matters to any of us, which is to experience joy.

As adults we might make a decision to learn something for what appears to be utilitarian reasons. For instance, I might learn Spanish in preparation for a trip to Mexico. I make that decision to learn Spanish because I believe, based on what I've learned so far in life, that doing so will increase the odds of a satisfying trip. I am learning Spanish, therefore, because it is about my self-selected pursuit and the satisfaction of that pursuit. Even if the immediate satisfaction I pursue is a greasy buck, I must, at some level anticipate that this money will, somehow, some day, lead to joy. 

Otherwise, there is no point, and that is the path to depression. 

Should I presume to teach Spanish to a young child who has not chosen to learn it, I take curiosity, and therefore joy, out of the equation. I distract them from the shadows on the wall and force them to attend to my silly sounds and dangling woodland animal mobiles. When I do this, I cheat the child of their own, self-selected pursuit, which means, no matter how well-intended I am, leading them away from joy.

Curiosity is an imperative. It is one of the few universal purposes. It makes survival more likely, but survival itself is not a purpose. 

When we leave our babies to contemplate shadows on the wall we free them to play, to pursue their own thoughts, and to create their own understanding. The purpose of all learning, at bottom, is nothing less than joy.

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If you're interested in learning about what you can do, right now, to create a joyful learning village that parents will wholeheartedly support, I've developed this 6-part course called Partnering With Parents. As preschool educators, we don't just educate children, but their families as well. For decades, I've worked in a place that puts the tri-cornered relationship of child-parent-educator at the center, and over that time I've learned a great deal about how to work with families to create the kind of village every child needs and deserves. How would it be to have parents show up as joyful allies? Click this link to register and to learn more. Discounts are available for groups.

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!

This is How We Make the Villages Our Children Need

By nature, I consider myself an introvert, so when our daughter was born, I happily stepped into the role of stay-at-home parent. Of course, I looked forward to the "parenting" part, but I equally, and a bit secretly, embraced the "stay-at-home" aspect of the job title. As I held my newborn, I imagined our cozy life, snuggling, puttering around the house, eating snacks, reading storybooks, and playing in the garden. My homebody self imagined a kind of utopia effectively walled-off from the rest of the world where my wife, the extravert, would go off into the world to slay the dragons, while the two of us nested, unmolested, at least for a time, by the stresses of being out in the world.

And it was something like that at first, but among her first sentences were, "Let's go somewhere" and "Let's do something," a clear indication that she was her mother's daughter. I took this to mean that she was asking me for preschool, but when I ran the idea by my wife, she said, "No. She has a stay-at-home parent. Why would we send her off to be raised by strangers if we don't have to?" She had a point, but just in case, I ran the idea of preschool by my mother, who said, "Why would you do that? She has you. Besides, once their gone they're gone. Keep her at home as long as you can." Another compelling argument, but I there was still my mother-in-law, but she too gave it a thumbs down and no wise person defies the three most important women in their life, so it was on me, the introvert, to cobble together the social life our 18-month-old clearly craved.

This primarily involved going to lots of neighborhood playgrounds and other places where young children gathered. One day, I got to chatting with the mother of a son who was only a little older, and I shared my story. She said, "I know how you feel. I'm a stay-at-home parent, but we've enrolled in a cooperative preschool two mornings a week." It turned out that instead of dropping him off, she attended preschool with him. That's all I needed to hear. When I ran this idea by my triumvirate of beloved women, they approved, just so long as we both went.

And so I discovered cooperative schools, places where the families own the school and serve as assistant teachers. For the next three years, we went to school together, and where I got to work alongside a master teacher by the name of Chris David. When it came time for our daughter to move onto kindergarten, Chris urged me to consider staying behind and become a cooperative preschool teacher, and that's when Teacher Tom was born and where I've been for the better part of the past two decades.

Every preschool becomes a community of children, but a cooperative, in a very real sense, becomes a kind of "village" organized around the all-important project of raising children, including parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and caretakers brought together in the context of community. It reminds me as much as anything in the modern world possibly can of the neighborhood in which I grew up, a place where parents sent their children outside to play, confident that they would create their own social lives simply by living amongst the people, both old and young, that we found there. The kind of place where we learn to teach, care for, support, and love all the children, and to, in turn, trust the other adults in that role with our own children. It's not an accident that the parents at Woodland Park are refer to it as "the community" more often than as a school.

As a teacher, I might have valued my cooperative community more than I did as a parent. At any given moment there were 5-10 of these "amateur" teachers with me, bound together by a culture of learning and care that we were creating together day-after-day. I cannot imagine doing this preschool thing any other way, surrounded by parents who are my colleagues, supporters, and allies: a village raising children.

This isn't the experience of most educators. Indeed, too often parents show up in preschool settings as adversaries instead of allies. They show up as "customers" and critics, mettlesome dilettantes, and people whose phone message, "We need to talk," sends our hearts into our throats. Others come off as disinterested and dismissive. This is not how it should be. Parents and educators are natural allies in that we all want what is best for the children, yet we too often find ourselves feeling that parents, at least some of the parents, are in the way or behaving in ways that undermine our good work. They challenge us about such bedrock things like play-based education, discipline, risky play, mess, and a host of other aspects of our professional work, often demanding we do things that we know are not in the best interest of children.

For the past 20 years, I've been working in a place that puts this tri-cornered relationship of child-parent-educator at the center, and over that time I've learned a great deal about how to work with families to create the kind of village every child needs and deserves. I'm proud to announce that I've assembled what I've learned into my fully updated 6-part course called Partnering With Parents in which I share my best thinking on how to make allies of the parents of the children we teach. (Click this link to learn more.)

Most of us don't live in the kind of villages envisioned by the proverb, but that doesn't mean our children don't need them. We may never again be free to send our children out into the neighborhood to play, but we can do the next best thing by making our preschools into places not just for children, but for families. This is how we make the villages our children need. 

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It takes a village to raise a child. As preschool educators, we don't just educate children, but their families as well. For decades, I worked in a place that put the tri-cornered relationship of child-parent-educator at the center, and over that time I learned a great deal about how to work with families to create the kind of village every child needs and deserves. I've assembled what I've learned into a 6-part course called Partnering With Parents in which I share my best thinking on how educators can and should make allies of the parents of the children we teach. The 2025 cohort for this course begins next week. Click this link to register and to learn more. Discounts are available for groups.

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!

When a Parent Says, "We Need to Talk"

"We need to talk."

It's a message from the parent of one of your students -- an email, text, voice mail, or quick word at pickup time. Your heart rises into your throat.

"We need to talk" almost always means that something has gone wrong, and it's going to get worse before it gets better. This parent is angry, sad, or confused. They object to your curriculum. They are worried their child is "falling behind." They want to demand that you do something about this, that, or the other.

We've all been there. Parents and educators are natural allies, but all too often we find ourselves at odds, even though we all want the same thing: happy, well-adjusted children.

Over the years, I've found that the struggle to get on the same page with parents might not be the top-of-mind concern for educators, but when we get down to the bottom line, that's often the real challenge, whether it's over things like learning through play, discipline, risky play, or messy play.

 

“The parents would never let us do that!”

 

“The parents want more academics.”

 

“The parents complain whenever their child gets messy.”

 

“The parents just don’t understand!”

 

My own experience of parents is as colleagues rather than people who demand a “quick meeting.” I’ve spent my entire teaching career in cooperative preschools, where the parents are right there with me in the classroom, serving as assistant teachers. This is the great strength of the cooperative model and through this experience of working shoulder-to-shoulder with parents, day-after-day, I discovered the incredible power of a true partnership with parents.

 

As parents and educators, we both are the children’s “first teachers” (to use the nomenclature of the Reggio-Emilia model), but in our modern world, too often we find ourselves on opposite sides of the table across the divide of “we need to talk.” 

 

How would it change your life as an educator to have a parent community that really understands what play is all about? Where parents fully support your curriculum? Where parents are on the same page about mess, risk, and self-directed learning? How would it change your attitude if the parents in your school always had your back? If you could say one thing to the parents of the children you teach, what would it be? What would you want them to know?

I recently asked my newsletter readers these questions.

Jenny S., the director of a large center, wishes that parents could walk in an educator's shoes for a day. "Have you tried caring for five children under two for even two hours?"

Ramona M wishes that parents understood "normal human development."

"I would really like to see parents understand how the power of connection and attachment that can shape their child's relationships, and how powerful play is their child's life," writes Mary J. "Slow down and be present and you start to see and understand who they are and what is really important to them."

Several educators expressed frustration that parent concerns stand in the way of introducing developmentally appropriate "risky play." As Leslie D. asked, "Is there something I could say to them that allows us to have more freedom with the children and have the parents on board?"

Almost everyone who responded expressed frustrations with unrealistic academic expectations, communication, wishes that parents understood more about early childhood development, and a hope for a better educator-parent-child partnership.

As Ramona M. put it, "It takes a village."

That is the idea behind my fully updated 6-part course Partnering With Parents. If any of this rings true for you, if you're interested in transforming your relationship with the parents of the children in your care, then you might want to check it out. To learn more and to register for the 2025 cohort, click here.

When we work to bring parents closer to the center of what we do, when we communicate clearly, honestly, and in a timely manner, we begin to form the kind of partnerships that help us begin to approach the promise of a village.

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It takes a village to raise a child. As preschool educators, we don't just educate children, but their families as well. For decades, I've been working in a place that puts the tri-cornered relationship of child-parent-educator at the center, and over that time I've learned a great deal about how to work with families to create the kind of village every child needs and deserves. I'm proud to announce that I've assembled what I've learned into a 6-part course called Partnering With Parents in which I share my best thinking on how educators can and should make allies of the parents of the children we teach. Click this link to register and to learn more. Discounts are available for groups. This is the one and only 2025 cohort. Please join us!

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!

Partnering With Parents One Preschool at a Time

Registration is now open for the 2025 cohort for my course Partnering With Parents. Click here to learn more and register!

Polar bear cubs stay with their mothers until they're two and half years old. Dolphin calves need maternal care for 2-3 years. Orangutan infants continue nursing for six years, the longest period of dependence of any species other than humans.

For us, this period during which our survival depends on care and attention from adults is, at minimum 10 years, although in modern society we set the legal age at 18, and for many of us, it extends even longer. 

Some scientists theorize that this is because our species has so much to learn in order to function, but I'm suspicious of that. One of our great prejudices is that we are somehow more intelligent, or that human social life is so much more complex than other species. The more I learn about other species, however -- not just mammals, but reptiles, birds, mollusks, and even plants -- the more I'm convinced that there is no hierarchy when it comes to intelligence or social complexity.

Another theory is that we have a longer period of dependence because we have longer lives: the process of growing up is just stretched out proportionally because we're going to, on average, live seven or eight decades. And it's true that, say, orangutans tend to only live to be 50, but elephants have a similar lifespan to humans and their young only have a 2-3 year period of dependence. There are several species that live for hundreds of years (whales, sharks, clams) with much shorter childhoods, while there are many more that can live for thousands of years (trees, sponges, fungi) with no childhood to speak of. There's even a jellyfish that is biologically immortal, reverting to its polyp state once it reproduces in order to do it all over again. Most of the longest lived species actually have no apparent period of dependence.

Our own period of dependence hasn't always been as long as we make it today. Our daughter was bat mitzvahed at 13, which is the traditional Jewish age of adulthood. Indeed, throughout traditional cultures, 12 or 13 is a common marker between childhood and adulthood, although few of us would think it wise to really stick to that in our modern world. There's no reason that children this age wouldn't be capable of functioning as adults, except for the fact that modern human culture is simply too dangerous to leave them on their own. There are just too many broken adults who want to prey on them. Other species don't have to worry about the predator from within. 

On the other hand, looked at another way, in other long-lived social species, like elephants, whales, and orangutans, one could argue that the period of dependence is never over. They rally to one another's aid throughout their lives. They protect, feed, and care for one another, not because they are parents, but because it's the most important thing their species does: care for one another.

I'm going to assert (without complete knowledge) that humans are the only social species that has forgotten that. As psychologist and researcher Alison Gopnik says, caring for the young is the principle purpose of every civilization. I would extend that to all people, not just the young. And with humans, as with other species, even those with relatively short lifespans, the responsibility is too much for one or two adults. It truly does, as the African proverb has it, "take a village to raise a child."

Over the past couple of centuries, humans, and especially those of us living in Eurocentric cultures have moved young children farther and farther from the center of society, until we today find them growing up in virtual isolation from the rest of the world. From a young age, we wall them off into "pink collar ghettos" to spend their days in crowds of like-aged colleagues in the care of professional caretakers and educators. And because most people outside those walls have little or no regular interaction with young people, their needs are rarely considered. Indeed, young children are forbidden or frowned upon in much of the modern world. As a corrective for this, I've always been an advocate for "place based learning," which means taking children out into their world: walking the neighborhood, visiting local businesses and institutions, traveling around by bus and other forms of mass transit.

I'm always struck by how work-a-day adults react to finding children in their lives. Make no mistake, many are delighted to suddenly find themselves, say, surrounded by excited four-year-olds on their morning commute. But many more move away. They draw their shoulders to their ears and scowl in judgement. These children, these young humans, these fellow humans, are viewed as loud, disgusting, ignorant intruders.

I can't help but compare this situation to that of other "outsider" populations who have historically been ghettoized. They have a right to exist, just not where I am. Am I exaggerating? Maybe a little, but it's something we need to think about. When we isolate children from society, we are likewise isolating society from children, which means we are robbing ourselves of the caring-and-being-cared-for give-and-take that characterizes every other long-lived animal culture. I can think of no better explanation for the breakdown of our "village." I can think of no better explanation for the intensity of our political divisions, for school shootings, for our mental health crisis, for the general rudeness and incivility that is making cynics of us all.

On one preschool field trip, we were transferring onto Seattle's Link Light Rail at the Westlake station in the heart of downtown, a place where children are rare during the workweek. As we entered the station, a man stood leaning against a wall smoking a cigarette. One of the kids said, loudly enough for the man to hear, "Look Teacher Tom, that man is making a bad choice!" The smoker stopped mid-puff, dropped his cigarette onto the pavement, and crushed it out with his heel, saying, "You're right. It is a bad choice." And then, when he noticed the kids were all now peering at the butt he'd dropped, he picked it up and tossed it in a trash can. Then the man said, "Thank you."

I've always known that being with young children makes me a better person, if only because I feel compelled to role model the behaviors that I want them to see as normal. I imagine that this man, in the presence of children, found it not just easier, but imperative to make "good choices."

Being in the company of young children tends to make adults more creative, more likely to try new things, more accepting of others, more playful, and less selfish. These are all things we could use more of in the world. This too is part of the power of the village.

We might not be able to change the world, but we can, today, begin changing it for the children in our care by opening the doors of our "ghettos." By both getting out there in the world and also by bringing others into our settings, especially their parents and extended families. Our world may never be the village we need, but our preschools can be exactly that, communities based on the knowledge of every other long-lived species: it takes a village. 

It might sound like a stretch, it might sound neigh impossible to engage the parents of the children we teach in this way, but not only do I know it's possible, I know it's the only antidote to cynicism. It takes a village to raise a child. It also takes children to raise a village. 

If this sounds like something you want to pursue more deeply, consider registering for my course, Partnering with Parents (see below). Perhaps we can change the world one preschool at a time.

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If you're interested in learning about what you can do, right now, to create a learning village that parents will wholeheartedly support, I've developed this 6-part course called Partnering With Parents. As preschool educators, we don't just educate children, but their families as well. For decades, I've worked in a place that puts the tri-cornered relationship of child-parent-educator at the center, and over that time I've learned a great deal about how to work with families to create the kind of village every child needs and deserves. How would it be to have parents show up as allies? Click this link to register and to learn more. Discounts are available for groups.

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!

The Power of Partnership With Parents

Many hands make light work. ~John Heywood

This how the Woodland Park Cooperative School does Halloween, the highest of our high holidays, the others, in calendrical order being MLK Day, Chinese New Year, and Valentine's Day.

Our morning school becomes a night (okay, early evening) school. We spend the two weeks leading up to the big night discussing our costumes and making decorations. We then all dress up in those costumes, gather at the school in the evening with tons of food, including too many sweets, and when I say "we all," I mean our entire community that grows to 100 or more children when one includes older siblings and alumni, and at least as many adults. It's an event that grew bigger each year. The center of the festivities took place in what we call the Cloud Room, the Fremont Baptist Church's social hall, a room with a stage and one whole wall lined with mirrors. I set up the classroom simply, with crayons, play dough, what we call "the crazy floor" (large foam blocks interspersed randomly under gym mats), and corn starch packing pellets in the sensory table. The outdoor classroom is open as well.

The parents are a big part of making this evening work, pitching in with their creativity and zeal. One year, for instance, Elijah's mom Unique put together a Halloween themed photo "booth," with small straw bales and a spooky back drop. Devrim's mom Funda set up a jack-o-lantern vomiting guacamole. Elizabeth's mom Susan organized a silent auction that evolved over the years into an important fundraiser for our school: local businesses, sports teams, and other organizations donated nice items, but the highlights were always the handmade, personal items and one-of-a-kind experiences that can only come from our community. Henry's family, for instance, would always offer an airport shuttle service complete with coffee. Every family contributes something.

Grandmas, grandpas and close family friends join us. More rarely seen spouses turn up, most in costume. And I must say that this is one of the coolest aspects of our annual party: there is a lot of friendly peer pressure to get the adults to at least make a gesture toward a costume. The kids definitely appreciate this. It raises the importance of this night for them when even the adults who never dress up are in costume. 

What do we do? We arrive, talk about our costumes, eat food, trash the classroom, take a lot of pictures, get a little overwhelmed, calm down outside, plunge back in, sneak an extra cupcake, and generally get carried away by the night. And we go home exhausted. You know, like what always happens at a good party. In the following days, children tell me, conspiratorially, "I had four sweets," or earnestly, "It was too loud," or eagerly, "Let's do it again." We spend the week after rehashing the event, talking about the moments when we were excited or frightened or sad or angry. We discuss what the "big kids" did or what the "little kids" did and, inspired, begin to plan our costumes for next year.

The highlight for me, the moment I live for, my absolutely most shining moment, is leading circle time for our entire community. I typically wore my pink bunny costume, a beautifully sewn thing, with gray "fir" around the cuffs and the paisley ears. I'm very fond of that costume, but it's hot in the best of times, a feature that is compounded by being in a tightly packed room. I sit on the stage and call the children together. I can't describe how magnificent it is to look into the faces of these children I know and, raising my gaze to look just beyond them, the faces of the families who make up the totality of who we are.

We sing "Roll That Pumpkin Down to Town," and "Itsy Bitsy Spider." We do a few of our anthemic felt board songs and chants, altered to honor the holiday. We sing "If You're Happy and You Know It" using the jack-o-lanterns we carved during the week to represent "happy," "sad," "angry," "surprised," "silly," and "pirate" (a recognized emotion in our school) as props. I love nothing more than catching the eyes of alumni students who are now first or second graders, singing lustily along.

I am, by the end, in a full-on sweat, red-faced and wishing I were wearing something more lightweight.

After the "show," the place is, as previously mentioned, trashed. My first thought is always that this was going to take hours to set back in order.

I want the families to feel free to pack their tired kids off to bed, so think of tidying up as my job, but the rest of the community doesn't see it that way. As the party winds down, I start by picking up one thing and putting it back where it belongs. Then another. Soon, without anything being said, a parent will join me, scooping corn starch pellets from the floor back into the sensory table, for instance. In another corner of the room another parent will put away the play dough. Another tidies up the art table. Grandparents and friends pitch in. Before five minutes has passed, a dozen adults and at least as many kids are, again without comment or instruction, putting things away, sweeping, organizing. Those hours of work are compressed into 10 minutes through the power of many hands.

When I return to the Cloud Room, a similar thing has happened in there: the decorations are down, the tables and chairs are stashed away, the floor is swept, and the garbage bags are carried to the dumpster. Same with the kitchen where we held the silent auction and the kindergarten room. Even the outdoor classroom is re-set and ready for the following day.

I'm always the last to leave. As I stand in our empty space, lights off, it's hard to believe that the evening has happened, that only moments before we were laughing, feasting, posing, sweating, singing, and dancing together, all of us, celebrating the magic of many hands. And, as I stand there, dressed in street clothes for my bus ride home, I realize that this is what we celebrate every day at our little cooperative preschool.

This is the power of true partnership with parents.

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If you're interested in learning more about creating a learning village that parents will wholeheartedly support, I've developed this 6-part course called Partnering With Parents. As preschool educators, we don't just educate children, but their families as well. For over two decades 20 years, I worked in a place that puts the tri-cornered relationship of child-parent-educator at the center, and over that time I've learned a great deal about how to work with families to create the kind of village every child needs and deserves. How would it be to have parents show up as allies? Click this link to learn more and get on the waitlist. Discounts are available for groups.

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 are Your Hopes for Your Child?"

I've asked thousands of parents the question, "What are your hopes for your child?" It's something a lot of us ask at the beginning of a school year or when we are first getting to know a family. Far and away, the top answers are some version of, "I just want my child to be happy," or "I just want my child to love learning." These are the answers I expect, especially from first time parents. 

The good news is that their children already love learning, they were born that way, so no problem there. Our only job, and it's made far simpler by a play-based curriculum, is to do no harm.

Happiness is, of course, another matter. It's the only emotion that tends to disappear the moment you become aware of it. It's a tricky, personal, and ephemeral thing, something we spot in others, but when we ourselves are happy we daren't look directly at it. It's like those phantom movements in our peripheral vision that Icelanders say are the "hidden people," elves and fairies and whatnot, who flee when you turn their way. Because of this phenomenon, Aristotle asserted that the only way humans can ever know if they've lived a happy life is in hindsight, from the perspective of our death beds, looking back over it all. This, of course, doesn't mean that we ought not pursue happiness, only that we have to accept that the pursuit is the most important part of that project, which is, at bottom, what self-directed learning is all about: the pursuit of happiness.

So I have no problem assuring parents that their preschool goals will be met. Their children will continue to love learning because they will be free to pursue happiness within the context of a community. The problem is that we too often fail to understand that the love of learning and the pursuit of happiness must be ends unto themselves, not means to an end. It's when we attempt to wrangle these highest of goods into the service of some more prosaic result, like a grade or a score or a certificate or a job, that we begin to undermine the joy of learning, replacing it with the avoidance of corrective sticks. It's when we make the pursuit of happiness into a hopeless chase after carrots that are always dangled just out of reach that we assure our hopes will never be realized.

No wonder so many children wind up finding school to be a disappointment: it is the place where they are taught that learning is a chore and something like happiness must be found in the praise of adults.

"I just want my child to be happy." "I just want my child to love learning." Laudable goals, indeed, the highest. My hope for these parents is that they come to see that the only way to get there is to set their children free and to trust them to know what to do with their freedom.

******

If you're interested in learning more about creating a learning village that parents will wholeheartedly support, I've developed this 6-part course called Partnering With Parents. As preschool educators, we don't just educate children, but their families as well. For decades, I worked in a place that puts the tri-cornered relationship of child-parent-educator at the center, and over that time I've learned a great deal about how to work with families to create the kind of village every child needs and deserves. How would it be to have parents show up as allies? Click here to learn more and the join the waitlist for the 2025 cohort. This is a course that becomes even more powerful if the whole team does it together. Discounts are available for groups.

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!

Building Our Future Villages

"We still had a blacksmith in our town in those days, if you can believe it." 

I was talking to the great grandfather of one of my students. Most of the time, the grandparents aren't much older than me, but here was a man 30 years my senior. I make a habit of talking to older people about their childhoods. I like seeing how they tend to light up. I learn about history through intimate stories, and I'm especially drawn to childhood memories. 

"My friends and I used to walk into town to watch him work. He opened his doors up wide to get some ventilation. They were like barn doors. There was a counter, then behind it was the fire and the anvil. We boys would stand in the doorway to watch. Sometimes he'd come out and talk to us. His arms were like this." He showed me with his hands, then chuckled, "At least one of them was. And he was always covered in soot and sweat. For a long time, I wanted to be a blacksmith when I grew up."

Another grandparent told me about how she used to go around to the back of a neighborhood ice cream parlor where the woman who worked there would secretly give her free samples and where they would often talk "about this and that. All kinds of things. She was like having a grown up sister."

John Holt wrote in his book Escape from Childhood: 

"Children need many more adult friends, people with whom they may have more easy relationships that they can easily move out of or away from whenever they need to or feel like it. Perhaps they found many of those in extended families, among various grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, in-laws, and so on. Perhaps they found them living in smaller communities, villages, or towns, or neighborhoods in larger cities. But these communities, in which people have a sense of place and mutual concern, are more rare all the time, disappearing from country as well as city. The extended family has been scattered by the automobile an the airplane. There is not a way to bring it together so that children may live close to numbers of older people who will in some degree have an interest in them and care about them."

The scattering of our villages, through automobiles and airplanes, yes, but also through an economic system that demands more and more from adults during what are the typical child-rearing years, is something that concerns me a great deal. If caring for children is among the most important projects of any human civilization, and it is, then how can it be that we're tending to increasingly push children away from the center of life, cordoning them off in "schools?" If the pandemic showed us anything, it's that the primary reason schools exist anymore is to get the kids out of their parents' hair so they can get to work. 

We know we all need the kinds of connectivity, the kinds of relationships of trust and kinship that can only be found in a community, village, town, or neighborhood, yet most of us start our days by sending the parents into one corner (work) and their children into another (school), one serving economic necessity while the other is left in a hothouse of like-aged children. On top of that, our automobiles and airplanes continue to scatter our small nuclear families far and wide, leaving the rest of our villages -- grandparents, aunts, uncles, and the like -- far away, only accessible by appointment. There are no longer opportunities to stand in the blacksmith's doorway or learn about life from an ice cream scooper. 

This was always my vision for the Woodland Park Cooperative School, a place where families could convene, where both children and adults could forge friendships with one another. Over the years, when I've written here about our preschool, I've focused mostly on the children, avoiding using photographs that show too many adults, but I'm showing a distorted picture of how our community really works. Visitors who see us up close and in person have always remarked on the number of adults, our parent-teachers, around the place. At any given moment children might be playing with one another, but there are others "playing" with adults: cheek to cheek in the garden, tasting the cilantro blossoms from a plant that's gone to seed; working together to get a snack on the table; wondering together about where that jet in the sky is headed. These are often real friendships by anyone's definition of the word, easy relationships formed for a day, a week, or a year. There are always some children who feel so connected to "Paul's mommy" that they ask for her when they arrive. There is disappointment when "Sarah's daddy" isn't there that day and joy at being reunited when "Kisha's grandma" is there.

We know there is something broken in society. We want to blame the press, social media, video games, politics, or declining morals. We all know we are divided, that we are lacking connection and community, even as it continues its long, slow disappearance over decades. We too often believe, I think, that this break up of villages is the effect of some greater cause, but I find myself wondering if it's the other way around. Maybe it was our choice, as a culture, to scatter ourselves that came first. But whatever the case, I think it's clear that a return to the village, in whatever contemporary form, is the balm and cure we need.

I have seen that our preschools can, at least in part, serve the role of community based on mutual concern. That, at least, is much of the thinking behind my course Partnering With Parents (to get on the waitlist for the 2025 cohort, click here). We can't all be cooperative schools, but we do stand in a unique position to bring children, parents, and even grandparents together by placing our children at the center of our lives. As John Holt points out, children need this, but it doesn't take much reflection to realize we all do. Children, families, and educators: I can think of no better foundation upon which to build our future villages.

******

Even the most thriving play-based environments can grow stale at times. I've created this collection of my favorite free (or nearly free) resources for educators, parents, and others who work with young children. It's my gift to you! Click here to download your own copy and never run out of ideas again!

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!

The Truth Will Make Me Free

The Truth Will Make Me Free

by Mister Rogers

What if I were very, very sad

And all I did was smile?

I wonder after a while

What might become of my sadness?

What if I were very, very angry,

And all I did was sit

And never think about it?

What might become of my anger?

Philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett believed that the more we are deceived, the less we are free. Free will, he asserted, is predicated upon education and information, yes, but also, importantly, self-reflection.

Where would they go, and what would they do

If I couldn't let them out?

Maybe I'd fall, maybe get sick

Or doubt.

The longer I've lived, the more suspicious I've become of this idea of objective truth at least when it comes to finding something that is true for everyone all the time everywhere. It's quite obvious that this kind of external truth, the kind of pursued by scientists, simply isn't part of reality. Truth is always a matter of perspective. There is always one more way to look at something, one more thing we haven't considered, which is why truth is never a destination, but always a journey of discovery. It's a journey that takes us beyond our current selves, transforming us, but it always begins with self-reflection because more often than not we have deceived ourselves. We've convinced ourselves that we're not really angry or sad.

But what if I could know the truth

And say just how I feel?

I think I'd learn a lot that's real

About freedom.

Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living", which is a call to regularly question our beliefs, actions, and assumptions about ourselves and the world in which we find ourselves. It takes courage. Reflecting on "exactly how I feel inside of me", for instance, is often painful and frightening because it demands that we face our self-deceptions and accept that things are not as they once appeared.

No one ever said that freedom would be easy. For most of us, most of the time, we are our own worst jailor. This is why we need other people to help us in learning to tell the truth. The term "self-reflection" suggests a solitary journey, but it's virtually impossible without the help and support of others, especially those people we love, if only because from their perspective our self-deception is far more obvious than the perspective from within where it looks like truth.

I'm learning to sing a sad song when I'm sad.

I'm learning to say I'm angry when I'm very mad.

I'm learning to shout,

I'm getting it out,

I'm happy, learning

Exactly how I feel inside of me

This is the struggle. It is the struggle of education and of life. We all know people who have stopped growing, who have determined that they possess objective truth and anything, any perspective, that challenges that, is a threat. We know these people are sad and angry, even if they don't. They are both the perfect prisoner and the perfect jailor. And we know we cannot help them be free unless they want to be helped. These people tend to not be children. Indeed, they tend to be old, which is why we must remain vigilant as we age, but of course there are plenty of exceptions that prove the rule.

Young children have the advantage on us if only because every day shows them new perspectives that they must puzzle into what they already think they know. Their capacity for delight and curiosity is less restrained by the certainty of the incomplete truth of their current perspective. They are more likely to trust their senses and, when necessary, abandon the illusions of perspective that keep us from discovering the truth that will make us free.

I'm learning to know the truth

I'm learning to tell the truth

Discovering truth will make me free.

******

Even the most thriving play-based environments can grow stale at times. I've created this collection of my favorite free (or nearly free) resources for educators, parents, and others who work with young children. It's my gift to you! Click here to download your own copy and never run out of ideas again!

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!