What Makes a Good Preschool Teacher?

Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person, they are almost indistinguishable. ~David W. Augsburger

Not long ago I had a series of conversations with business people about teaching. I've been a preschool teacher for over two decades, yet I had a hard time with some of their questions, and specifically those centered around the idea of what exactly it is that makes a "good teacher." It's in the nature of business people, it seems, to want to take things apart, to figure out how they work, to reduce them to their essentials, and then find ways to replicate them, preferably very efficiently and for profit. 

They were good conversations, useful, casting a new light on our profession for me. Are there some things that all good teachers do? I genuinely don't know. Maybe. I don't even know if someone can be taught to be a good teacher, even as I know that many, many of us demonstrate the skills. Generally speaking, it's widely assumed that it takes at least five years in the classroom to even know if someone is a good teacher or not, because nothing replaces experience. It seems that apprenticeship, working alongside veteran teachers, can accelerate learning, but as for "teaching" them to be teachers, I don't know.

I mean in all honesty, although I go by the moniker Teacher Tom, I'm not sure I do much of what these business people would define as teaching, which is widely understood as a synonym for "instructing." I know that the children I've worked with have grown and learned. I even have a pretty good idea what they've learned in some cases, but as for successfully instructing them, I have a very short, undistinguished track record. Can I prove that the children have learned? Can I prove what they've learned? No, at least not to the satisfaction of someone who is looking for the kind of hard data that business people tend to like behind the things they do. Traditionally, we've done it by starting with "learning objectives," providing instruction, then testing to see if the kids meet our objectives. I've never done any of those things because, while it produces data on the effectiveness of certain types of direct instruction, it forces children through a process that is the antithesis of how we know children's brains are designed to learn. Will we ever be able to produce acceptable hard data on children learning through play? I don't know.

I do know that I've spent very little time over my career in the role of instructor. People have suggested that maybe a better word for what we do would be facilitator or coordinator or perhaps more whimsically, guide on the side. I put quite a bit of energy into preparing the environment for children, getting it ready for them, providing what I think they will need on any given day to pursue their self-selected interests or answer, through their play, their own questions. I can do this because I've spent the previous day paying close attention, observing, studying, striving to understand their motivations, individually and collectively. I've never, however, taken it on as a systematic study, but rather an intuitive one with a sniff test that manifests along the lines of "Oh, the kids are going to love this!" or, equally as often, the singular version, "Billy is going to love this!" Could this be made into a systematic, replicable thing, a chart or something with boxes to tick? I don't know.

Is there anything that all good preschool teachers do? It's a question worthy of thought. I know that the foundation of what I've always done is to simply strive to treat children like people. What do I mean by that? It mostly means that, like with non-child people, I don't get to tell them what to do. It means I should avoid offering unsolicited advice, because most people, most of the time resent it. If I ask them questions, they should be real questions in the sense that I don't already know the answer and I have a reasonable expectation that this child can tell me what I need to know. And the most important thing is to listen to them, to shut up and let them say all the words they want to say to me about what's on their minds. (This is something that I actually do much more consistently with children than I do with adults.) And then to let them know through my words and actions that I've heard them.

Can this be called teaching? I don't know, but it's what I do and I know it's what the great teachers I know do. As Mister Rogers said, "Listening is where love begins: listening to ourselves and then to our neighbors." And at the end of the day, this is why I struggle so much to answer the questions these business people ask me. Love can't be qualified or quantified, although I think it can be replicated, quickly: it is infinitely scalable. Love is like play. It is a pure good that can't be defined or measured, even when we know it when we feel it. That is what a great teacher of young children will always be: someone who loves us and who is loved in return.

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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 Blind Spot

Karntakuringu Jukurrpa

Long before the advent of alphabets and literacy, human wisdom was stored and passed along as stories told from one person, one generation, to the next. Our modern, Western prejudice has long been that these stories, or "yarns," as author Tyson Yunkaporta calls them, may be entertaining or enlightening, but that they that are unreliable when it comes to passing along so-called "facts," especially of the scientific variety. 

I mean, after all, the great breakthrough that we call the "scientific process," the tradition of Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, and Einstein, strives to assume a position of objectivity, of pure logic. It is a tradition of observation, replicable experiments, and learned debate. Indeed, one of the primary missions of science is to separate mythology from "fact."

In his book Sand Talk, Yunkaporta tells us about the oral tradition of his Apalech clan (from what is today the far north of Queensland, Australia) that stretches back at least 7000 years, long before Western people began writing things down:

"We yarn about the sentience of stones and the Ancient Greek mistake of identifying “dead matter” as opposed to living matter, limited for centuries to come the potential of Western thought when attempting to define things like consciousness and self-organizing systems such as galaxies. Western thinkers viewed space as lifeless and empty between stars; our own stories represented those dark areas as living country, based on observed effects of attraction for those places on celestial bodies. Theories of dead matter and empty space meant that Western science came late to discoveries of what they now call “dark matter,” finding that those areas of “dead and empty” space actually contain most of the matter in the universe."

Indigenous peoples from around the globe tell ancient stories like this. The Ojibwe and other midwestern tribes tell stories that go back to the end of the last Ice Age, 10,000-12,000 years and perhaps beyond, yarns from "time immemorial".

Western science is only now beginning to catch up with much of this indigenous knowledge.

Yunkaporta writes, "In contemporary science and research, investigators have to make claims of objectivity, an impossible and god-like (greater-than) position that floats in empty space and observes the field while not being part of it. It is an illusion of omniscience that has hit some barriers in quantum physics. No matter how hard you may try to separate yourself from reality, there are always observer effects as the reality shifts in relation to your viewpoint."

Today, many of us hold science up as the gold standard of factual knowledge. And not without some validity. The scientific method has lead directly to the technological advantages that made both actual and cultural colonialism possible. Even us non-scientists seek to erase doubts about what we are going to say by starting off "Science tells us . . ." We shake our heads over those who take medical advice from anyone other than "trained" professionals. We teach oral traditions as literature or religion rather than an alternative perspective on truth.

Most scientists are humble enough to not pretend to know the "truth." They see their role as pursuing truth with the understanding that whatever we think we know today will be, at best, a stepping stone to a greater truth, if not an outright mistake. But there's little question that Western culture as a whole has embraced its science as a kind of supreme system for knowing things.

In their new book The Blind Spot, a scientist (Adam Frank) and a pair of philosophers (Marcelo Gleiser and Evan Thompson) explore what they call "the blind spot" of modern science in light of the story science has told over the past two centuries or so. This blind spot is made up of four main aspects of the progress of science (and most specifically physics) from the Ancient Greeks to the present day.

The first aspect of this is what mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead called "the bifurcation of nature." This refers to the assumption that we can separate human experience from nature. For instance, science tells us that atoms and light waves are "real," whereas experiences like color or hot and cold are merely psychological, manufactured by our minds, and thus not a part of so-called "objective reality." An example that comes to mind is that my doctor tells me that the placebo effect is "just in your mind" even if my lived experience is that the sugar pill, because it cured my ill, is real medicine. As Yunkaporta points out, the world since Einstein has shown us the process of bifurcation leaves us with an explanation of the world world, the quantum world, that makes no sense to those of us who live our day-to-day lives as an inseparable part of nature.

The second aspect of this blind spot is what the authors call reductionism (or the term I prefer, smallism). This refers to the process of attempting to understand larger systems by breaking them down into smaller and smaller parts. The idea is that the smaller the part, the better it represents reality, while our experience of larger systems -- like the human body or the planet Earth -- are just fabrications of our minds. But smallism has taken us to a place in which larger systems simply shouldn't exist as they do . . . Yet they do. There is something about these larger systems that we are missing as we squint into increasingly powerful microscopes.

The third aspect of science's blind spot is what Yunkaporta describes as "impossible and god-like": objectivism. This is perhaps the most profound absurdity of science, the idea that we can somehow step outside of reality in order to take a God's-eye view of things. What the quantum world is teaching us is that there is no place and no time at which a human can stand that is not inside the reality in which we exist. We are always inside it. The metaphor (or perhaps not a metaphor) that comes to mind is that no matter how much we know about what our brains do, we have no idea how it creates consciousness. That's probably because it's impossible for consciousness to take an objective view of consciousness. It's like asking a flashlight in a dark room to find something that doesn't have light on it. Since every direction it turns has light on it, the only conclusion is that everything has light on it.

The final component of the blind spot is what the authors call the reification (I prefer thingification) of mathematics. This means that we mistake the increasing abstractions of math as the skeleton upon which reality hangs rather than a product of our idealized scientific workshops or laboratories. Math can only explain things for which the scientist is seeking explanation, but to do so requires "controlling" for the rest of reality. To paraphrase Fran Lebowitz, let me assure you, in the real world there is no such thing as math. As an abstraction, math is one of the major tools for bifurcating us from our lived experiences.

Indigenous stories tell us of people without this blind spot, who accepted that they, and everything, is part of an un-bifurcatable system of reality in which there is no difference between living and non-living, in which everything is inseparably connected, in which our lived experience of doing, thinking, and being, of color and hot and cold, are as real and essential to understanding reality as atoms and light waves. This is the world of young children who have not yet fallen victim to the blind spot.

In their book The World of the Newborn, Daphne and Charles Maurer write about newborns:

"His world smells to him much as our world smells to us, but he does not perceive odors (as we do) . . . His world is a melee of pungent aromas -- and pungent sounds, and bitter-smelling sounds, and sweet-smelling sights, and sour-smelling pressures against the skin. If we could visit the newborn's world, we would think ourselves inside a hallucinogenic perfumery."

Western science tells us that sweet-smelling sights are not objective aspects of reality. Tens of thousands of years of human experience, and every young child, begs to differ.

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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!

Mistaking Subject Matter for Meaning

I recently took a long walk. As I walked, my mind, as one's mind does, wandered. I assume that traffic continued whizzing past me on the roadway alongside which I walked, but because my mind was elsewhere I can't say for certain. I can only assume so because there had been traffic the last time I checked in with the present moment and there was traffic the next time I became conscious in the present. But the truth is that I was, while my mind wandered, somewhere else.

Consciousness is an incredible thing. Even as my body was moving, step-over-step, along a sidewalk, my mind was busy elsewhere: reliving a moment from my childhood; anticipating a conversation I expected to have with my doctor later in the day; regretting an embarrassing comment I made the night before; fearing the implications of a news story I read earlier that morning. Indeed, most of the time I was walking my conscious mind was everywhere other than that sidewalk along a busy road.

Of course, part of me, the unconscious part, was at least vaguely aware of what was going on around me. When I came to a crosswalk, I briefly returned from my time travels to attend to the present as I located the crosswalk signal, checked both ways for cars, and calculated the proper moment to continue. But even before I was on the other side of the street, my mind was, once more, elsewhere.

As author and researcher in psychology Julian Jaynes writes: 

"Consciousness is a much smaller part of our mental life than we are conscious of, because we cannot be conscious of what we are not conscious of . . . It is like asking a flashlight in a dark room to search around for something that does not have any light shining upon it. The flashlight, since there is light in whatever direction it turns, would have to conclude that the light is everywhere . . . Right at this moment, you are not conscious of how you are sitting, of where your hands are placed, or how fast you are reading, though even as I mentioned these items, you were. And as you read, you are not conscious of the letters or the words or even of the syntax of the sentences and punctuation, but only of their meaning. As you listen to an address, phonemes disappear into words and words into sentences and sentences disappear into what they are trying to say, into meaning. To be conscious of the elements of speech is to destroy the intention of the speech."

The project of modern schooling is one of directing children where to shine the flashlight of their consciousness and in the process we destroy meaning. We provide their minds with subject matter. In preschool that might be "the letter of the day" or the life cycle of a butterfly. We then proceed to tell them what they are to think of this thing. Then, finally, we grade them on how well they are later able to recall, on command, the salient points.

In no other aspect of life, other than school, do we demand this of human consciousness. For instance, I am currently writing this blog post. A moment before writing that last sentence I realized that the words on the screen had no meaning. They had become simply the place where my eyes were resting as my mind, always traveling, was back in the classroom looking around for an example to make my point. I then became aware that I was elsewhere and redirected my gaze out the window where they rested on the view. My mind was then transported briefly to the future where I saw, based on how the sky looked, that it was going to be a sunny day. When I returned my eyes to the screen to write the above sentence that begins with "For instance . . ." the words once again had meaning. And by the time I got around to writing this current sentence, my mind has been around the world, even inside your mind, predicting how you, the reader might react to this or that choice of words. The reality is that I spent most of my writing time, not writing at all, not even really thinking about the words. In fact, most of these words I've written here came to me when I was emphatically not trying to think of them.

When Jaynes writes "To be conscious of the elements of speech is to destroy the intention of the speech" he is putting his finger on one of the great myths about learning and thinking. I've found that one of the worst ways to come up with an idea or solution is to "think" about it like we expect children to do in school. The French call this phenomenon "genius in the stairwell." We've all had the experience of having our best thoughts flash upon us while, say, in the shower. We've all walked out of an interview only to curse ourselves over all the things we should have said. Our best thinking is rarely the product of conscious thought.

Thinking, real thinking, deep thinking, is rarely a conscious process. This is why play is so much more powerful than direct instruction. Play frees our minds to travel, to bounce about between past and present, here and there, now and then, as our bodies engage the present. Direct instruction attempts to chain our magnificent minds, our time traveling minds, our creative, critical, connected minds, to a single point in time. It limits the beam of our flashlight to this meager crumb of reality while the traffic whizzes past us; while the bird soars overhead; while the candy goes untasted. And perhaps worst of all, we punish and drug children when their minds do what minds are designed to do, which is to play.

The reason that a child at play, to quote Lev Vygotsky, is "a head taller than themself" is because when we play our minds, brains, and bodies are finally free to think and learn at full capacity.

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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 Love of Children v. the Love of Money

On the one hand, we have hundreds of children being currently imprisoned in concentration camps by our federal government and billionaire child rapists being protected by our courts, politicians, and the Justice Department. On the other, we have consistent and chronic underfunding of anything having to do with children and families, including education.

We are lead to believe that the culture war is about books, bathrooms, religion, patriotism, or “family values.” It's not. The real culture war is between people who love children and systems that love money. It's easy to despair, but there is some good news.

The Iowa state legislature is putting the finishing touches on a law that would mandate play-based learning in preschool and kindergarten. The law requires a minimum of 3 hours per day of play and child-directed experiences, including unstructured classroom discovery, in addition to recess and physical education. The law only specifies 45 minutes per day in kindergarten, but it's still an important step in the right direction.

Iowa joins Connecticut (2024), New Hampshire (2018), and Oklahoma (2021), all of which have legislated play for their youngest citizens. Nevada, Maine, Michigan, and Illinois have all adopted or are considering play-friendly policies and approaches. The Connecticut law even permits play-based learning through 5th grade. Of course, none of these laws goes far enough in my opinion, but they're all encouraging steps in the right direction.

For better or worse, our Constitution explicitly puts states in charge of education. The federal government is meant to be hands off, leaving states the freedom to experiment. The idea is that if something works in one state, it will be adopted by others. Of course, the federal government, with it's ability to grant or withhold funding has, under both Democrats and Republicans, tried to force misguided educational mandates on our schools (e.g., No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, Common Core). This federal (and I think illegal) incursion into our public schools has been one of the main driving forces behind the drill-and-kill high stakes testing regime that has come to dominate the educational experience of a vast majority of our children, including, cruelly, preschoolers and kindergarteners. 

My hope is that what we are seeing right now is the beginning of a trend in which states take meaningful corrective measures to protect children from those who love money more than children. 

Of course, legislation is not the same thing as making real change. Legislation signifies a direction, in this case a positive one, but it still takes people to make change happen.

For one thing, play, like love, is a notoriously illusive thing to define. Each state has adopted its own definition. I see words and phrases we've all used to describe our work, like "child-directed," "unstructured classroom discovery," "developmentally appropriate," "free play," "games," "movement," "socially interactive," and even "joyful." But when the rubber meets the road, as with anything to do with schools, it comes down to how individual teachers implement it.

Some veteran teachers in Connecticut, for instance, are requiring children to make a plan for their play and stick to it, in the name of "teaching" executive function. I'm pretty sure that can't be taught. It's something that develops through life experience, like those encountered while playing. In Oklahoma, the law prohibits districts from restricting teacher's use of play-based learning, but doesn't exactly require it. The New Hampshire and Connecticut laws define the role of teacher as "facilitator" or "guide on the side," but there is a lot of wiggle room. Only Iowa imposes a minimum number of hours for play-based learning, which means that in the other states the amount of play permitted to children can vary depending on the teacher's bent. It leaves the door wide open for play being dangled before children as a kind of reward or punishment, instead of a right.

Still, I'm encouraged. But if we are going to make these laws effective, we are going to have to tighten up our definitions of play and make sure that educators are well-trained in play-based pedagogy. As a play-purist, I'd like to see young children (and that includes children up to at least 10-years-old), playing all day. I know that's not realistic in the current climate, but we should have, as in the Iowa law, minimums set for preschoolers and kindergarteners, otherwise  play will continue to be treated as a "relief from serious learning" rather than the proper work of childhood (to paraphrase Mister Rogers). And I would definitely want to see us getting our children outside and away from screen-based technology which is replacing authentic childhood with artificial experiences.

I remain encouraged, even in a world that too often seems to love money more than children. I'm grateful to the bi-partisan coalition of legislators who are compelling schools to follow the science of learning and best practices by mandating play. And I'm fully in awe of those advocates -- educators and parents -- who have had the tenacity and skill to convince these legislators to do the right thing for our youngest citizens.

This is progress. Let's keep it up! No turning back!

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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!

Telling This Story of Life Itself

A corpus callosotomy is a surgical procedure by which the bundle of nerves that connect the two halves of a human brain are cut, leaving them without the ability to communicate with one another. It's a rare procedure, most often undertaken as a high-risk, last-ditch effort to mitigate seizures, most often due to drug-resistant epilepsy.

Patients who have undergone this surgery tend to appear and behave normally in day-to-day life, but in reality their divided brain behaves as two separate brains in one body, with distinct personalities, perceptions, and purposes. One hand might be buttoning a shirt while the other is unbuttoning it (i.e., alien hand syndrome). The person(s) might perceive an object in their left visual field (which is processed by the right hemisphere), but be unable to speak about it or name it because speech processed in the left hemisphere. Indeed, these two minds within one body are often completely unaware of one another, often with distinct personalities. In one patient it was found that the left hemisphere personality believed in God, while the right was an athiest. 

The left hemisphere unconsciously creates "stories" to explain the actions of the right hemisphere. If the right personality is commanded to walk, the left personality will concoct an explanation for why their shared body is walking -- "I'm getting a glass of water." In other words, a divided brain results not in two halves of one mind, but rather two distinct minds. In this regard, minds cannot be reduced or halved because a mind will always be complete unto itself. This is due in large measure to our minds' capacity for telling stories about themselves.

This phenomenon isn't the exclusive domain of callosotomy patients. We all do it. Cognitive psychologist Stephen Pinker refers to our left hemisphere as a "baloney generator" due to its tendency to concoct plausible-seeming justifications for behaviors and decisions made by other parts of the brain, even when those explanations are entirely made up. Neuroscientists tell us that more often than not we act first, then our minds come up with the story of why we acted after the fact. We are so adept at this kind of storytelling, however, that we genuinely believe it happened the other way around.

Storytelling (or baloney generation) is fundamental to human cognition. We do it every time we open our eyes. There is literally a blind spot in our field of visions where our noses are, yet we don't notice it because our minds tell a story that convinces us that we are seeing a continuous world in front of us. It doesn't seem like baloney, however, because we do it seamlessly and, more often than not, it serves us.

The point is that none of this happens on a conscious level. Indeed, very little of what our brains actually do involves our awareness. This includes thinking. Our conscious mind is very good at say, identifying a problem or challenge. It's called "executive function" because back in the 70's scientists thought our pre-frontal cortex operated like the brain's CEO, managing, directing, and planning. Then, like any good leader, it delegates the details to the rest of the brain so that it can continue to focus on the tasks at hand, which is dealing with the present, short term (or working) memory, and impulse control. The problem is that the more we learn, the weaker the CEO metaphor becomes. Increasingly, we're coming to understand that brains are not so much hierarchical as they are cooperative, so when I think of our conscious minds I'm more inclined to see them as gatekeepers tasked with determining what should be allowed in or kept out.

This is why our best ideas come to us in the shower or while taking a walk or cooking dinner or doing anything other than consciously thinking about the problem. Our unconscious minds weave stories around the problem, a tapestry of metaphors, environmental and language triggers, physical sensations, dreams, and long term memory. It's a meandering process with lots of dead ends, detours, and spirals until a story finally emerges that makes our prefrontal cortex say, Eureka! 

Standard schooling, however, focuses almost exclusively on our conscious mind. It makes the ignorant assumption that all our thinking happens in a linear, knowable, provable way. Increasingly, our schools minimize those opportunities for the rest of the brain to get to work, treating things like the music, art, dance, socializing, and recess like interruptions to learning, when, in fact they are exactly what makes learning, deep learning, real learning, possible. So we're stuck with institutions in which children are fed isolated facts to hold in their short-term memory just long enough to pass the test. The rest of their minds, the part that makes sense of things, are almost entirely left out of the process. This situation is made even more dire by proliferation of screens in which "learning" is reduced to children hunched over tablets, their isolated faces illuminated like blue-grey ghosts.

Our minds function best while engaging life itself. Our minds function best when free to wander, to explore, to make and break connections, to physically engage, to discover plot, character, and happy endings that make narrative order of what our conscious minds have let in. Life itself presents real problems and challenges. Life itself is the project in which our minds are meant to be engaged. Life itself is the story we tell ourselves about ourselves and the world around us. Life itself is always a journey, an epic tale told in chapters and episodes and stanzas, one that carries us both outward and inward with no other goal than to discover and react to what happens next.

Play is what we have evolved for this purpose. When we are playing, we create just the right conditions for our full brains to engage in the process of telling this story of life itself. 

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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 Best Educated People on Earth

Several of the kids were taking turns boasting about how strong they were.

"I can pick up this whole table!"

"I can pick up this whole school!"

"I can pick up this whole world!"

As their claims escalated ludicrously, some of their classmates called them out.

"No you can't!"

"You can't even pick up a piece of paper!"

"You can't even pick up a piece of toilet paper!"

It was all fun and games, of course, no one was serious. Then one of them said, "I can pick up the whole loft." The loft is a two level piece of furniture that stands in the corner of the room. I recall that when it arrived, decades ago, it came, ready-to-assemble, in cartons weighing a little over 250 pounds. I tossed this information out there, like a loose part, "The loft weighs more than 250 pounds."

The boaster paused, looked astonished, then said, "I guess I can't lift 250 pounds by myself."

A fellow boaster said, "Maybe we can lift it together."

The tone had suddenly changed from one of one-upsmanship to serious consideration of a job at hand. They agreed to try, approaching the loft with their muscles flexed, but they were unable to budge it.

Not stymied, they called out, "Hey guys! We need help!" and "We're going to lift up the whole loft!" As more and more children gathered, I began to get the idea that this might really happen. One or two of them could never manage it, but dozens, working together, likely could. What was the worst thing that could happen? It could topple over and land on the kids. They could succeed in lifting it, then drop in on their toes. I moved closer. As the children assembled, I called a couple of other adults over and we quietly strategized how we could make it safe enough, just in case.

At first, even with nearly twenty children, nothing happened. Their efforts were individual and uncoordinated. But they were still working on it. 

"We have to lift at the same time!" 

"We have to spread out!" 

"We need more people under the low part!" 

"I'll count to three!" "No, I'll count to three!" "Let's all count to three, then lift!" "Okay, guys, ready?"

They indicated their readiness with a sudden silence, then together they chanted, "One! Two! Three! Lift!" And the loft began to rise, all 250 pounds of it, hovering one then two inches off the ground. As agreed, the adults then stepped in and took much of weight as we helped them slowly lower it to the ground, cautioning about toes and fingers.

Sadly, this type of experience is all too rare in American schools, especially the farther one gets from the preschool years. Grades and scores and other assessments are individual things. Indeed, to achieve school-ish success in any way other than on your own is labeled as cheating and punished. Oh sure, there may be one or two tick boxes that rate a child's ability to cooperate with others, but no one takes those seriously. Teachers might assign a group project here and there, but we all know that the "smart" kids resent the "stupid" ones, concerned they will "hold them back" or not do enough of the work, taking relief in knowing that the grading, at least, will be individual. Working together to lift a loft, write a report, or solve a problem might be praised in the abstract, but every school child comes to know that at the end of of the day they will be judged not by what they have accomplished together, but rather by how well they compete against their classmates.

In school, to boast of one's prowess is no joke: it is the point.

People often try to make the argument that school must be this way because life is this way, but is it really? Yes, perhaps we do compete for jobs and promotions. There are some professions, like high-pressure sales jobs, in which employees find themselves pitted against one another, but even professional sports teams, like most employers, value teamwork above individual accomplishment. 

But even if we stipulate that the work-a-day world has certain competitive elements, that hardly comprises most of what makes life worth living. Most of what we do in our homes, communities, churches, and with our friends involves coming together around common problems, opportunities, or projects. Democracy itself, if it is to work, is far more akin to lifting a loft than competing for grades. This is what school, if it is to truly prepare children for life, should be about: people coming together to lift the loft.

One of the great American myths is this idea of a solitary hero who single-handedly saves the day, but it has never happened outside of a Hollywood movie. No doctor saves a life on their own. No engineer builds a bridge without the support of thousands. No community has ever been kept safe except by the actions of the community itself. No one has ever lived a joyful life unless they have spent it accomplishing meaningful things, shoulder-to-shoulder with others. That is what I wish for the children I teach -- a life in community.

The moment the loft's long legs touched the ground, the children cheered. Spontaneously. For themselves. Together they had done something that had at first seemed like an hyperbolic boast. They hugged and jumped up and down, saying things like, "We did it!" These are the best educated people on earth.

******

I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 15 years. I've recently gone back through the 4000+ blog posts(!) I've written since 2009. Here are my 10 favorite in a nifty free download. Click here to get yours.

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!

As If They've Never Before Seen a Human Ready and Eager to Learn

Jean-Michel Basquiat (Luna Luna)

Over my decades as a play-based preschool teacher, I've never had to deal with a bored child. I've worked with sad and angry children, frightened and frustrated children, and even children who were experiencing emotions that our language cannot fully describe, but never a bored one . . . or at least not for long.

In our play-based program, children engage with an object or a game or a person of their choosing for a time. They are attracted by the novelty of whatever it is, drawn in by the questions they have about it. They put their hands on it, their minds to it. What is it? What can I do with it? What will it do with me? In other words, they play with it. Then, as their questions get answered, they start to lose interest and something like boredom creeps in, which is the brain's signal to move on to the next novelty. This is how humans have evolved to educate themselves.

From the perspective of neuroscience, the neural network that makes up our brain is, as most of us know by now, initially very plastic which allows it to absorb new information, but over time, and as the information becomes repetitive, it starts to solidify. We can actually feel this happening: we start with the thrill of novelty, followed by the satisfaction of mastery, and then comes the restlessness, the boredom, that draws us into new challenges. And in a play-based program there is always a new challenge, which is why I've never had to deal with a bored child: in a varied and beautiful environment, free people are always learning.

For a long time, we believed that this plasticity naturally solidifies as we age, achieving its "final" form in young adulthood, but we now know that our brains can remain plastic throughout life if only we continue to find ourselves in the presence of novelty. This is one of the reasons I read books, both fiction and nonfiction, history, mysteries, science, politics, psychology, classic novels, and especially books written by people who are not middle-aged, middle-class, American males because, being one of those, I'm a bit bored by that singular perspective. My day-to-day life may not always present me with all the novelty I need, but books are entire worlds I can access from within my current life. Of course, I also seek novelty in travel, in trying new things, in meeting new people. It takes more effort than it did when I was a child and everything was new, but I'm committed to not aging into a calcified old man.

In recent years, it's become an expression of common wisdom to say something like, Let your children be bored; that's how they learn to be creative. The idea is that kids will naturally overcome the lethargy and discomfort of their boredom by finding something to do and, bingo, the boredom is over. This is of course true, as we see every day in play-based preschool. But in the world beyond our playground, children are increasingly feeling trapped in a life in which they see little novelty and, perhaps more importantly, they have no permission to seek novelty.

As a boy, I recall experiencing boredom on days when I was stuck at home. Mom was busy, my brother irritating, and the toys were all played out. In other words, I'd mastered what there was to master, draining my self-contained world of novelty. I'd have watched TV, but back then, there was very little to interest children outside of Saturday mornings. If I complained, mom suggested chores. I would typically solve the problem by picking up a book, picking a fight with my brother, or going outside. In other words, I would escape to where the novelty was.

Today's children still have the escapes of books and bickering, although the habit of reading is on the wane and adults usually don't tolerate bickering. The sure fire option of going outside has pretty much been replaced by video games and an internet that provides 24/7 children's programming. However, we adults have, rightly or wrongly, determined that screen-based activities must be restricted in the name of health and safety, so we cut off that escape route. We buy them more toys than ever before, but the novelty of manufactured toys is, by design, always short-lived. We sign them up for classes and sports teams and whatnot. Sometimes that works, especially if a child discovers an art or pursuit or activity that inspires them, but since most of these types of things are offered on a schedule and at a remote location, they aren't options for long afternoons during which "There's nothing to do." These pre-planned activities require boredom to happen on a schedule, which isn't the way it works.

Standard schooling is even worse than being at home. Children are literally confined to rooms, to desks, to mandated curricula. They are made to memorize material in which they have no interest and learn skills for which they see no applicability. When they try to connect with the other children, they are told "no socializing." When novelty accidentally occurs -- a flooded playground, new toilets being installed, a raccoon family wanders past -- the children are shooed away. In many standard schools novelty is so rare that on those days in which it is consciously introduced -- an assembly, a visit from firefighters, a pizza party -- the adults are frightened by the children's excitement. It feels like things are on the verge of being out-of-control. 

It's as if they've never before seen a human ready and eager to learn.

And here's the point, boredom is meant to be a short-lived thing, fixed by going outside or reading a book or engaging with friends. It's nature's way to telling us that it's time to move on to something else. The kind of chronic boredom that characterizes standard schooling is not a benign thing. Extended periods of boredom damage the mind (see what happens to prisoners in isolation). It affects mental health. It leads to rage, depression, and worse. This is why I worry every time an adult dismisses a child's boredom as "a good thing." A little bit is necessary. A lot, like the degree to which many experience boredom in standard schools, can be deadly.

Our brains cannot tolerate ongoing, inescapable boredom, but it needs those small doses that let it know it's time to move on. We have evolved to keep ourselves, as science journalist George Musser puts it, "on the cusp between frustration and boredom," in that wonder-filled space between What is this and what can I do with it? and I'm ready for something new. This is what we see when children are uncaged, when they know they have permission to play in a varied and beautiful environment.

******

I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 15 years. I've recently gone back through the 4000+ blog posts(!) I've written since 2009. Here are my 10 favorite in a nifty free download. Click here to get yours.

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!

Microscopic Utopias

The boy was on his knees, sobbing. I don't know why, but I also did nothing because there was already someone caring for him. Two people, in fact: girls, his classmates, children who rarely played with him, but down there with him nonetheless, hands lovingly across his shoulder, on his knee, talking soothingly into his ear.

When I first started writing this blog, I did it for myself, but as people started reading and responding, as I began to see my words and ideas impact people, and especially as I began to see that the profession of early childhood education is full of people who see the world, or the prospects of a world, the way I do, I got the idea that maybe I could make a difference in how children everywhere experience childhood.

Yes, I'm a utopian. Yes, I've experienced the reformer's zeal. Call me naive, but even as I look around and see that there have been as many steps back as there have been forward, I remain convinced that a more beautiful world is possible. The news discourages me, but my job, the time I spend amongst the newest humans, convinces me that utopia is possible.

In her memoir Recollections of My Non-Existence, Rebecca Solnit, writes of "that microscopic utopia that is a moment of kindness." People use the word "childish" to refer to adults who behave in petulant, self-centered ways, but these microscopic utopias are also, even mostly, what I've discovered during my decades on my knees with children. Another book by Solnit is A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster, in which she shines a spotlight on the countless examples of temporary, but real, utopias that predictably emerge in the aftermath of earthquakes, fires, floods, and other traumatic events. While we focus on the pain and suffering, we too often miss the kindness that is our greatest and most childish glory.

The utopias, heavens, and nirvanas of our imaginations are perfected places, impossible in a world in which our fellow humans so often find themselves on their knees, sobbing. But what I've learned from my years with children is that utopia is not a destination, but rather an act of one human caring for another in their time of need. Actual utopia is created in moments of kindness.

******

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!

How I Think About "Disruptive" Behavior

On Tuesday, I paraphrased John Dewey, writing, "Two children together can sustain behavior or a project that neither would maintain alone. And that behavior or project might well be mischief." And sometimes that mischief rises to the level that it impacts the rest of the community as disruptive, frightening, or even hazardous.

The example I used is of two or more children allied in this way, goading one another into shoving classmates then running off, while giggling. It could be snatching toys. It could be name calling. It could be pulling hair. Whatever the case, it leaves classmates feeling targeted, violated, and even in danger. 

When two or more children start feeding each other's behavior in this way, more often than not they are doing one of three things: 1) seeking intensity, 2) seeking collaboration, 3) testing the boundaries of the community, all of which represent healthy developmental impulses. Our job is to help them pursue those impulses in ways that work for everyone.

The standard way of dealing with this, however, is to punish the offenders. Punishment might stem the behavior in the moment, but ultimately what it teaches children is that those with power get to tell them what to do, obedience to authority, a fundamentally anti-democratic concept. Furthermore, research into the mechanics of punishment finds that it's really only effective as long as the punisher remains present, not ending the behavior, but rather pushing the behavior underground. The only time that punishment produces lasting behavioral change is when it is so debilitating that the child would never dare risk it again. I hope no one reading here thinks it's okay to inflict that kind of severe punishments on a child.

Keeping in mind that this kind of disruptive collaborative behavior is based in a developmentally healthy impulse, the more thoughtful among us seek alternatives. Often, our first instinct is to reason with the collaborators, pointing out the impact of their behaviors. "She's crying because you took that from her." "When you shove people it isn't safe. My job is to keep everyone safe, so I can't let you do that." This is sometimes useful. Some very young children are not clear about their impact on others, but when children are feeding off one another in this way, no matter how gently and matter-of-factly we speak with them, it will, at best come off as scolding that must be endured before getting back to their important game in which they are deeply connected with another human. That's why they often continue giggling together, frustrating our attempts to talk them into behaving in less disruptive ways.

Often the simplest intervention is re-direction. We might casually say something like "I need your help over here," or "Can you bring those blocks to the table?" The goal is to temporarily interrupt the feedback loop and channel their urge to seek intensity and collaboration into something more appropriate

"You two are on fire today. Wanna help me build a bike ramp?"

"Alright, so I see you guys want to wrestle. How about you help me lay down some gym mats and have a real match?"

I once set up a "throwing station" with targets and projectiles as a way to divert a couple of kids who were winging things all over the playground. When "dinosaurs" were stomping on the blocks with which other children were trying to play, I brought out a box of scrap bubble wrap.

The goal isn't to stop their energy, but rather to help them find a legitimate outlet.

When confronted with disruptive behaviors I find myself asking the question, What is it about the environment that invites this behavior? Maybe it's too little space for rough-and-tumble play, maybe there aren't enough loose parts, maybe kids are having to wait too long for their turn, maybe the furniture needs to be rearranged. Adding materials, redefining the play area, or opening a new activity can dissolve the problem.

In Tuesday's post I mentioned that sometimes the only way to get beyond a problem is through it. By that I mean, that instead of trying to control their play from the outside, I like to join them with an eye toward gently shifting it in more acceptable ways. There was once a pair of kids goading one another to throw sand randomly into the air, aggravating other children in the process. Instead of trying to make them stop, I joined them, saying, "I'll bet I can make my sand land in that bucket over there." We kept throwing sand, but now it was targeted. We eventually moved the game into an out-of-the-way corner because "the other kids keep getting in the way." 

The goal here is to subtly change the narrative without kiboshing the whole thing.

Of course, the most powerful tool is to rely on our democratic classroom. When we sit down at circle time, I'll start things off by saying, without pointing to any individuals, "People are throwing sand and it's getting in people's eyes. What should we do?" Children often propose solutions that adults would never consider. Indeed, the best ideas often come from the children who were throwing the sand in the first place. It's powerful because what emerges is a democratically arrived at "agreement" rather than an adult imposed rule.

Sometimes the discussion alone stems the behavior even if no agreement is reached. A girl named Francis once told us that she was "scared" of some boys who playing a game they called "bad guys." The fierceness of the game made her nervous, even though she admitted that they had never hurt her. A few other kids joined her in her concern, but the "bad guys" insisted they liked their game. Two days later, the mother of the lead baddie pulled me aside, "When I went to tuck him in last night, he told me he wasn't going to play 'bad guys' any more because Francis didn't like it." That day, and for the days going forward, they played "good guys," the same game, but this change satisfied Francis' fears.

Of course, often the best approach is the one that is the hardest for many of us, and that is that we must learn to accept a certain level of chaos. Sometimes that burst of chaotic play strikes  us as disruptive, or it's not yet disruptive, but we think that if left unchecked it will become disruptive so we step in "before things get out of hand." And maybe that's the right move, but it's vital to keep in mind that what they are doing -- seeking intensity, seeking collaboration, testing boundaries -- are healthy impulses. 

Before stepping in, I like to pause long enough to ask myself, Is anyone getting hurt? Is anything important being destroyed? Is this truly harmful or just loud and messy?

If the answer is no, you might still want to remain close to the action, but the best move might be to sit with your discomfort and let the play run its course, which is to say, let the children fully engage the social experiment they've begun.

******

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!