Keeping It Short

A parent educator once told me that preschool teachers are just middle class bag ladies, so it shouldn’t surprise you that when my father-in-law retired from his position teaching English at the UW I saw it as a great opportunity to get “quality goods” cheaply. Since I was seeing him weekly, I began asking for ideas about what I ought to be reading. He started me out with Tom Jones. As I made my way through it, I kept Otto appraised of what I thought. He would listen patiently, then let me know how wrong I was.

This has been going on for more than 10 years now and is the reason I rarely read anything written since 1950. I’m only half joking when I say I’m earning a masters in English.

There is so much to love about classic novels, but my favorite part is mining them for epigrams. I know not everyone is as fond of the pithy comment as I am (my wife has no patience for them, for instance), but I can spend entire afternoons contemplating the implications of certain well-turned phrases. One of my first orders of business upon being hired at Woodland Park was to start sharing them on the bulletin boards of our classroom. I didn’t limit myself to novels, however; I’ll steal from television as readily as from Joseph Conrad.

Here are some of the quotes that have graced our walls over the years.

Laurence Sterne
My Sterne quotes come from his great novel Tristram Shandy, a remarkable work from one of the great clowning spirits. Reading this experimental masterpiece (which I’ve now done 3 times) it’s nearly impossible to believe that he was writing during the 18th Century.

. . . so long as a man rides his Hobby-Horse peaceably and quietly along the King’s highway, and neither compels you or me to get up behind him, -- pray, Sir, what have either you or I to do with it?

I have a hundred difficulties which I have promised to clear up, and a thousand distresses and domestic misadventures crowding in upon me thick and threefold, one upon the neck of another.

-- Certainly it was ordained as a scourge upon the pride of human wisdom, that the wisest of us all should . . . outwit ourselves, and eternally forego our purposes in the intemperate act of pursuing them.

Fyodor Dostoevsky
Both of these quotes come from the greatest novel ever written, The Brothers Karamazov. It’s one of the few books that have truly moved my soul.

As a general rule, people, even the wicked, are much more naïve and simple-hearted than we suppose. And we ourselves are, too

No one grows wise through another man’s woes.

George Eliot
Eliot’s a great novelist, of course, but probably not of the highest order. She does, however, come up with some of the greatest epigrams in all of literature.

The world would be a poor place if there were nothing but common sense in it.

So our lives glide on: the river ends we don’t know where, and the sea begins, and then there is no more jumping ashore.

It was that mixture of pushing forward and being pushed forward, which is a brief history of most human things.

Truly . . . the uncertainty of things is a text rather too wide and obvious for fruitful application; and to discourse of it is, as one may say, to bottle up air, and make a present of it to those who are already standing out of doors.

It is not true that love makes all things easy: it makes us choose what is difficult.

Confucius
No list of quotations would be complete with out him . . .

There is nothing to be done for a person who isn’t constantly asking What should be done?

How can you love people without encouraging them? And how can you be loyal to people without educating them?

Hold the young in awe.

The Tao Te Ching
The difficulty with the Tao is two-fold. First of all the “church” that has evolved from Lao Tzu’s teachings barely resembles its source. And secondly, it’s nearly impossible to translate ancient Chinese into English without losing a lot. That said, I keep a copy of the Tao in my car and read from it almost every day.

Don’t aim to perfect yourself.
Don’t rush into changing yourself.
Just do what needs doing
while accepting your feelings.

Let your feelings flourish . . .
and get on with your life of doing.

Water is frail and feeble.
Yet it gets its water work done.
It moves toward its goal.
Just being water.
You know its power.
Just be water.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
I originally began looking into MLK’s writings five years ago as I was preparing for our classroom celebration. Like most people, I was only really familiar with the I Have A Dream speech, but I learned that it was only the tip of the iceberg.

I am convinced that love is the most durable power in the world. It is not an expression of impractical idealism, but of practical realism. Far from being the pious injunction of a Utopian dreamer, love is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization. To return hate for hate does nothing but intensify the existence of evil in the universe. Someone must have sense enough and religion enough to cut off the chain of hate and evil, and this can only be done through love.

Nonviolence is absolute commitment to the way of love. Love is not emotional bash; it is not empty sentimentalism. It is the active outpouring of one’s whole being into the being of another.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation.

Mister Rogers
I will never have his personality, but I do aspire to be like Mister Rogers. You probably know that he was an ordained minister and he always spoke of his work with children as his “ministry”. The best thing is that he could teach without preaching.

Love is like infinity: You can’t have more or less infinity, and you can’t compare two things to see if they’re “equally infinite.” Infinity just is, and that’s the way I think love is, too.

Listening is where love begins . . .

Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.

All our lives, we rework the things from our childhood, like feeling good about ourselves, managing our angry feelings, (and) being able to say good-bye to people we love.

Tom Waits
I tend to be drawn to the solitary, male singer/songwriters like Johnny Cash, Neil Young and Leonard Cohen. As far as epigrams go, Tom Waits gets the special star.

Ask a king or a beggar
And the answer they’ll give
Is we’re all gonna be
Yea, yea.

You must risk something that matters.

I don’t wanna have to shout it out
I don’t want my hair to fall out
I don’t wanna be filled with doubt
I don’t wanna be a good boy scout
I don’t wanna have to learn to count
I don’t wanna have the biggest amount
I don’t wanna grow up.

Grab bag

It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death. --Thomas Mann

You shouldn’t wish your child is a genius, you should hope (s)he’s an optimist. --Edward Hallowell

The opposite of play isn’t work, it’s rote. --Edward Hallowell

Nothing is perfect . . . except everything. --Josephine (age 3)

In limitations he first shows himself the master. --Goethe

Love is what's in the room with you . . . if you stop opening presents and listen. --Bobby (age 5)

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties. --Francis Bacon

Isn’t it love that keeps us breathing?
Isn’t it love we’re sent here for? --Bonnie Raitt

Time is eternity that stammers. --Umberto Eco

I am too firm in my consciousness of the marvelous to be ever fascinated by the mere supernatural . . . --Joseph Conrad

That’s what life is . . . coming to places like this. --Six Feet Under

Together we’re a genius. --Six Feet Under

Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. --Rumi

(Fairy tales) tell children what they unconsciously know – that human nature is not innately good, that conflict is real, that life is harsh before it is happy – and thereby reassure them about their own fears and their own sense of self. --Arthur Schlesinger

This is the moment you’ve been waiting for. --Jack LaLanne

The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right name. --Chinese proverb

There is a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in. --Leonard Cohen

It is not only necessary to love: it is also necessary to say it. --French Proverb

Rotten Island

During the rest of the week the 3, 4 and 5 year olds at Woodland Park are in class together, but we set aside one afternoon for the oldest children to have their own special class that we call Pre-K. This class is comprised of the 8-10 children who we will be sending off to kindergarten. One of the benefits of this is I get to expose the kids to my favorite children’s book author and illustrator, William Steig.

I start off each school year with a reading of Rotten Island, which is the book that changed my mind about what a children’s book could be. From its opening words you know you’re reading something different:

There was once a very unbeautiful, very rocky, rotten island. It had acres of sharp gravel and volcanoes that belched fire and smoke, spewed hot lava, and spat poison arrows and double-headed toads.

The spiny, thorny, twisted plants that grew there had never a flower of any kind.

There was an earthquake an hour, black tornadoes, lightning sprees with racking thunder, squalls, cyclones, and dust storms.

Steig goes on to detail the menagerie of monsters that live on this rotten island, describing “electric eels of high voltage,” “armour-plating full of tacks and rusty nails,” and “clacking shells covered with grit and petrified saurkraut.” They fight and claw for fun. They bathe in hot lava and laugh when others suffer pain. They take revenge, break things, caterwaul, and give each other bad dreams.

Rotten Island was their Paradise.

Once, after reading it to the group, Calvin raised his hand and said with the smile of a child tasting a forbidden delicacy, “I know why this is a Pre-K book; because it has violence in it.”

This is not a book for the feint of heart or even many 3-year-olds, who I’ve seen become overly frightened by it. In fact, most of Steig’s books fall into this category.

There’s Dr. De Soto, the mouse dentist who bravely performs dental surgery on a fox, knowing full well that he could be eaten at any moment. Adding to the suspense is the fact that the readers are privy to the fox’s inner monologue in which he has “definitely decided to eat them – with the help of his brand new tooth.”

And Solomon The Rusty Nail, in which our bunny hero, who has the magical ability to transform himself into a rusty nail, finds himself pounded into a wall by a hungry cat.

Or The Amazing Bone, in which gun toting bad guys are scared off by our pig heroine’s talking bone.

There are the horrifying creatures, such as in Shrek!.

And the equally horrifying concepts of Kafka-esque justice and bottled up parents found in The Zabajaba Jungle.

But most importantly, and the reason these books are so vital and beloved by the Pre-K children, is their straight-forward honesty about an imperfect world. Grown-Ups Get To Do All The Driving is so painfully honest that I’ve had parents request we remove it from the classroom.

Steig certainly wrote some less challenging books, such as the charming Pete’s A Pizza (which I read to the younger children as well) or the clever CDC? and CDB! But most of his work uses big words to address big ideas like life and death, peace and violence, truth and beauty -- just like real literature. And while adults often cringe because these books are so unlike much of the gentle butterfly sweetness found in other picture books, the children’s attentions are fixed and their eyes are round with amazement as I read. They can hardly contain themselves when I’m done. They are compelled to talk, to examine these heady concepts, and to clearly enjoy the flavor of truths that seem forbidden.

Steig’s stories put me in mind of classic fables and fairy tales and their ability to convey great truths from generation to generation. Until Walt Disney put his hands on it, for instance, children knew that the story of Cinderella ended with pigeons pecking out the eyes of the “false sisters.” Or that Snow White’s step mother is condemned in the end to dance in red-hot iron shoes until she falls down dead.

I don’t think we do children, especially “Pre-K” children, any favors by protecting them from the kinds of truths found in these stories. As Arthur Schlesinger said:

(Fairy tales) tell children what they unconsciously know – that human nature is not innately good, that conflict is real, that life is harsh before it is happy – and thereby reassure them about their own fears and their own sense of self.

Honest fairy tales give us a safe, fictional place in which young children, along with their adults, can explore the darker side of life, think about it, consider ways to deal with it, and generally prepare themselves for the real world.

And it’s something they really want to explore. I need only look into the faces of our Pre-K kids as I read Rotten Island, hear their gallows laughter, and share their discussions, to know that this is true. And the more we do this, the more confident they become that they will be able to handle whatever the world throws in their way.

At the end of The Zabajaba Jungle, Leonard frees his parents from a bottle in which they’re mysteriously imprisoned.

“Where are we?” his father asks.

“In the Zabajaba Jungle.”

“How do we get out?”

“Follow me,” says Leonard.

The truth, whatever our age, will set us free.

I Don’t Know What To Do

(Note: I wrote this short story several years ago as part of one of my teaching courses at the college. We'd been given the challenge of "creatively demonstrating" our understanding of one of the core concepts of the course. Although it's longer than a typical blog post, I've been wanting to re-publish it here for some time. For me, it still illustrates some "core concepts" that I hold dear. I wonder if it does for anyone else? )


The Dykemaster

The dyke was leaking. Then again, it was an old dyke – ancient – and it was always leaking. It’s to be presumed that there had been a time when the dyke that surrounded the village wasn’t crumbling, but that day was lost in the mists of time. Lost there too was the source of the wisdom that caused the original settlers to decide upon building the dyke instead of moving away from the rising waters that daily threatened their survival.

But build it they did -- of stone and mortar.

The most important citizen in the village was the one in charge of maintaining the wall: the dykemaster. A venerated elder, the dykemaster’s task was one that required on-going diligence and an army of strong arms and legs to labor at the task of preserving the dyke. So vital to their survival was this mission that each of the village youths was expected to serve a 3-year stint in the service of the dykemaster, toiling at the wall, and receiving essential education at the feet of the master.

One day, as the dykemaster made his daily round of inspection, one of his charges ran up to him. “We’ve a leak, but no mortar!”

The dykemaster himself was to blame for this. He had only that morning ordered those in charge of mixing mortar to leave off in order that they might help with more pressing work in the rock quarry.

“You’ve no mortar, then use your finger,” he directed. “We’ll have fresh mortar as soon as humanly possible.”

The youth did as he was told.

Being as leaky as it was, the dyke typically sprung several leaks every day, but as luck would have it, on this day there were dozens more than usual. To each of the youths who ran up to the dykemaster, he answered, “Use your finger.”

The dykemaster finished his rounds, just as black storm clouds began to loom over the village. We must shelter those youths from the weather, the dykemaster concluded, after that we will mix more mortar. “Build tents for them,” he commanded. As the youths stood with their fingers in the dyke, others toiled around them, erecting heavy canvas coverings.

Dinnertime drew near. We must feed those youths, the dykemaster concluded, after that we will mix more mortar. “Cook dinner for them,” he commanded. As the youths stood with their fingers in the dyke, while others toiled around them erecting tents, the remaining youths scrambled to cook and deliver dinner to everyone.

By the time dinner had been eaten, it was late and the workers were tired. We must get some sleep, the dykemaster concluded, after that we will mix more mortar. “Sleep,” he commanded those not charged with keeping their fingers in the dyke.

The dykemaster was awakened in the night by reports that many of those with their fingers in the dyke had fallen asleep. We must give those youths a break, the dykemaster concluded, after that we will mix more mortar. “Go and replace them at their posts.”

The dykemaster, now fully awake, could not possibly sleep after this. He foresaw that the morning would bring breakfast. After that there would be more leaks, youths who needed rest, then lunch . . . He needed to get around in front of this process. After several hours of contemplation, he devised a plan.

The next morning, he gathered together those of his charges who could come.

“We are coming upon a time of great hardship and we must each of us take on added weight to our burden. As you are aware, we are tending each leak with a finger. The task of a leak, however, has proved too taxing for but one finger. I will therefore assign 3 fingers to each leak: one to plug the hole, one to tend to the needs of the one plugging the hole and the third will rest. Those not assigned to a leak will serve as cooks.”

“What about the mortar?” one of them asked.

“That will have to wait until our crisis has passed.”

The dykemaster was proud of the way his disciples took on their unusual duties in these unusual times. When a new leak was discovered, he immediately dispatched a team of 3 who plugged their hole, erected their tent, prepared their bed, and initiated communications with the kitchen. The youths were in high spirits, it was fun for them, and the dykemaster took this as a sign that he was doing his job with creativity and flare.

After several days, however, it became necessary to forego lessons altogether as the dykemaster’s remaining troops were sent in threes to take up positions on the wall. Shortly after that, the kitchen staff began to erode, until finally all that could be mustered for sustenance were crackers and carrot juice.

The dykemaster knew it wouldn’t be long before the grumbling began.

It’s time to pro-actively rally the troops, he thought, and set out on a “goodwill tour” of his ever-multiplying outposts. The first thing he noted was how comfortable they had made themselves. Most had hung hammocks or had gathered mounds of soft hay upon which the dyke fingerer could repose. Many of the tents had been either replaced or augmented by wooden walls, some with windows, all with fresh paint. It seems the various outposts had formed alliances with one another and shared work to such an extent that they had time for such things as decorating. One team had already planted a garden in response to the crackers and carrot juice. “Free time” was so rampant that a wide variety of hobbies had sprung up: book clubs had formed, a dance was scheduled, there was talk of a recreational volleyball league . . . The youths seemed happy and enthusiastic.

The dykemaster, as might be expected of a great and wise personage, was horrified. “What has happened here?” he cried. “We’re not here for pleasure, we’re here to work, to strive . . . For god’s sake, it’s a time of crisis!”

The youths to whom he had addressed this diatribe looked up insolently from their game of backgammon and shrugged. “What can we do? We must mind our leak.”

The dykemaster arrived home in a foul mood. How could matters have gone so wrong? He wanted to blame his youths, but in his heart he knew that he had mismanaged the entire business. If only he had made the time for mixing the mortar at the very start.

That, of course, was how he would correct the situation – he would have mortar made at once. He sent word that one of every three was being recalled from the dyke to mortar mixing duty. Word came back, however, that not a single one of them could be spared. Word went out again that they had no choice in the matter. Word once more returned to the effect that should he continue on in this haughty tone, the youths, acting in unison, would remove their fingers from the dyke, which would result in the destruction of the village.

It had come to this.

The dykemaster burnt-out the flame of his outrage, then fell into a state of melancholy reflection. As angry as he was, he had to admit one thing: they were enjoying themselves. He even chuckled at the memory of their devices and admitted respect for their inventiveness and self-motivation – there was just no . . . direction to it. Whatever else they did, they emphatically were not fulfilling the fundamental charge of their existence: they were not, in any way, maintaining the wall. But what could he do about it? He had lost his power to command – without that, how could anything be accomplished?

He paced through the night, then, finally, in desperation, he went to the nearest of the encampments. There he found one of the most senior of his youths – a girl named Sara.

Dispensing with the formalities customary when a great and wise personage addresses a youth, the dykemaster explained his situation as clearly as he could: “We must mix mortar or we will all die. I don’t know what to do.”

Sara thought a moment. “None of us want to die.”

“But you will not mix mortar.”

“That’s because we know that if we do, everything will go back to the way it was. We will live in the dormitories, rising and sleeping by your schedule, doing as you tell us. This is much better.”

“I understand,” said the dykemaster gravely, “but we can’t keep our fingers in the dyke forever. We need mortar.”

“I understand,” answered Sara, mirroring the dykemaster. She consulted with her teammates, then said, “If you let us remain here, living like this, the three of us will mix the mortar to fix our hole.”

Armed with this small success, the dykemaster proceeded from tent to tent saying, “I don’t know what to do.”

Soon the mortar was mixed and the holes were patched. The youths then, through their system of alliances, made sure that they would never again be without mortar.

At first, the dykemaster did not know what to do with himself. As he stood by, he felt helpless, but at the same time thrilled. Never before had he seen his charges so alive. Yet, never before had he felt so useless: he was no longer called upon to direct. The maintenance of the wall no longer needed him; the youths were educating themselves through their hobbies; they had even managed to get more from the kitchen than crackers and carrot juice.

He still felt at sea on the day when the village elders awarded him the honor of “Dykemaster of the Millennium”.

The old dyke still leaked as always, but many thought it did so less frequently than in times past. The youths grew in body and intellect.

And the dykemaster finally came to understand his new role. It was simply to look around and be the one to say, “I don’t know what to do.”

Educational Toys

As a boy I lived in a lot of places -- Missouri, Connecticut, Texas, Greece, Oregon -- but the place I consider my childhood home is 134 Wembley Street, a suburban cul-de-sac in Columbia, South Carolina. That was where I lived from the age of 4 until the middle of my 4th grade year.

There were a lot of kids on our street, Johnny and Chuckie Beale, Pheobe and John Azar, the Wieble girls, the Cozart boys, big John Sain who could run right over us smaller kids in a game of tackle football, little Thomas Ballentine who we could talk into doing things the rest of us were too timid to try. We spent our free time ranging up and down the street having pinecone wars, playing kick ball, making forts in piles of recently cut tree limbs that had been piled along the curb for the garbage truck.

As we got older and bikes made us mobile, we roamed the wider neighborhood, building damns in the roadside ditches, laying down skid marks on asphalt, and hunting in the woods on "Hampton's Land" for lizards, frogs, and turtles that we would then put in boxes or jars. We met the kids from Christopher and Winston Streets, quarreling with some of them and befriending others.

Some of our mothers had actual dinner bells they would stand on the porch and ring when it was time to come home. It didn’t really matter whose mother was ringing, we all went home when we heard the first bell.

Throughout all of this outdoor play I don’t remember many toys. There were balls and shovels and the various slides, swings, and jungle gyms we had in our backyards. And I suppose bikes could be classified as toys, although they were equally transportation.

Inside, in our bedrooms, we had toys like cars, blocks, stuffed animals, and later dangerous things like hot plates for melting lead (that we poured into molds to make figurines), bows and arrows, and wood burning sets. We had a pair of heavy cars called SSTs that looked like dragster rockets that could be made to travel at very high speeds by yanking a rip-cord. They left perfectly round bruises on ankles, and girls had to be careful not to get their long hair caught the flywheel or it would have to be cut off. We had a game called “Skittle Bowl” that involved swinging a hard wooden ball on a chain around a post. Duck!

One thing none of us ever owned was an “educational toy.”

This long introduction is by way of pointing you to a funny, insightful and very well-written post on the topic of educational toys, educational TV, and what that means. It’s by Woodland Park Pre-3 parent Toby Beth Jarman and appears on the website Offsprung where she writes a featured blog called Tykegeist.

I like this line:

. . . it’s curious to me why a culture that’s often so proudly and willfully ignorant would care whether their babies are smarter than other babies.

And this one:

At what age does intelligence lose its bragging rights, anyway?

I love Toby's prose and enjoy her thinking. Go read it.

Weighing The Pig Doesn’t Fatten It

I’ve become an political geek these last few years, so those of you who know me probably won’t find it surprising that I was re-reading the transcript from a town hall meeting on healthcare that President Obama held in Green Bay back in June.

I’m not sure what I was looking for, but I was suddenly struck by the presence of a non-healthcare question. It was from a teacher:

Q: One of the things that I've learned in education in the last 20 years is that the system is not broken. And it bothers me when I hear politicians, and even my President, say that our educational system is broken . . . This system works . . . There are great things happening in Green Bay and Appleton and all over the UP. And there are things that can be reproduced. My question is: When will the focus be on reproducing those things -- smaller classrooms, creating communities in your classrooms -- and moving the focus away from single-day testing and test-driven outcomes? (Applause.)

Excellent question. In fact, it was the advent of the misguided and unfunded “No Child Left Behind” alongside the charter school initiatives more than anything else that caused me to become politically active in the first place. It particularly got under my skin that teachers and their unions were being unfairly blamed for all the failings of public education, and that many of the very people who assert that government can never do anything right were now telling professional educators how to do our jobs. These MBAs, CPAs and lawyers were going to somehow work their privatizing, standardizing magic and show us how to manufacture super-duper blueberry ice cream.

This is how the president answered:

I completely agree with you that there is a lot of good stuff going on in American education. The problem is . . . that it's uneven. (Applause.) Well, let me put it this way. There are actually two problems. In some places it is completely broken. In some urban communities where you've got 50 percent of the kids dropping out, you only have one out of every 10 children who are graduating at grade level -- this system is broken for them . . .

I lived in the Detroit area for several years, and have joked ever since that it’s a good place to be from. Public education is still a mess there, and it has much more to do with mismanagement and lack of funds than it does teachers. The sound is choppy in parts of this video, but the opening tells the story even without words:



The president goes on:

Now, in other places . . . the average public school is actually doing a reasonably good job -- but I can still say that even if you factor out the urban schools, we are falling behind when it comes to math; our kids are falling behind when it comes to science. We have kind of settled into mediocrity when we compare ourselves to other advanced countries and wealthy countries. That's a problem because the reason that America over the last hundred years has consistently been the wealthiest nation is because we've also been the most educated nation.

It used to be by a pretty sizable factor we had the highest high school graduation rates, we had the highest college graduation rates, we had the highest number of Ph.D.s, the highest number of engineers and scientists. We used to be head and shoulders above other countries when it came to education. We aren't anymore. We're sort of in the middle of the pack now among wealthy, advanced, industrialized countries.

So even with the good schools, we've got to pick up the pace, because the world has gotten competitive. The Chinese, the Indians, they're coming at us and they're coming at us hard, and they're hungry, and they're really buckling down.

On the one hand, I do feel patriotically challenged when I learn that we’re “sort of in the middle of the pack.” On the other, I’m not wild about the notion that our schools should be judged based on their ability to create wealth – education should be its own reward. But okay, I got it, I'm a utopian. If this is what motivates us to do a better job of educating kids, I’ll take it.

And they (the Chinese, Indians, etc.) watch -- their kids watch a lot less TV than our kids do, play a lot fewer video games, they're in the classroom a lot longer. (Applause.)

Yay! I’m all for less time in front of screens, but longer time in the classroom? Boo! Kids need time to be kids. This is the danger of the education-as-vocational-training approach: it tends to rob children of their childhood.

And now for the part where he starts to propose solutions:

So here's the bottom line. We've got to improve, we've got to step up our game -- which brings me to the next point in your question, which is, how do we do that? I agree with you that if all we're doing is spreading around a lot of standardized tests and teaching to the test, that's not improving our education system. (Applause.)

There's a saying in Illinois I learned when I was down in a lot of rural communities. They said, "Just weighing a pig doesn't fatten it." (Applause.) You can weigh it all the time, but it's not making the hog fatter. So the point being, if we're all we're doing is testing and then teaching to the test, that doesn't assure that we're actually improving educational outcomes.

We do need to have accountability, however. We do need to measure progress with our kids. Maybe it's just one standardized test, plus portfolios of work that kids are doing, plus observing the classroom. There can be a whole range of assessments, but we do have to have some kind of accountability, number one.

Number two, we do have to upgrade the professional development for our teachers. (Applause.) I mean, we still have a lot of teachers who are -- we've got a lot of teachers who are well-meaning, but they're teaching science and they didn't major in science and they don't necessarily know science that well. And they certainly don't know how to make science interesting. So we've got to give them the chance to train and become better teachers. We've got to recruit more teachers, train them better, retain them better, match them up with master teachers who are doing excellent work so that they are upgrading their skills . . .

. . . Now, the key point I want to make is this: We should focus on what works, based on good data. And Arne Duncan, my Secretary of Education, this guy is just obsessed with improving our education system. He is focused a hundred percent on it, and he is completely committed to teachers. We think that teachers are the most important ingredient in good schools. We're going to do whatever works to help teachers do a better job -- (Applause) -- we're going to eliminate those thing that don't help teachers do a good job. Some of it is going to require more money, so in our Recovery Act, we have more money for improving curriculums, teacher training, recruitment, a lot of these things. But you can't just put more money without reform, and so some of it is demanding more accountability and more reform.

It’s a bit doughy, but it’s good to see phrases like “based on good data,” “going to require more money,” and “teacher training.” It’s refreshing after 8 years of the under-funded, knee-jerk, punitive, blame-teachers-first approach we’ve seen from our federal government. I have heard the president speak highly of charter schools in the past (an approach that tends to suck middle class kids and tax dollars out of public schools, with very little educational advantage to show for it), but I can wait until things are fleshed out to complain.

And this is where the president wrapped up his answer:

There's one other ingredient, though, and that is parents. (Applause.) We've got to have parents putting more emphasis on education with our kids. That's how we're all going to be able to pick up our game. (Applause.)

He saved the most important for last, I think, but I wonder what, if anything, the federal government can do about it. Time and again, studies show that the most strongly correlated factor in determining a child’s academic success is his parent’s commitment to education. This is where Barack Obama is doing what he always does: remind us that in our country, the hard work is always left up to “We the people.”

Anyone reading this is likely already the kind of parent he's talking about. So what can we do to pay it forward?

Learning the Hard Way

I think this story beautifully illustrates why we should make no assumptions when a 2-year-old hits another child. I hope it also shows how taking a lazy short cut, like spanking or scolding, would have only served to further bewilder a child who was already confused about hitting.

My first day teaching the Pre-3 class was an eye-opener. A boy was crying, probably because someone was playing with a toy he wanted. Ellie rushed over and started pummeling the poor kid. She rained blows down upon his head and shoulders like no body’s business. There was absolutely no malice in Ellie’s face as she did this. In fact, she looked almost like she was just taking care of a necessary piece of business.

Over the next few weeks, I found Ellie to be a happy, loving, very verbal little girl, but whenever a classmate cried her response was to start beating on him. I tried repeatedly to get her to tell me something that would give me insight into what she was thinking before she finally said, “I want him to stop crying.”

I answered, “But when you hit him, it hurts him.”

The blank stare followed by a quick change of subjects was enough to tell me that as delightful and articulate as she was, Ellie was not ready to comprehend the concept. Clearly, she knew there was a connection between hitting, hurting and crying, but the wires in that connection were crossed.

After that, when a child cried I let another adult tend to him, while my first order of business was to find Ellie, shadow her, and grab her wrists just before the fisticuffs. I would then help her to gently pat her crying friend by guiding her hands with my own, kind of like she was my own personal soothing puppet. She soon got the hang of it, eventually turning those gentle strokes into hugs. Of course, at first, the hugs were overly enthusiastic and tended to wind up with both kids falling to the floor, but once again, employing the time-tested scientific method of trial and error she figured that one out too.

This is real work, even if it sometimes just looks like mayhem. We expect every child to learn these basic lessons. Thankfully they don’t all have to learn it the hard way.

But some do.

A Welcome Summer Vacation Rain

Across the country, students and teachers are heading back to school, while those of us residing in the Great Northwest still have a month of summer vacation in our sights. I’m pretty sure that this is largely a climate-related discrepancy. After all, if we’re lucky we really only get 3 relatively warm and rain-free months around here and it’s only fair that our school schedule is designed to give our kids (and teachers) full advantage of that outdoor time.

That said, it started raining last night and continues this morning. It’s a much needed rain, but not just because it cleans the air and waters the rhododendrons. It's also helping turn my attentions toward our upcoming school year, and it was only fitting that the first drops began to fall as our Woodland Park 3-5’s Cooperative Preschool board sat down together last night to collect our thoughts for the coming year.

Cooperative preschools are parent owned and operated institutions and so it was fitting that we met in our chairwoman’s living room, where I got to see my friend Ella, ready for bed in a snappy pink princess bathrobe. It’s hard to believe that she’ll be starting her third and final year at Woodland Park. We’ve known each other for a long time, Ella and I, traveling together for two full years of messy art, crazy loco stories, princesses, and ladybugs. This year, she’s one of our 11 Pre-K kids, and as such she and her friends – even more than their parents – are the keepers of our institutional memory.

We grown-ups had a great board meeting last night, satisfactorily whipping through the nuts and bolts of our agenda in record time, then tackling a couple challenging issues that have cropped up over the summer. We will be ready for that first day of school.

The school belongs to the parents right now, but once those doors open, we turn it over to the kids and we’ll be counting on Ella, Luna, Anjali, Josephine, Fletcher, Jack, Annabelle, Thomas, Finn, Katherine, and Sarah to set the tone for what kind of community we’re going to be. They’ll be the ones, for instance, who teach the 11 younger children about raising their hands if they’ve something to say. They’ll take the lead and role-model appropriate behavior when we sing, clean-up, and transition from one thing to another. They’ll be the ones who begin the year-long process of making rules. It will be the Pre-K children who recall or forget the traditions and rituals that marked prior years. They will teach the games, conversations, and silliness that makes our community unique.

These eleven 4-year-olds have been coming to Woodland Park together for as long as they remember, and some (i.e., Luna, Annabelle, Finn and Sarah) have been here even longer, tagging along with their older siblings. And I expect that some (i.e., Ella, Anjali, Fletcher, Annabelle, Katherine, and Thomas) will remain a part of our community for years to come as they tag-along with their younger siblings.

I still have four weeks of summer vacation left and I’m going to take full advantage of them, but that won’t stop me from pining a bit as I hear about the first week of school from my colleagues around the country. I expect the sun to return again, but this morning I welcome the rain as a reminder of my friends and the fun we will have together building our community.

It’s Hard Work For Everyone

All our lives, we rework the things from our childhood, like feeling good about ourselves, managing our angry feelings, being able to say good-bye to the people we love. –Mister Rogers

I’ve told the story dozens of times, about how all the important women in my life (wife, mother and mother-in-law) were for once unanimous in their opinion that 2-year-old Josephine was too young for preschool. “She is too young to be on her own,” was the main argument. The only way I could get around their objections was enrolling in a cooperative preschool, and only then if I attended with her every time.

The part of the story I tend to leave out is what a relief it was to have had that restriction. Without it I would have stayed with her anyway, but been plagued by fears I was hobbling her social prospects, creating an unnatural attachment, or otherwise generating raw material for future therapy sessions. Instead, I was able to tell myself that I was just abiding by the democratic will of my childrearing inner circle. I could shrug my shoulders when Teacher Sue or another parent asked me about it: “I’m just lucky we get to go to preschool at all.” The implication, of course, being that I, the enlightened caregiver, knew that young children needed to learn about separation, but I had to honor those women I love – even if they’re wrong. It made my part of the “work” of separation a lot easier.

The primary objective of our first year in preschool is to teach the children to trust the larger world beyond the four walls and familiar faces of home. We want our preschool to be a safe, predictable, self-contained “neighborhood” in which children can develop the confidence and skills to do that. And part of doing that is learning that you can still trust it, even when mommy (or daddy) isn’t there with you.

One of the benefits of the cooperative model is that we can let parents and their kids take the process of “separation” at their own pace. Some kids arrive on that first day ready to go. Others can’t stand the thought of even releasing mommy’s hand. Some children seem to start out comfortable, only to have their fears and concerns crop up several weeks or even months into the school year. Some will warm up slowly and steadily. Others will take a roller coaster ride of ups and downs.

This is hard work our young children are doing and the path is not always straight. Many young 2-year-olds are still learning about “object permanence” and they’re not even sure mommy will come back. Talk about anxiety. But then she does come back, again and again, until he understands that mommy will always come back.

Most, however, are fully aware that mommy still exists even when she’s not at preschool and they wail, “I want my mommy!” They run to the door through which she left and beat on it with their tiny hands, wrestling with the child-proofed door knob. It’s heartbreaking, but rarely lasts for more than 5 minutes. Woodland Park has installed one-way mirrors to allow parents to watch how their child handles herself, and most are relieved (and sometimes a little disappointed) when the tears stop and the play begins in a matter of minutes, even seconds in some cases.

As the school year progresses, it’s very common for children in this age group to repeatedly run down the day’s schedule, concluding with, “then daddy comes and gets me.” It’s a plot. It’s creating order from chaos. It soothes the anxiety. As adults, we consciously help them understand this story, making sure they know that it ends when we sing the “Boom Boom Song” (our traditional ending to the day), and they get to see their parent again. That's why it's so important that we adhere strictly to our schedule -- the children depend on it.

Over the past decade, I’ve become fairly adept at helping children through their separation anxiety. In fact, it’s a job I relish. There is nothing that makes me love my job more than the feeling of a child’s tears soaking through the fabric of my shirt and onto my neck and shoulder. I love when they trust me enough to put their head there for comfort.

Figuring out what will sooth a child through their separation anxiety is usually a process of trail and error.

The fall back position, is distraction. Twos have notoriously short attention spans and most of the time all it takes is to point out the blocks or the paints. Last year, we had several boys, who could readily set aside their emotions in the presence of our collection of Hot Wheels. That was a fairly easy one. Many children need less prosaic fetishistic distractions, such as gloves, traffic cones, board game spinners, or pine cones (to name but a few I’ve actually discovered in the past couple years). It may take awhile, but once you’ve found the object or activity, you can rely on it.

The change of pace is another technique I’ve found effective. While many children struggle with transitions, others take the opportunity to snap out of it. Some children just need me to beat the drum for clean up time. And when a child needs a transition when there isn’t a natural reason for one, it needs to be manufactured. Brandon and I found that “taking a nap” under the loft made for a great transition. When we “woke up” it was a whole new day. Ellie and I needed to physically separate ourselves by sitting on our entry way stairs and observing the class from there. Other times we take a walk in our courtyard. Charlie once took me all the way to the gate, crying, before saying, "Mommy gone." After that he was fine. And then there’s the old, reliable standby: reading books. It’s difficult for me to read books in the loft because I tend to draw a crowd. That’s why we have a parent designated as librarian every day. I rely on that parent to help create a quiet temporary oasis for children who need it.

Another method is what I think of as rubbing your child off on another adult. This is a technique that can really only be employed in a co-op, with lots of extra grown-ups in the room. Twos are typically adult focused and many just need to know there’s a trustworthy grown-up friend they can count on. At Woodland Park each child has a “buddy” parent, a special adult who works in the classroom on the day the child’s parent doesn’t work. In the same vein, sometimes a home visit from Teacher Tom is helpful. I’m aware that for many of your children I’m Barney or Thomas the Tank Engine – a celebrity perhaps, but not necessarily a “friend” – and a quiet, personal visit on their home turf helps break down that wall.

Then there is just listening. More verbal twos might just need to talk about it: over and over and over again, through their tears or not. Our job is to hold them if they want to be held, repeat their words to them, agree with them, name their emotions, and assure them that mommy will come back when we sing the “Boom Boom Song.”

And finally we have the baby-steps approach. Some parents have been successful with the technique of leaving the room for longer and longer periods of time over the course of the school day, giving their children multiple examples of mommy coming back again and again and again.

Eventually, separation gets easier for children, but it never gets easier for parents. A few summers ago, when Josephine was only 9, she spent 3 whole weeks away from home at a camp. Our only means of communication were snail mail letters. Believe me, I wished my wife, mother and mother-in-law would have just told me that she had to stay home. I’m already dreading the driver’s license and she’s only 12.

It’s the job of a child to separate. It’s the job of a parent to help them do it. It’s hard work for everyone.

And Now For Something Completely Silly

After yesterday’s somewhat upsetting post, I thought we could cleanse the pallet with some more of the children’s stories.

There are two components to the children’s storytelling. The first part is when we sit in a corner of the room and the child dictates his story. Then there is the “performance” portion of the process when the child stands in front of his peers at Circle Time as I read the story. It doesn’t take long for some of the children to realize that silly stories generate a disproportionately huge audience response. Each of these stories had them rolling in the aisles.

Inanimate objects that walk and talk are always good for a laugh, as are made-up words with silly definitions. Katherine demonstrates mastery of both in this story:

Once there was a talking hat that walked by itself without any legs. And then some cheeks came by and walked on some silly hair and it talked, talked, talked, talked, talked. And then it ran over stuff. And then it bumped into some glasses. And then there was a dog and a little baby puppy. One more puppy and a one more talking sweater and a Boppa Gee Gee (a kind of silly dog). Some much talking teeth came and scaired away everything. –Katherine (3)

Ella’s story is silly alright, but right at the end, she decided to throw in a bit of the sublime:

My story is about Mini Kitty. She sleeped all night. And then she goes crazy loco. And then some talking clothes came by. And then some crazy loco Floam came by. And then a load of people came by. And then talking rug came by. And then some real talking baby came by. And then a talking Hulk came by. And then a talking hole came by. And then some talking paper animals came by. And then a load of mommies came by. And then a crazy loco floor came by. And then a princess came by. –Ella (3)

I often wish I could send my wallet to the store on my behalf:

There was a walkie talkie was walking on its head. Then the ghost came and fell on his head. And then a pig was squeezing his stomach. And then a bad guy punched himself in the eye. And then the silly ghost was bonking its head on the wall. And then something happened – he walked through the wall and he bonked into the wood! Somebody made his hand bonk his head. And then there was a guy who say, “Hey, you’re not supposed to be in here!” And then there was a talking wallet. And it was walking into the store. –Elliot O. (4)

Most of Elliott T's stories started with the same joke. For this particular one, he ask my permission to use me in his story. Re-reading it now, I’m wondering if granting that permission was wise:

Once upon a time. The End . . . There’s more. Once upon a time there was a DD head (that’s what people call it when it walks on its head). And then there was a What The Heck jumping on the head. And then there was Teacher Tom, and then something stinky happened in the garbage can. And then the shoes walked over. And the shoes talked to the garbage can and then the shoes got spilled by the garbage can on accident. And then there was a super stinky. And the mirror walked over. And then there was a Elliott T. And then there was another super stinky. Then there was a What The Heck. And then they got squirted in their face. --Elliott T. (5)

Ava’s stories were always told with a laughing audience in mind. In fact, she would laugh the entire time she told them:

Once there was a bear and it was walking inside someone’s tummy. And then the fire truck came. And then a pig came around and said, “Oink!” –Ava (4)

I love the way Esme insisted that I keep her extra-narrative comments in the final draft:

Once upon a time there was a love rat with a duck head and a duck beak. And then everything flew on him. But they’re only toys – that’s a joke! And then something flew on the loft and breaked it. And then something flew past the room in the school. (I like doing this a lot.) Then a talking chair came. (Hey, my jeans are . . . I forgot.) And then a talking loft came. And then nothing came. And then nothing came again and again and again. And then a talking, walking head came along, walking on his hair. –Esme (4)

Annabelle’s stories were almost always designed to make me laugh in the moment of their telling. The prospects of a future audience were only secondary:

Bump, Bump!
Bah!
Meow – it was a kitty too!
And Beef!
Cup!
Cake!
Bubble!
Rabbit!
--Annabelle (3)

Fletcher tended to tell more straight-forward stories, until one day he got a huge laugh from this one:

About Setoris Squid. And he kicked a whale in his blow hole. And he sneezed all big brown boogers on him. –Fletcher (3)

This was followed-up a few days later by this one, the audience response clearly in his view:

Once upon a time there was a talking pine cone. And then a talking rabbit and a talking car came. And what happened, there was a talking monkey. Then a talking hair comed along. Talking buttons come along. Then a talking umbrella comes along. A talking shoe comed along. Then what happened there was a talking shark. And something threw over a fire truck and it broke the fire truck. And then what comed along – a shark came! And the shark ate everthing up. And then what happened is something ate the shark. And then what happened a talking car came along and said, “I got milk spilled in my head.” –Fletcher (3)

Head bonking is always good for a laugh:

Once upon a time there was a princess and he fall on his bummy. Then he bonked on his head. And then she went along and she bonked on her head again. –Malcolm (4)

At first, I thought this was going to be another of Jane’s beautiful princess/fairy/mermaid stories, but it suddenly took a very silly turn:

Once upon a time there was a fairy. Her name was Star. There was a fire in a house and her wand transformed into a fire hose. And then she digged some dirt. And she took a bath. She got a cough like mine: that I have the same cough as her. She got a strawberry berry cough drop. She hid in the back of a fire truck and the fire truck sprayed water on her. And then she blasted into a block. A fire truck ran her over. But she wasn’t flat. A ladder said, “Oink!” A pig ladder! –Jane (5)

The End. By Teacher Tom.

Spanking

Nonviolence is absolute commitment to the way of love. –Martin Luther King, Jr.

I would never spank a child, not as a teacher or parent. This is a vow I made long before having a child of my own, and it’s one I’ve never even been tempted to break.

And while I could link to dozens of studies that show that spanking doesn’t improve a child’s behavior, and in fact may lead to everything from poor peer relationships to hyperactivity to anti-social behavior, I’m not going to. I won’t because there are other scientific studies (fewer, but they exist) that show that spanking is an effective and acceptable parenting tool.

My objection to spanking is a moral one, anyway, and any research I site would simply be backfill to support a position from which I will not budge. As I’ve written here before, I believe that once a moral argument is raised, the debate is over. No one is going to back down from an honestly held moral position: once that point is reached, further discussion is a waste of breath.

There are a few things about spanking, however, about which I hope every reasonable person agrees:

• Spanking must never be done in anger – that’s called beating.

• Spanking is the exclusive domain of parents; it’s never okay to spank someone else’s child.

• Spanking must be accompanied by a clear explanation to the child about why she is being punished and followed-up with clear demonstrations of love.

• If the child is too young to understand why he is being spanked, he is too young to be spanked.

As much as it goes against every fiber of my being, if these conditions are met, I guess a big, strong adult has the right to hit a smaller, weaker child. The whole idea makes me soul sick, but we live in a society in which the choice of parental corporal punishment is permitted.

That said spanking done in public becomes everybody’s business. We’ve all seen a frustrated parent whack a whining child. From where I stand, that’s hitting done in anger and I can’t help but wonder that if a parent does this in public, heaven only knows what she’ll do behind closed doors. That parent may have the right to spank her child, but I’ve just witnessed a child getting hit. As a teacher in Washington State, I’m required by law to report suspected child abusers. That parent's actions have caused a spark of suspicion, so I can’t just look the other way on both moral and legal grounds.

It’s hard to know what to do. I don’t want to make things worse by humiliating or further angering a person who has already demonstrated a willingness to hit a child. Sometimes I find a way to say something. I try to do it in a compassionate and reasonable tone. My primary goal is to stop the violence by distracting the parent. Other times, I simply make sure that the adult knows that I’ve been a witness by forcing eye contact. Either way, I’m always left angry, sad, and wondering what else I could have done.

I’ve had people shrug at my moral stance and insist that spanking “works,” and I’m sure it does. There are lots of things that work that I will never try. If I disagree with you, shouting you down works, but wouldn’t it be better if I engaged you in reasonable debate? If I need money, stealing works, but wouldn’t it be better if I worked to earn a higher income? If you’re standing in my way, pushing you works, but wouldn’t it be better to politely ask you to allow me to pass? Indeed, spanking may work, but there are better ways. They just take more effort.

As a boy, I was on the receiving end of a handful of spankings, always administered by my father, who is by every measure a loving, peaceful, compassionate man. I don’t believe that I am the worse for the experience.

Still, I have never spanked a child and I never will because I know in my heart that violence is wrong. And I will not teach violence.

Nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation. --MLK

They're Listening

From Mister Rogers:

When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me. “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” To this day, especially in times of “disaster,” I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.

Fortunately, for most of us the world is not so full of disaster. Your child is unlikely to experience much of it except on TV, and frankly I don’t think that’s such a bad place to get some initial exposure as long as you’re there with them. It doesn’t have to be television: passing the scene of a traffic accident or witnessing the business end of a fire department call to a neighbor’s house would serve just as well. Viewing disaster at a distance gives parents an opportunity to calmly lay down a little philosophical groundwork to prepare for when tragedy strikes closer to home.

Brilliantly, Mister Roger’s mom came up with looking for the helpers. It was a simple observation that comforted him throughout his life.

When children from the Woodland Park community experience frightening events such as accidents, emergency illnesses, or a death in the family, parents usually prepare me with a little back story and an assessment of how their child is handling it. More often than not, the child is clearly eager to get back to the normalcy of school, but I always take a quiet moment during the day to broach the subject with the child. Sometimes they let me know, in their own ways, that they’re not ready to talk about it. But more often than not they do talk, and in what they say I always hear their parents’ voices putting things in perspective.

It might not always seem like it, but they’re listening.

Being A Man

A few days ago my friend Paul responded to a post:

I think one of the most appealing things about your blog posts here is that you are a man and not, well, a sissy. It is very encouraging to read your parenting stuff written in a way that is not emasculating. (And yes that matters.)

That felt good. As a preschool teacher I work in a field dominated by women and it’s of consequence to know that it hasn’t entirely feminized me. To be honest, I’m not even really sure what that means, and I have nothing but respect for femininity, but remaining masculine is important to me nonetheless.

There’s a lot of twisted machismo out there, I know, and I’m the first to admit that testosterone might be the most dangerous substance known to humankind, but I’m proud to be a man. I’m proud to be a man who works with children. I’m proud to be a man to talks about poop and pee and feelings and love.

Yesterday I posted a video about the love we have around us every day. My friend and co-op parent Lynn raised a valid criticism:

Sorry, but I just can't get behind this one. The idea, yes, but not the words. Why would we talk about love in the language of war and violence? Love is not a 'weapon,' it does not spread through 'bombs' and it does not need an 'army'!! It needs better words and a new language that frees us from these old paradigms of conflict. We deserve a more beautiful way to talk about and be with love...

She’s right, of course. I admire this video’s effort to evoke the supreme, urgent power of love, but it fell short in that regard. But it wasn’t the co-opting of militaristic words that jumped out at me. It was that harp sound track? Yeesh.

I think the video would have been more powerful with this more masculine soundtrack about the power of love (sorry about the quality, but I wanted a clip from when they were still young):



Not to deny its feminine side, but without the muscle of masculinity love can seem limp. It lacks dynamic force; its full-throated Roger Daltry scream. Love is nurturing and warm and cuddly for sure, and those are good things, but it can also knock you out. It kicks over the drum set, rips off its shirt, and makes you scream with mindless joy.

It’s the male aspects of love that make us laugh until it hurts, jump off of garage roofs, and play fools. It’s also the masculine side of love that causes us to join hands, to rise up, to overcome.

Moments after I got Paul’s message, I received an email from a colleague:

I have been reading articles on fathering and parenting, etc. Would love to hear your views on the various aspects and influences of being a hands-on dad.

Over the years, many parents have told me that they chose Woodland Park because I’m a man.

Hundreds of people have said, “We need more male teachers.”

I’ve never known what to say to any of this. I’m a preschool teacher because I really like doing it. But if I were to hazard any kind of comment on the “goodness” of being a male who works with young children, it would be that I’m a weight in the balance to counter the (real or perceived) preponderance of feminine love in children’s lives. What a great problem for our children to have.

Nearly all of the kids who have ever come through Woodland Park already have at least one strong, present male figure in their lives. Most have many. But I know that for a few hours in the day, I will be front and center in those children's lives, and in part I take it as a responsibility to be a good example as a man.

And I only hope that as the children pass by me, they don’t pass without knowing that I love them.

And now if you have a few more minutes, here’s another non-sissy rock n roll video:

Recruiting For The Army Of Love

Isn’t it love that keeps us breathing?
Isn’t it love we’re sent here for? --Bonnie Raitt

Love baby,
That’s where it’s at. –The B-52’s

In case there are people out there who don’t know it, I have an agenda. My friend Ann pointed me to this video and I wanted to pay it forward.

Math Is Fun

During Woodland Park’s parent orientation meetings, I usually make some comment along the lines of, “You won’t find numbers in the classroom except when they get there by accident.”

But that doesn’t mean we don’t learn math. In fact, if your preschooler is awake she’s probably working on foundational math skills right now. Of course, many of us don’t see it because we associate math education with work sheets, homework and rote memorization, but those things have nothing to do with how preschoolers learn their ‘rithmatic.

Counting, for instance, is a daily, even hourly activity for many preschoolers. I have a photo of myself holding up a single finger on my first birthday – I was a math prodigy! What happened? To make sure he was adequately washing his hands each morning, Alex’s mom taught him to loudly count to 20 as he washed his hands. Elliott and Mikey would sometimes count out the blocks to make sure they each had the same amount before building.

You’re teaching math every time you talk about locational concepts like near, far, left and right. When we remind kids to “stay beside me” on our field trips we’re working on those Einstein skills.

At bottom, all of math is just increasingly complex ways to work with sequences and patterns. Jackson could hardly pass a table without arranging its objects in straight lines by color, preparing himself to ace that discrete mathematics course he’ll take during his sophomore year of college. When Keira and Ava sat side-by-side stringing beads in beautiful patterns they were getting ready for calculus.

Identifying shapes lays the foundation for those geometry lessons in the future. When Anjali proudly showed me the triangle she had learned to form using her thumbs and index fingers, I imagined the geodesic domes and flying buttresses she’ll one day employ as an architect.

Working puzzles requires a focused mind and an ability to calculate spatial relations. After watching my friend Hazel meticulously assemble every puzzle in the classroom over her three years as a student, I wasn’t surprised when she was accepted into the Seattle Public School’s advanced placement program as a first grader.

We predict outcomes, estimate, and form hypotheses based on past experience all the time. When 2-year-old Evan used his predicting skills each day to informed me it was “clean up time," he was rarely more than a few minutes off, even though he had no idea how to read the analog clock on the wall.

As holidays approach children anticipate the days through such simple activities as advent calendars or counting the days of Hanukkah.

Sets of anything (e.g., buttons, coins, stuffed animals) encourage foundational math skills; asking for “more cookies” or complaining about “too many” kisses does too. Many preschool songs rely on addition or subtraction. Shooting baskets is a physics exercise. Mixing mud is a lesson in proportions . . .

Math is in nearly everything our children do. They are programmed to learn math and we are programmed to teach it.

Forget the work sheets, homework and memorization. Math is supposed to be fun.

Setting Sail: Why We Take Field Trips

You raise them to be independent, then you’re heartbroken when they are. –Shirley Hobson (my mom)

The Woodland Park children share experiences; routines, expectations, rules, art projects, sensory table play, building, dramatic games, music. These day-to-day experiences are the threads that weave the sailcloth of our community. Because the children already have a year of Woodland Park experience behind them by the time they reach our 3-5’s class, they tend to arrive on the first day prepared to trust our community.

That’s why this is the perfect time to hoist our sail and test it in the wind by sharing extraordinary experiences, like field trips.

Our maiden voyage each year takes place in October and is usually some version of visiting a pumpkin patch. As the big day approaches, invariably some parents tell me their children are nervous -- these tend to be the parents of 3-year-olds. And that makes sense. We can't expect the younger members of our crew to yet have complete confidence in the stability of our little boat on the high seas beyond our little harbor. It might tip over out there in the choppy waves! On the other hand, having already experienced a year's worth of these kinds of extraordinary journeys, our older kids have a footlocker full of evidence that the boat will hold together.

I know that parents worry as well. That makes sense too. After all, their child is heading out into the world, riding public busses and visiting public places with our whole gang of kids and only a handful of adults. I can try to reassure them by mentioning that I've been taking monthly field trips with preschoolers for over a decade and have never lost or hurt a child.

I can say that every single adult is constantly either counting children or talking about counting the children.

I can point out that their kids are out in the world all the time and already know the basics -- like staying on sidewalks and keeping their adult in sight.

But the only thing that really helps is experience.

Like their children, parents will feel more and more comfortable as the year goes on. Like it or not, the older our children get, the farther out into the world they will go, increasingly without us -- believe me, as the parent of a 12-year-old, I know! We raise them up to set them free, and as a parent, at some level, it will always be terrifying.

That, more than anything else, is why we take field trips: it's another baby step toward independence for both parent and child.

Seeing The Fool In Yourself

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. –James Baldwin

I believe in not sweating the small stuff, taking it easy, being the Buddha. However, when my then 14-month-old daughter Josephine shouted at the traffic in clear imitation of me, “Get out of the way car! Go drive in the trees!” it was made crushingly clear that I was far from living up to my own standards.

Nothing in life has made me more aware of the gap between my purported values and my behavior than having a child. In the effort to be a good parent, I've come to realize that it isn’t enough to simply believe; I had to behave as if I believed, because it's that behavior my child will come to imitate. You can try to pound beliefs into a child all you want, but unless they see those beliefs in practice, you’ve done nothing more than plant guilt bombs that will explode when your child inevitably imitates you.

This doesn’t mean that there is an imperative to behave perfectly all the time. Lord knows, I don’t. We’re humans. We lose our temper. We say cruel things. We break rules. We lose our patience. That’s simply part of the human condition. Never making mistakes isn’t realistic. And like it or not, our children are liable to imitate us by making mistakes similar to our own.

That’s why it’s vital that when our children see us falter, we also need to make sure they see what we do to correct the damage we’ve done or fix our failings. Ultimately, they will also imitate how well we accept the consequences of our behavior, our apologies, our amends, and our forgiveness.

After Josephine’s first foray into road rage, I tried biting my tongue, but it didn’t take. I told her I didn’t like myself when I got mad at other drivers, and asked her to remind me to “breathe” whenever she saw I was getting overheated. I installed a row of bouncing Buddha’s on my dashboard to remind me to be peaceful. As she got older, I tried self-mockery and exaggeration, following up my bursts of irritation by saying things I knew she would see through like, “I never make mistakes,” and “It’s hard being the only good driver.”

For the time being Josephine has accepted the invitation to make fun of me for my foible, answering with long suffering sighs of, “Yeah, right Dad,” and “You know, they can’t hear you.” I doubt I’ll ever be the world’s most serene driver, but with Josephine’s help, I’m getting better and quicker, at breathing, then laughing my way out of it.

Since “taking it easy” may always just be only an aspirational part of my belief system when it comes to driving -- one that I’m incapable of role modeling -- I hope I’m at least teaching her the power of seeing the fool in yourself. And that's something I hope she learns to imitate.

Pragmatic Preparation for Swine Flu

A few years ago a Woodland Park family made a financial gift to the school and worked for an employer who matched its employee’s donations. In filling out the paperwork, the parent asked me for our “organization’s mission statement.” Since we’ve never had such a thing, I made one up:

To expose young children to as many childhood illnesses as possible before they get to kindergarten.

I was only half joking. Preschools are notorious breeding grounds for coughs, colds, pink eye, chicken pox, and dozens of other maladies. Two-year-olds without older siblings are often hit particularly hard. My friend Charlotte must have missed half the school year due to fevers, sniffles, and tummy aches.

And while we all hate it when kids are sick, it’s one of the important ways they strengthen their immune systems. It’s not an accident that Charlotte’s younger sister Annabelle missed very few days when she was two. And I won’t be surprised if their youngest sister Penelope winds up sporting a perfect attendance record.

I mention this by way of establishing my credentials as a pragmatist when it comes to illness. And it’s as a pragmatist that I mention that those of us who teach, or have children in school, need to prepare for the H1N1 (Swine) Flu. While it hasn’t so far turned out to be as virulent as once feared, it is a real pandemic, and when flu season hits a lot of us are probably be going to be experiencing its symptoms, either first or second hand.

I do not want to feed panic, because that doesn’t help anyone, but after receiving an email from a Woodland Park parent who is a public health researcher and reading an article from yesterday’s Washington Post, it seemed like complacency is not a pragmatic option either.

If current cases are any indication, it sounds like most of us, and our children, are only likely to suffer the usual delights, but the Center for Disease Control (CDC) has put pregnant women in the highest risk category for severe consequences from H1N1. A Lancet study found a 32 percent hospitalization rate for women at one month. There tend to be a lot of pregnant women in and around preschools, so if only for their sake, it’s vital that we do everything we pragmatically can to prevent the spread of H1N1 this flu season.

But as we do, please keep in mind the words of World Health Organization Director General Margaret Chan:

“Between the extremes of panic and complacency lies the solid ground of vigilance.”

The good news is that a vaccine is expected to be ready by September, according to yesterday’s Post article, although it may take a few more months to get it distributed.

Beyond this and until then, there are common sense non-medical precautions that we all need to take, most of which we should already be doing. I’m looking at this as an opportunity for Woodland Park to reinvigorate our disease prevention measures. What follows are the current CDC recommendations regarding K-12 schools and child care programs:

Interim Recommendations: K-12 Schools
-School dismissal is not advised for a suspected or confirmed case of novel influenza A (H1N1) and, in general, is not advised unless there is a magnitude of faculty or student absenteeism that interferes with the school’s ability to function.

-Students, faculty or staff with influenza-like illness (fever with a cough or sore throat) should stay home and not attend school or go into the community except to seek medical care for at least 7 days even if symptoms resolve sooner.

-Students, faculty and staff who are still sick 7 days after they become ill should continue to stay home from school until at least 24 hours after symptoms have resolved.

-Students, faculty and staff who appear to have an influenza-like illness at arrival or become ill during the day should be isolated promptly in a room separate from other students and sent home.

-Aspirin or aspirin-containing products should not be administered to any confirmed or suspected ill case of novel H1N1 influenza virus infection aged 18 years old and younger due to the risk of Reye syndrome. Refer to pediatric medical management for guidance regarding use of any medications, especially those containing aspirin. (http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/clinicians/)

-Parents and guardians should monitor their school-aged children, and faculty and staff should self-monitor every morning for symptoms of influenza-like illness.

-Ill students should not attend alternative child care or congregate in other neighborhood and community settings outside of school.

-School administrator’s should communicate regularly with local public health officials to obtain guidance about reporting of influenza-like illnesses in the school.

-Schools can help serve as a focus for educational activities aimed at promoting ways to reduce the spread of influenza, including hand hygiene and cough etiquette.

-Students, faculty and staff should stringently follow sanitary measures to reduce the spread of influenza, including covering their nose and mouth with a tissue when coughing or sneezing (or coughing or sneezing into their sleeve if a tissue isn’t available), frequently washing hands with soap and water, or using hand sanitizer if hand washing with soap and water is not possible.

Interim Recommendations: Child Care Programs
As for schools, closure of child care programs is not currently recommended due to novel H1N1 influenza in the community or the child care facility. Child care programs should follow the above recommendations for schools along with the other recommendations in this section.

-Child care programs should work closely and directly with their local and State public health officials to make appropriate decisions and implement strategies in a coordinated manner.

-Child care providers should conduct daily health checks on all children. Although daily health checks have been recommended for child care programs before the current H1N1 flu situation, programs that do not conduct routine daily health checks should institute this practice. (See Caring for Our Children Standards 3.001 and 3.002 for information on how to do this http://nrckids.org/)

-Ill children should stay home and not be taken out of one child care program and put into another child care program even temporarily.

-Childcare facilities should clean and sanitize frequently-touched surfaces, (such as desks, doorknobs, computer keyboards, toys) routinely and if they become visibly soiled.

http://nrckids.org/CFOC/HTMLVersion/Chapter_3.html#1076310
http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/qa.htm
http://www.epa.gov/oppad001/influenza-disinfectants.html

-Child care programs can help serve as a focus for educational activities aimed at promoting ways to reduce the spread of influenza, including hand hygiene and cough etiquette.

I hope that a year from now we will be placing Swine Flu into the same category as “killer bees” and the Y2K panic. Although as we laugh about them now, no one will ever know the role pragmatic preparation played in preventing our worst fears from being realized. Besides, it can’t hurt to be prepared, as long as we don’t freak out.

Note: I am not an expert on disease prevention, so if I’ve made any mistakes or if you have any additional information, PLEASE let me know.