The Girl Who Silenced The World For 5 Minutes

Parents worry about role models. We worry about what our sons learn from superheroes. We worry about what our daughters learn from the Disney princesses. As they get older we worry about what they learn from Kanye West, Britney Spears, or even Joe Wilson. After all, these are the people who get all the attention. They're the ones who are on TV behaving badly and often even being rewarded for their boorishness.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, as parents we are more powerful than all the misbehaving professional athletes, actors, politicians and beauty queens combined, but only if we're present to share our own opinions with our children.

Still, it's nice to sometimes have examples of people getting attention for behaving in a truly heroic manner. For instance, when Mister Rogers was a boy his mother would urge him to "Look for the helpers," whenever they saw something frightening on the news; the firefighters, the police, the medics, the regular citizens.

Most of the real heroes, however, are not of the action variety. The cameras are not on them when they are doing their magnificent deeds because true heroism is often the work of years, or even a lifetime. But every now and then one of them gets caught on camera. In this case the hero is a 12-year-old girl addressing a UN conference on the environment. Please take the time to watch the whole video. This girl does what a hero should do -- inspire us to want to do great things.



Believe me, I've shared this with my child and it made her cry.

Nine Months From Now

What an exciting first week with the 2-year-olds. They all came in ready to get to work, and while a few of them clung to mommy a bit at first, they all eventually got their legs under them, their hands busy, and their brains engaged.

Very impressive, although I expect coming weeks will be a bit more rocky as parents experiment with leaving their kids on their own at school and we begin to deal with separation anxiety.

I’m always a little shocked by how little they are, with their fat diaper-bottoms and waddling walks. When I dismissed last year’s Pre-3 class in the spring they were big, confident 3-year-olds. It’s during these first few weeks that the past and present exist simultaneously for me – I see them how they are, but through the prism of how I know they will be nine months from now.

Two-year-olds are notoriously individual suns around whom the entire universe revolves and that’s exactly what we experienced last week, a roomful of brilliant suns, delightfully unaware of the brilliance of the other blazing suns playing beside them at the play dough table. The Pre-3 year of preschool, in large measure, is about learning to live in a crowded universe in which space and resources are limited. It’s about learning that you can only knock down your own block building. It’s about understanding that if someone else is holding something, you can’t just take it. It’s about accommodating the person who is coming down the stairs when you want to go up. These are not things that most of the children I met last week are capable of understanding. Yet, they are all things they will understand 9 months from now.

The development of 2-year-olds is all over the charts. Some come through the door prepared to discuss the relative differences between a triceratops and a diplodocus, while others have only just mastered the two-word sentence. Some scoot down the stairs on their bottoms, while we need to keep an eye on others to make sure they don’t climb one of the trees in the courtyard and make an escape over our 7-foot fence. Some are already showing signs of being ready to move beyond parallel play, while others seem entirely unaware of the existence of other children. At times the developmental differences are so extreme that they almost seem like they’re different species, yet it all falls well within the realm of “normal.” As the year goes on these difference won’t entirely disappear, but they’ll become less and less pronounced until, 9 months from now, they’ll all seem much more alike than they are different.

Two-year-olds tend to be very adult focused. Even when they have something to say to a peer, it’s often done by way of the nearest adult. Within a few weeks, as the children grow more comfortable with me, I’ll spend much of my time in the classroom wearing a “skirt” of children. Everywhere I go, everything I do, it will be in the company of two or more children. If I have to leave the classroom for a moment, they’ll stand by the door waiting for me to return. It might appear that they are playing “together,” but in reality it will be many individual kids playing with Teacher Tom at the same time. But as the year progresses, they’ll start to find one another. Nine months from now, I will able to spend extended periods of our free play time leaning against a wall just watching the kids play together.

There is no other year during which children change more than they do between the ages of 2 and 3. It’s an amazing 9-month adventure. I’m incredibly lucky to be along for the ride.

Life In The Big Leagues: Conflict, Similarities, Differences, And Helping Each Other

Continuing the baseball coach metaphor from yesterday . . .

I think of the 3-year-olds in our 3-5 class as my wide-eyed rookies who’ve just been called up to the “show.” They put in their season in the instructional league (Pre-3’s) last year, and they’re now ready for the bright lights of the big time.

The game is played at a different speed at this level, with more complex rules, and more responsibility.

For starters, the sound level tends to be higher and the play more sophisticated because of the presence of our veterans (4-year-olds). It’s not as if our Pre-3 class is a quite haven, but the older kids have bigger voices, more to say, and rowdier tendencies which can take a little getting used to.

Our schedule is expanded to include a second Circle Time, and once there we do more than just sing songs. We have important things to discuss like rules, compliments, and feelings, so it’s essential to learn about raising hands, staying in our own self-space, and listening to others so we can get this work done.

When they were 2-year-olds, the doors to the hallway and bathroom were kept closed and children were escorted by adults if they needed to go into those areas. This year, those doors remain open and children are expected to take things to their own cubbies, wash their own hands, and take care of themselves on the toilet. When an assist is needed we like to turn to a veteran to show them the way.

Children get to choose when to have their snack – or even if they want a snack at all – in the 3-5 class, unlike last year when we all sat together to eat at the appointed time.

At the beginning of the season, my job as Teacher Tom the coach is to help blend our 3-year-olds with our established core of veterans. I got to know these kids last year. I know their strengths and tendencies and while I’ve developed theories about where they need to go as individuals, ultimately only they can determine that. My coaching concern is how they function as part of our team – our community. This is important because it’s only from living in a community that we learn the most important things young children need to know:

1) How to handle conflict
2) How we are the same
3) How to appreciate differences, and
4) How to help other people

Conflict
I genuinely love classroom conflict. As a coach, those are the moments I’m looking for. Dealing with conflict is the core of how we learn to live with one another. Of course, there are genuine differences of opinion, but we only call it conflict when it becomes emotional. And that’s where any resolution has to start: by understanding the emotions involved and naming them.

I like to begin the season with strong reminders about emotional signals. We spent time this week looking through photographs of children expressing emotions like happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, silliness, (and pirate) then singing If You're Happy And You Know It, while running through our 5 emotions and one character (“If ye be a pirate and ye know it say, Arr!”). We’ll add emotions as the year goes on (e.g., frustrated, frightened, worried) and I reserve the right to add more characters.

When conflict erupts in the classroom, and as long as it’s not physical, my first response is to start describing the emotions I see on children’s faces. I might say, “Billy looks angry,” or “Sharon looks sad.” This almost always leads Billy, Sharon (or even a bystander) to frame the argument for us. We might learn that Billy is mad because someone knocked down his block tower. We might learn that Sharon is sad because someone took her doll. Whatever the case, we need an understanding of the emotions involved, and a shared agreement that we would like to help our friends not be mad or sad in order to have any hope of reaching a resolution. This is the work of a lifetime, of course, but it’s during the 3-year-old year that some of the basics are most easily taught, and these skills are essential to thriving as a 4-year-old.

Similarity
Identifying how we are all the same is the foundation upon which empathy is built. We start by noticing external similarities like body parts and clothing. You’ll often hear me remarking on similarities:

“Hey, Finn and Max are both wearing short pants today.”

“Marcus and Ariya both have dark hair.”

“I’m wearing pink shoes today, too!”

As the year progresses, we move on to exploring our emotional and intellectual similarities. We find things we all like (e.g, candy) and dislike (e.g., getting hit). We draw parallels between the emotions in others and the emotions we ourselves feel. For instance, when someone is crying, I might ask another child if she can remember when she was once sad. When someone is shouting in anger, I might comment that I get mad sometimes. Coming to an understanding that we all feel joy and we all feel pain is the essence of the kind of team we’re striving to build. It is through this basic understanding that we come to treat one another as we ourselves wish to be treated.

Differences
Our differences are just as important as our similarities. Learning to feel proud of the things that make us special and appreciating the differences in others are high goals indeed. From a coach’s perspective, I know that the strongest teams are the ones that take advantage of the unique talents and interests that each individual brings to the table.

Just as I make a point of remarking on similarities, I do the same with differences, starting with externalities:

“Isak is using blue paint. Charlie is using red paint.”

“Alex wears glasses. Lachlan does not wear glasses.”

“Dennis is a boy. Sarah is a girl.”

As we move into internal differences, such as our likes and dislikes, or areas that tend to create cleavages in the wider world (e.g., skin color) we strive to speak about them without judgment and to place them into the broader context of our similarities whenever possible.

It takes all of us to make a team. We learn more from differences than from similarities. And, of course, the world would be a far duller place if we were all the same.

Helping Others
If we’re not here to help others, I don’t know what any of the rest of it is about.

Certainly, the purpose for communities of any kind is that there are things we can do together that are impossible, or at least very difficult, for us to do alone. As great a player as Ken Griffey has been over his career, he would be nowhere in baseball without the help of his teammates.

As parents, we get in the habit of stepping in to help our children when they struggle with something, but here in the “big leagues,” I’m adamant that parents step back whenever possible and let the children practice helping one another, whether it be going to the bathroom, cutting with scissors, or cleaning up the classroom.

The children can even help one another in handling their emotions. When someone is sad, angry, or frustrated in preschool, it becomes a matter for all of us. We discuss it. We try to find solutions. We express our sympathy. We learn that we are not alone in our pain.

And that, in essence, is the definition of a team: people helping each other.

Our 4-year-olds have already experienced a season of conflict, similarities, differences and helping one another. They are our veterans, our experts. As our 3-year-olds learn the ropes, discover their friends, and find their voices, they’ll have important roles to play in our team’s success in the 2009-2010 season. And when they return next year, it will be their turn to enjoy their role as seasoned veterans.

A View From The Dugout

Three-year-old Charlie B. asked me, “When is outside time?”

I turned to 4-year-olds Ella and Josephine, “Charlie wants to know when it’s outside time?”

Ella thought for a moment into the air over my shoulder, then answered, “After Small Group.”

Josephine added, “First we have Circle Time, then we have Small Group, then we go outside.”

I said to Charlie B., “Ella and Josephine say outside time is after Small Group.”

Up to now Charlie B. has been an age-appropriately adult-focused kid, but he clearly took note of the girls’ expertise.

From the perspective of Teacher Tom the coach, the first week of school is all about developing the routines, habits and classroom fundamentals that will form the groundwork for a successful team of learners.

I’ve known most of the children in our 3-5’s class for a year or more. Eight of our current students started coming into class with their siblings before they were born! In other words, I’m quite familiar with my personnel, so my main focus is on team chemistry and getting the younger children integrated into the line-up. For the next few weeks I’ll be putting a lot of energy into encouraging our 4-year-olds, who are starting their second year in the 3-5 class, to demonstrate their mastery of the classroom and its procedures. This is how they’ll help me teach the 3-year-olds: by being authoritative role-models and inspiring leaders.

At Circle Time this week, 4-year-old Katherine told her 3-year-old brother Lachlan, “You have to raise your hand if you want to say something.” Lachlan stopped talking and raised his hand. Nothing I could have said would have had this much effect. Even better, all the other 3-year-olds heard her. I was thrilled when Luna, who struggled with hand-raising as a 3-year-old, gave the same instructions to her younger friend Alex who then dutifully followed suit.

I asked 3-year-olds Charlie L. and Isak if they’d found their cubbies yet. When they were uncertain, I enrolled 4-year-old Jack in the project of finding them. Jack took his responsibility a step farther by also helping them find their hooks.

During our free play period, a few of the 3-year-olds expressed their excitement about school by throwing our cardboard blocks. I pointed the behavior out to 4-year-old Annabelle who agreed to raise her hand at Circle Time and suggest the rule No throwing blocks, which she did.

When 3-year-old Dennis was ready for his snack, I asked 4-year-old Sarah to help him get his hands washed before eating. Sarah took his hand and lead him to the bathroom. Even though Dennis changed his mind about eating once returning to the classroom, at least he did it with clean hands.

Four-year-old Thomas lead several younger boys in an outdoor digging project, which I’m sure involved serious construction-worker action that will form the backbone of our masculine dramatic play for much of the rest of the year.

Four-year-old Finn’s enthusiastic assistance in cleaning up the block area was clearly an inspiration to one of our younger boys who matched him block for block.

At no time do I make an issue of the age differences between the children, of course, that wouldn’t be fair to any of them. They’re all equal classmates, but as a coach I’d be foolish not to take advantage of the expertise, confidence and skill of my veterans. As far as Coach Teacher Tom is concerned, they are the keys to setting the tone for the whole season . . . uh, school year.

I’ll Know What To Do

Yesterday morning I posted about how parents are the real reason our school works so well.

Yesterday afternoon Woodland Park parent and fellow blogger (who I’ve mentioned before both here and here) posted about why we so readily do the work – the kids. It was her daughter Alex’s first day of school and Maya wrote about it on her blog Crumbs and Quibbles, complete with several cute photos that show a focused little girl getting right to work.

It’s fun to read about our school from a parent’s perspective.

Maya’s family and I have been part of one another’s lives for the past 5 years. As I played with bold, confident Alex yesterday, I couldn’t help recalling her older sister Sammy, who as a 2-year-old would flee whenever I entered the part of the classroom in which she played. She didn’t make a big deal about it, but when I got too physically close, she’d just put down whatever she was doing and go somewhere else. Maya told me that Sammy spoke highly of me at home, even insisting that a poster of Peter Tosh was, in fact, Teacher Tom. I don’t think I frightened her as much as overwhelmed her with my proximity – a circumstance that might work fine for a TV personality, but not for a teacher.

I eventually adopted a strategy of positioning myself as near to Sammy as she would allow, then making sure to talk to the children around me loudly enough that she could hear. She kept track of me from the corners of her eyes, so I knew she was paying attention. Over a period of weeks I got closer and closer until one day we were sharing the play dough table. This was exciting! I didn’t talk at all, but rather focused on silently mashing the ball of dough in my hands. I felt a little like I was sneaking up on a robin; one false move and she’d fly away. I edged ever nearer. Before long we were side-by-side working our dough.

That’s when I risked speaking. As softly and matter-of-factly as I could I said, “I want to make a diamond shape.” Without looking at me, Sammy picked up the diamond-shaped cookie cutter at her elbow and handed it to me. Moments later she was gone, but that was the beginning of the thaw, and over the course of the next 3 years we became great friends.

On Tuesday, I met 2-year-old Sasha on her first day of school. Whenever I entered the area in which she played, she would put down what she was doing and retreat to her mom. If it continues next week, thanks to Sammy, I’ll know what to do.

Functioning Communism

I had asked Megan to make a batch of play dough for our first day of school, but had done a sloppy job of communicating, so when she arrived with her daughter Annabelle on Monday, no play dough. It was entirely my fault, and not a huge deal.

Yesterday morning as I got ready for class, there was a knock on the school door. It was Megan with a large ball of bright yellow dough. Annabelle didn’t have class yesterday, Megan's older daughter wasn’t starting school until Thursday, and the family doesn't live particularly nearby. In other words, this was a morning that by all rights Megan should have been still at home in her jammies, enjoying a second cup of coffee, but instead she was standing there with a ball of yellow dough, promising to make another batch once she’s purchased more cream of tarter. I made the mistake and she took it upon herself to fix it.

Last night Shelly, our health and safety officer, notified us that a child who had been in class on Monday has been discovered with lice. (Arg! Really? Already?) This was supposed to be the year of flu, not lice. The lice “scare” is almost an annual ritual at most schools, and while I’ve been very near them via both Woodland Park and my own daughter’s school for over a decade, I’ve not yet been victimized by the actual bugs. (Knock on wood!) Their imaginary doppelgangers, however, always cause my scalp to itch, which it’s doing right now in spite of my best efforts to remind myself that it’s all in my head, not on my head.

By the time I awoke this morning, Jaimee, Andrea, and probably other parents who didn’t include me in their email chain, had agreed to meet at the school at 7:45 a.m. to execute our official lice cleaning procedures so that class can proceed as usual.

This is how our school works. And while I’ve been around cooperatives for as long as I’ve been near lice, I still find it incredible.

I often use our school as an example of functioning communism, the key to its effectiveness being that we’ve all voluntarily joined together to make it work. I invite families to think of our preschool as a three-year program during which time you will sometimes be the one with “ability” and other times the one with “needs.”

Everywhere I look in our classroom I see enduring examples of those with ability going that extra mile. Alicia painted all the tables and chairs. Steve built the fence around our garden. Gloria installed the motion sensitive light in our cleaning closet. Marie turned the columns in the middle of the classroom into “trees” that spread their leaves across our ceiling. Martin built the easels. And one mother, whose name I’ve forgotten since her family was forced to drop out of school after only a couple months during my first year, gave several weeks of her summer to painting bucolic scenes of trees, hills, and blue skies on the walls of our gym. The examples of our community’s abilities are endless.

Every year I also see amazing examples of those with needs receiving what we can offer. Families with new babies are feted with meals, offers of babysitting, and maternity leave. Families with financial challenges are given exceptions, discounts and scholarships. Families with emergencies are helped in whatever way the community can help.

I love that our children are spending their preschool years in this community, and I’m reminded every day, in both big and small ways, of how lucky I am to be here.

Masters Of Time

At the end of last school year, the Seattle Public Schools announced that many of their schools were going to be changing their start times – some would be earlier, some later. Since several of our Woodland Park families have older children in the public schools, and the actual start times weren’t going to be announced until the end of summer, we decided last spring to shift our start time from 9:30 a.m. to 9:45 by way of giving everyone more time in the morning in case they needed it.

It was a minor shift, but I struggled with it during our first day back from summer vacation.

Although our school day may appear loosey-goosey from the outside, I’m a firm believer that preschoolers need a consistent, reliable schedule. It’s at first comforting, then empowering to be able to anticipate and even predict what’s next. When a child cries for mommy, one of the most effective ways to sooth him is to talk through the day’s schedule leading up to, “. . . and then mommy comes back.” As kids get older, especially the ones who’ve been with me a couple years, they like to let me know when it’s time to “bang the drum” that signals clean up time, or anticipate my calling them in from outside play by rushing inside before I’ve started the chant, “Preschool children to the top of the stairs.”

I often have parents warn me that their child “isn’t very good with transitions,” and that’s sometimes confirmed during the first couple months of class, but once our schedule becomes ingrained, her reluctance to end one thing and begin another always fades away. She still might object in the rest of her life where schedules tend not to be as predictable, but in preschool she becomes a master of time.

Yesterday’s “slow start” turned out to be an unbalanced combination of veterans and rookies, with only two children in class who weren’t already familiar with the 3-5 routine. And, of course, the day flowed fluidly in spite of my obsessively counting forward and backwards to account for that measly 15 minutes. Charlie and Isak learned that they get to choose when to eat their snack rather than waiting for an official “snack time.” They discovered that there is an extra Circle Time right in the middle of the day. I was proud of how they both followed the lead of their older classmates by leaping right into our curricular centerpiece of clean-up time.

Our second “slow start” day is Wednesday and I’m not anticipating such an easy flow. The veteran to rookie ratio will be 4:9, so Ella, Katherine, Josephine and Luna will have their role-modeling work cut out for them as the 3-year-olds feel the pull back to last year’s Pre-3 routines.

This morning our Pre-3 class has its first “slow start” day. Without the time mastery of older children to guide us, it’s always much more of a challenge to get everyone on board with the schedule. They need to rely on me to coach them through it – at least for the first few months.

At our 3-5 parent orientation meeting, actual public school schedules now in hand, there was talk of re-visting our own start time decision next month. There seems to be a movement toward shifting back to the 9:30 start from prior years. By then, of course, I expect I will have fully adjusted to the 9:45 start-time. It’s already on my mind. People think I’m a loosey-goosey kind of teacher, but I’m really not. Like the kids, I rely on my schedule for comfort and strength.

Notes:
For those of you concerned about the health of our standard poodle Athena, she’s still moving slowly, but the steroid injection she got yesterday from the vet did wonders and she was even agitating for a walk yesterday evening. Thanks for your words of support and sympathy.

Also, I got my art show installed at the North Seattle Community College library yesterday. It looks great. If you live in the Seattle the library is open to the public, so stop by if you get the chance.

Waning Hours

If you’re lucky you get 100 summers and I’m sitting here in the waning hours of my 47th.

It’s ending on a real downer. Our standard poodle, Athena, had been strangely lethargic for the past few days. We had already scheduled a vet appointment for this afternoon, but when she collapsed on Saturday night while trying to stand to greet us, we got her to the hospital where she spent the night undergoing tests and receiving intravenous fluids. Even before we left on our lonely drive home, however, the doctor was pretty sure she was suffering from Addison’s disease. It’s likely that she would have died overnight had we not taken her in when we did.

So I waited last night in the waning hours of my 47th summer for my wife and daughter to bring our very ill dog home. I had to carry her up the stairs, this dog who I’ve always compared to the great wide receiver Lynn Swann for her combination of grace and power. She’ll spend the rest of her life on medication, as I understand it, and will need regular steroid injections. According to everything I’ve read, she can be expected to live a normal, active life.

It was a chore to do anything yesterday. I honestly don’t think of myself as a dog person, although I spend most of my waking hours in the company of Athena and her golden retriever sister Waffle, and prior to that with our chow chow Vincent. I often grumble about how much simpler life would be if I didn’t have to deal with the walking, the poop collecting, the grooming, and the over-fawning aggravation they cause our guests. But it hasn’t been a relief to have my dog obligations cut in half. Instead, I’ve plowed through my busy waning hours of summer with a zombie-like tenacity, just trying to continue putting one foot in front of the other. I’m not a dog person, but I guess I am an Athena person, which is interesting if not exactly useful information to have acquired here in the waning hours.

Tomorrow afternoon I install my art show. I spent Sunday morning putting the finishing touches on the easels I manufactured last week, dusting off a few of the older pieces, creating an artist statement, and getting everything packed up for transport. On Saturday afternoon I dropped by Great Stuff in Georgetown to pick up three pieces that have hung there for the past 6 months. Kirk, the proprietor, made it clear that he wants to continue selling my work once this show is over. He’s convinced that as the economy turns around, the art market will bounce back, and he’s confident that people will want to buy my work.

That’s how things work, right? They bounce back from the bottom. I’ve had 47 winters turn into springs as well. In a few days, Athena’s behavior will be back to normal, that’s what the vet says. She’ll regain her old athletic form. In the meantime, I’m spending the waning hours of summer with a dog who this morning tried to go down the stairs on her own, but lost her footing and tumbled to the bottom.

Today is the first day of school – the best day of every school year. Not only that, but with the “slow start” schedule of our two schools, it will be a “first day” for some of the kids for 4 of the 5 days, so I can look forward to that special giddiness all week long. As the children get older, say as old as my 12-year-old Josephine, they’ll come to find a seed of melancholy within the ground of that unmitigated excitement. Transitions are like that. There are always waning hours and the older we get the more we come to anticipate them and use them for the reflective moments they offer. Sometimes I run across an adult who is so enthusiastically focused on the future that she seems to deny the past, oblivious to such things as waning hours. “The past is gone,” she seems to be saying, “Why dwell on it?” It’s not exactly childlike because young children aren’t even aware the past is gone. In fact if you really listen to young children, you learn that the past isn’t even really past.

I’ll remember my 47th summer as the one I learned to appreciate the late, great storyteller Utah Phillips. In his story called “Bridges” he tells of a friend who asks him why he talks about the past so much and chides him for trying to live there.

He answers, “I can go outside and pick up a rock that’s older than the oldest song you know and bring it back in here and drop it on your foot. Now the past didn’t go anywhere, did it?”

Athena is lying beside me as I write this in the waning hours, licking her bandage where the IV needle was stuck. She is leaping in the air and twirling with excitement. She is tumbling down the stairs. She is chasing a squirrel up a tree. She is collapsing as she tries to rise to greet us. She is taunting Waffle with her superior athleticism, biting her on the neck then running way, laughing over her shoulder.

I’ve written recently that young children remind me to live in the present, but this morning I’m thinking that’s not entirely accurate. It just seems like the present because children don’t have a lot of past to bring to bear. They have little experience with the waning hours. When I bang the drum to indicate it’s clean up time, some of them seem to be surprised all year long. Adults can’t go there and it would be a denial to try.

The past doesn’t go anywhere. In fact, it is the very foundation upon which this moment is built. The past is the very substance of the present. It's the material of wisdom.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m looking forward to today. Who wouldn’t be? At the same time, I’m aware of the seed of melancholy. My day will be a roller coaster of tops and bottoms as I travel from first days and art shows through vet appointments and carrying Athena up the stairs.

At least these are my thoughts as I sit here in the waning hours of my 47th summer.

Many Hands

If you’ve been reading between the lines here for the past couple weeks, you may have sussed out the fact that there was a lot to do to get our physical facility ready for the new school year.

In a normal year, we set aside two days during which parents are expected to drop by and work with me for a couple of hours, but this year has required an extended period of concern and effort due to our visitor and water damage. And while I’ve tried to keep a positive outlook, the project was looking overwhelming to me when I arrived Friday morning for the first of our two days of set-up. Honestly, I couldn’t imagine how we were going to get it done before Monday.

Gloria was the first to arrive. We brainstormed a latching mechanism for our new gate that would keep kids in while not locking parents out. After a few minutes we came up with what I thought was a fairly straight-forward solution. I gave her the rest of my shopping list and she was off.

Terry was the next to arrive. We had a rambling discussion, the most exciting part to me being a nuts-and-bolts discussion about what it would take to fulfill a dream of mine to equip our classroom with web-cams that would allow parents, grandparents, and other trusted members of the community to check in on their loved ones during their preschool days via the internet. I know, a lot of teachers would freak out at the idea of cameras in the classroom, but as a co-op teacher I’m so accustomed to working under the watchful eyes of dozens of parents that the idea of a few more observers doesn’t bother me in the least. In fact, my favorite days are the ones when we have beloved adults from distant cities visit us in the classroom, so the idea that grandparents separated from their own children by geography would have this kind of daily window into their grandkids’ lives appeals to me. Not to mention the moms and dads who can take a peek at junior from their office computers. Terry said he was going to experiment at home and let me know what he learns.

Karolyn and I had an interesting conversation that ranged from ADD/ADHD and other diagnoses, to remembering families and children from prior years, to our own kids.

Sybrina, a former parent whose only child is now in 3rd grade, dropped by with a tub of small vehicles she had taken home to clean three years ago and forgotten to return. She gave me a fun report on Misa as well as several other kids from that “graduating” class.

Karl and I talked real estate and home improvements among other things, two topics that have been very much on the front of my mind this summer.

Last year I’d spent some of our extra cash on a cool new piece of playground equipment that had become a great disappointment when one of the parts had turned up missing and we’d been unable to get satisfaction from the manufacturer before they went out of business. Katherine figured out how to make that cool piece of playground equipment functional using only the tools and parts at hand!

Jaimee, our chair, came near the end of the day, directly from a long morning at the college where she’d attended the board member Leadership Workshop. She passed on the details of our water damage situation and held down the fort as I had to absent myself to pick up my daughter Josephine from school.

Oh yeah, and in between all of this we got the work done. In fact, we made so much progress on what had previously looked to me like a monumental undertaking that our Saturday crew had finished the job by shortly after lunchtime, leaving me alone in the classroom for the rest of the day to set things up for the children who will arrive on Monday.

The job wasn’t too big after all. Many hands make light work. I love this place.

How Our School Works (The Big Picture)

(Note: I’ve received many questions over the past couple months asking about the nuts and bolts of how Woodland Park’s preschool program functions. This is the first in an irregular series that will detail how our school works. Today’s post is intended as a kind of overview.)

On Monday morning, half of Woodland Park’s 3 and 4-year-olds will start school. On Wednesday the other half will have their first day. On Thursday, we’ll all be together for the first time. Our 2-year-olds will have their own “slow start” week with half coming on Tuesday, half on Friday, then the whole crew fills the room for the first time on the following Tuesday.

It might sound a little complicated, but “slow start” is how we traditionally start our year, giving both the kids and their parents an opportunity to ease back into their school year by doing what we can to mitigate some of the “shock and awe” that often accompanies a preschooler’s first day of school.

Our Woodland Park Cooperative Preschool is technically two separate schools that share a facility and, in our present configuration, a teacher – yours truly. This means that each school is owned and operated by its respective parent community, has its own board, its own bi-laws, and its own set of policies and procedures.

In practice, however, we operate very much like a 3-year preschool, with about 50 percent of the children who enroll as 2-year-olds “graduating” three years later.

Tuesday and Friday mornings belong to the 2 hour Pre-3 class. Typically, a quarter to a third of these families are alumni, with the rest more often than not coming to us from one of the local one-day-a-week toddler cooperatives.

Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays the classroom is taken over by the 2.5 hour 3-5’s class. Normally, all of these families come to us from the Pre-3 class, although this year we were lucky enough to be able to offer spots to 2 new families, both of whom have prior experience in one of the other 40+ cooperative preschools in the North Seattle Community College network.

Tuesday afternoons are an additional session reserved for our oldest children, those who will move on to either kindergarten or a “transitional” preschool program like that offered by my friend Teacher Aaron’s North Seattle 5’s Cooperative School located right across the street from Woodland Park.

I like the natural progression of our cooperative model, with 1-year-olds attending one day a week, 2-year-olds two days, and so on until as 5-year-olds they're ready for the rigors of attending school for the full five day week. Just as our first week represents a gradual progression into school year, the overall cooperative system ramps up with the children as they grow older and wiser.

Obviously, it’s not a program for families who need their schools to double as daycare facilities. As a teacher, I appreciate this. I don’t need to worry about eating or napping schedules, and it’s even surprisingly rare to have to deal with a diaper change. I can just go full speed ahead then send them home dirty, tired, and hungry, which is how I think a child should feel after a hard day of learning.

Evidence Of Our Passage

Unlike last weeks Woodland Park Pre-3 Parent Orientation meeting where there were mostly new faces, last night’s 3-5 orientation saw only 2 new families, which is two more than most years. As I went around the circle, I counted 3 families who were there representing their third child through Woodland Park and 6 who were on their second child. And there are 9 other families with babies who I hope to see come through the school within the next two years.

In other words, unlike last week I wasn’t worried about first impressions, which is good because we arrived to find a portion of the wall of the gym removed and a dehumidifier running. Apparently, last week’s heavy rain revealed a leak in the roof which had caused water damage to a portion of the walls. This forced us to meet in the classroom, where we sat in the children’s tiny chairs. To make more room for our larger adult bodies we shoved some of our shelves back, revealing some grit and grime we missed during last spring’s year-end cleaning. One of our new mother’s said, “Ew,” but no one else batted an eye.

Between our courtyard camper and this, our little school took a beating over the summer while we were away. I’ll bet it’s glad to have us back, where it will continue to take a beating.

Being an established school community, we cranked through the business portion of the program effortlessly, while I made notes of things that need to happen over the next two days as these same families come in to work together to get the school in shape for our first day next Monday. Scanning the room, I checked the spot on the ceiling where water leaked in a few years back causing a chunk of material to fall to the floor. As I peered across the room to make sure there was no new moisture on the floor beneath that spot, I noticed the permanent paint and glue stains on the cracked and faded linoleum. No amount of scrubbing will ever get those off.

The Woodland Park Cooperative Preschool facility will never be mistaken for state-of-the-art and I like it that way. In fact, as far as I’m concerned the more like a garage it is, the better. I even fought getting a new rug for Circle Time a couple years ago because I didn’t want to feel the pressure to keep it clean. I only relented when parents assured me they wouldn’t complain if we damaged it with paint, mud, or any of the various materials we use for Pre-K science experiments. Our tables, walls and easels all bear the unwashable marks of prior years. We use our art supplies, toys and tools until they fall apart, and then more often than not they find their final resting place as part of some sort of art project. The bright side of our current water damage is that we now have some stains on the new carpeting we installed in the gym last year as a way to correct poor acoustics. Whew! The pressure is off!

Young children spend far too much of their lives in places where they’re told to not make a mess. Preschool shouldn’t be one of those places.

I’m heading into the classroom in a couple hours where I’ll spend the next two days working with parents to scrub and tidy as best we can. But however hard we try, our walls, doors and floors will continue to proudly wear the evidence of the passage of all the children it has helped to teach. And starting Monday, we'll start making more.

From The Archives

I have to hit it early today, so I thought I'd draw your attention to a few posts from the the days when only about a dozen or so people were reading the blog.

"Growing Brave Children"
Both our history and popular culture are full of stories and imagery that suggests that solving problems through violence is an act of bravery. I try to make the case here that it takes far more courage to choose non-violence. This, at least, is what we try to teach children at Woodland Park.

"Up, Up and Away!"
Pretending to be superheroes or princesses are ways our children experiment with being powerful. There are other ways as well.

"People Outside of Time"
Play is why we're here. And that goes for grown-ups too.

"And Get On With Your Life of Doing"
This is the story about how Henry taught me the true meaning of the Tao.

"Compromise: The Other Messy Art Project"
Learning to compromise is the key to creating a vital community.

"And Now The Children Tell Their Stories"
Children tell incredibly imaginative and funny stories. Here are few from last year.

The Struggle To Love

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. –Mister Rogers

I find it relatively easy to love the children who walk through the doors of our school. I’m with them for a short time. My agenda for them is simply that they each find a way to be constructively engaged. Then they go home.

School is my church. It’s the one place in my life where it’s relatively easy to accept each person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now. I often say that the time I spend in the classroom with the children simultaneously stands still and passes in a flash. It’s because young children are born to live in the moment and if I’m going to be their teacher I either have to rip them out of that, or strive to meet them there. I choose their world in which the past is easily forgotten and the future exists only in theory.

It’s in that ever-present gap between past and future that love exists.

Love is much more of a struggle during the rest of my life. The moment I’m left alone in the classroom at the end of the day, time returns with its regrets and worries. I torture myself with my own failings, and grumble about those of others. As I rush through my afternoon of errands, I interact with cashiers who are slow, drivers who are rude, and baristas who are phony. At home my child should clean up her room and my wife should stop working so hard.

But every now and then, if I really concentrate, I remember to look the other people in the eye, smile, and accept them without any agenda of my own. It may only last for a second, but that’s long enough. Sometimes, that moment fills me to overflowing and I bounce along the sidewalk, making eye contact with every stranger I pass, smiling and saying, “Hi.” Some are startled and suspicious, wondering, I suppose, about my agenda, but that doesn’t change the fact that I love them. Others are too distracted by the past and future to do more than flash me a distracted smile, but that doesn’t change the fact that I love them. And once in awhile, I get full-on eye contact, a real smile, and a return “Hi,” that says I love you, too.

Of course, there are those special times when I dress as my alter-ego, Captain Superhugger, as depicted at the top of this blog. That’s when I get to walk down the street hugging the strangers, looking them in the eye, and actually saying the words, “I love you” -- and mean it. And they almost always say it back to me. I can float on that experience for weeks.

As summer winds down, I’m eager to get back to “church.” I got a taste of it a couple weeks ago, but a lot has happened this summer (e.g., politics, selling a house, car problems) that has forced me into a pattern of regret and worry. I need the kids to pull me into the present, and support me in my ongoing struggle to love.

A Pair Of Schoolhouse Visitors

Here are a couple follow-ups to recent posts.

On Wednesday I published a post entitled "A Grown Man's Blankies" about the homeless person who used our preschool's playground as a campsite for at least part of the summer. It was heartwarming how many of you responded. I was particularly moved by this email from Shelly:

. . . When I first learned about this situation, I thought about it strictly as a problem we had to deal with, but over the last few weeks I've been thinking more about it in terms of the problems the homeless population have to deal with.

When we are out and about, Chris and I have been noticing how few public restrooms there are in this city (especially compared to the number in Europe). We've also paid more attention to a large van with curtained windows parked across from our house - it moves about two houses down the street every other day. We wonder where it's inhabitants eat, use the restroom, and shower. We hope none of our neighbors have called to complain about them. As we drive south on 8th Avenue we see more and more of these vehicle-homes and wonder about the circumstances that led to their owners' misfortunes. When I think about that, I feel silly about some of the things I worry about.

There are a lot of homeless people living in this city, and it shames me to admit that I'd become so accustomed to seeing them from day to day that I stopped really noticing them. I feel somewhat thankful to the man who was living in the courtyard for opening my eyes so that I can see beyond my own life and family - to notice the people who struggle every day with things I completely take for granted.

On Saturday I published a post entitled "It Will Be Our Fault" about the precarious position teachers around the country are being put in over Barack Obama's address to school children that will take place later today.

An interesting thing happened. Apparently, a lot of people either linked to the post or shared the URL with their friends because I saw a significant surge in readership over the next couple days. I was feeling pretty proud of myself until things turned ugly. Yesterday I awoke to a flood of anonymous comments, some respectful, most not, strongly disagreeing with me. I began by diligently reading each of them with the intent of responding until I noticed that they were all kind of sounding alike, often even repeating exact phases. It also became clear that the writers of these anonymous comments either hadn't read the post, or at least hadn't read the full post, because they accused me of writing things or believing things that simply weren't there. And finally, almost all of them devolved into a litany of reasons to fear Obama, Democrats and/or the federal government, which is entirely beside the point.

Clearly, Teacher Tom's Blog had been targeted by some sort of political "rapid response" effort. I'd heard about these types of things, but I figured they didn't have time for little blogs like this one. I was wrong. And, frankly, after awaking to another half dozen anonymous posts this morning, I'd have to say I'm still feeling proud.

I've made the editorial decision to just delete the anonymous comments, unread. Life's too short.

Any Road Will Get You There

There was a time when I wore suits to work. It was the 1980’s and I was the communications manager at the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce. I let my freak flag fly by matching my socks to my tie.

One of my colleagues had this slogan on the wall of his office:

If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.

It’s an epigram about setting and pursuing goals, but every time I read it, I would think, I’d rather take the scenic route. I’d begun to realize that the business world wasn’t for me, and the idea of all those roads, leading lord knows where, had far more appeal than any single goal I could conjure.

Fortunately, I was married to a woman who knew where she was going, which gave me the opportunity to dump the suit, grow a real freak flag, and follow an up and down back road as a freelance hack writer, which landed me a decade later as the stay-at-home father of a perfect baby girl named Josephine. I readily dropped all pretenses of paid work and set out on a detour that, at that time, not many men had taken. I entertained doubts about the wisdom of my decision until my father, who had spent good chunks of my childhood traveling on business, said, “I missed you boys growing up. You’re the luckiest man alive.” (I’m glossing over it here, but that was a huge moment for me.)

I loved her to pieces as a baby, and there were rewards aplenty, but it wasn’t all that much fun until Josephine started talking and walking. That’s when I knew that the road I was on had taken me someplace I really wanted to be.

When Josephine turned 2, all the important women in my life (wife, mother and mother-in-law) were for once unanimous in their opinion that she wasn’t ready for preschool. “She’s 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.

For the uninitiated, the cooperative model of early childhood education has been around since at least the 1940’s. The basic concept is that the parents own their children’s school and operate it at every level from the executive to the janitorial, with the teacher being the sole paid employee. Typically, every parent also spends one day a week serving as an assistant teacher, bringing the adult to child ratio up to an incredible 1:2 or 1:3, depending on the age of the children. There are obvious benefits of teachers and parents working so closely together, both inside and outside the classroom, not to mention very low tuitions.

From our first day we knew we had found a home. Three years later as Josephine prepared for kindergarten, her teacher asked me, “What are you going to do once she’s in full-day kindergarten?” To be honest, I hadn’t thought about it, but the idea of going back to sitting by myself, at home, in front a computer looked like a grim prospect. “Have you ever considered teaching preschool?”

And so as my girl took the road that headed to grade school and beyond, I diverted once more onto a side street that lead me to becoming Teacher Tom. Children come to me now as 2-year-olds in diapers and leave three years later, “sophisticated” 5-year-olds ready for kindergarten. These are remarkable years of development and I’m honored to be a part of the lives of these kids and their families.

Eight years later, I’m still enjoying the scenery. I continue to write and I’ve added some artistic pursuits to my portfolio, but teaching and parenting are how I fuel my ride.

When I graduated from college I didn’t have a career in mind so much as a strong desire to spend my time around great minds engaged in worthwhile endeavors. That’s what I’ve found in preschool. I’m in awe of these amazing brains. Every day I learn something I didn’t know when I awoke. And every day I hope I'm helping make the world a little bit better.

I’ve edited my chamber of commerce colleague’s quote for my own wall. It now reads:

Any road will get you there.

And here is always great place to be.

Carved Books

If you read the profile attached to this blog, you'll notice that I refer to myself, among other things, as an artist. I shared some of my illustrations here a few days ago, but to be honest it's been a long time since I broke out the paints. More recently my artistic endeavors have been expended in what I call "carving books." And while Teacher Tom's Blog exists primarily to address matters related to my role as a teacher, I'm going to be exerting myself this morning in the garage, scrambling to get ready for my first art installation. I thought I'd share some images of my work by way of inspiring myself to build a dozen black easels for the display.

The show will at the main library of North Seattle Community College. I'm planning to get it installed on Monday, September 14, right after my first day of school. Needless to say I'm excited and grateful, especially to librarian Elinor Appel who has been advocating on my behalf.

The process is to use a small, sharp knife, tweezers, and a headlamp to very carefully carve down one page at a time. I wish my photography was better. I hope you can make out what I'm up to.


Funk & Wagnall Standard Dictionary, A-Lobar















Funk & Wagnall Standard Dictionary, Lobate-Z















Arabian Nights
















Whole Earth Catalog
















Vogue, December, 2008
















The Illustrated Almanac of Historical Facts
















The Iliad and the Odyssey
















The Dark Thirty
















The Believer, Forty-Seventh Issue, Beoufcake, September 07















Synapsida
















Pinocchio
















Now We Are Six (A.A. Milne)
















Madel Waffe
















Harper's Bazaar, December, 2008
















Elle Magazine, May, 2008
















Elsewhere, Perhaps (Amos Oz)
















First Aid, Fourth Edition, American national Red Cross

It Will Be Our Fault

If I were a public school teacher, I think I’d be relieved if my principal forbade me to let my students watch President Obama’s back to school address on September 8. Sure, I’d make a show of outrage, maybe even write a sternly worded letter of protest, but deep down inside I’d feel the same kind of relief I felt when my wife, mother and mother-in-law told me my 2-year-old daughter was too young to be in preschool: It’s the right thing to do, but the higher ups won’t let me.

In 2003, during the run-up to the Iraq War a public school teacher in Indiana was using an officially approved Time Magazine for Kids curriculum to discuss current events. She was required to teach that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction along with other historical “facts” about the relationship between our two countries. The curriculum included a short story about anti-war protests. When one of her students asked her if she would ever take part in one of these demonstrations, she answered, “I honk for peace” when I drive by demonstrators with signs reading I Honk For Peace.

A small group of parents raised a ruckus. The teacher lost her job and ultimately her home. She took her case all the way to the Supreme Court, which declined to hear it, thus confirming the lower court decision:

. . . a teacher’s speech is a commodity that she sells to a school in exchange for a salary.

While this technically only applies to teachers in the 7th Circuit (Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin) it could, and probably would, be used as a precedent in other parts of the country.

Thousands of teachers will air President Obama’s speech in their classrooms, but in our current political environment they will need to walk on eggshells to avoid having their lives destroyed for doing so. An opportunity for meaningful civics education will be missed if teachers are cowed into silence by a few exercised parents.

In 1988, Ronald Reagan spoke directly to students. So did George H.W. Bush in 1991. In both cases, objections were raised, but no one was censored over it, let alone lost their jobs. Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton all also spoke directly to students without controversy. Heck, George W. Bush was famously sitting in an elementary school classroom when the tragedy of 9/11 happened.

And now there’s a controversy over the president of the United States speaking to students? Really? And it’s such a big deal that teachers' livelihoods will be threatened over it? Really? Really? Already, entire school districts have succumbed to pressure and banned the president’s speech. What the hell is going on here? This is the elected leader of the free world we’re talking about, not some dangerous fringe figure with the magic powers to brainwash children through the television.

The only conclusion I can draw is that a noisy minority of our fellow citizens has suffered a psychotic break with reality. They are calling our president a Nazi, a socialist, a communist, a terrorist, and a race-hater, sometimes all in the same tirade. They are openly and threateningly carrying guns to places where he appears. They are even insisting that he isn’t really the president. As outright crazy as this is, our constitution protects their right to engage in all of this insanity.

But it does not protect their right to censor the president, especially when, by all accounts, the subject of his speech will be the universally accepted values of hard work, setting goals and staying in school. As ludicrous as it sounds, this is the message they want to censor.

Yet in many parts of the country they are successfully doing so. A frothy fringe of parents has been hammering school districts, administrators, and even teachers for weeks now. And frankly, I can’t blame them for giving in. They don’t want to lose their jobs and homes. Our public educators are in a bind. They cannot speak out without great risk.

Thankfully, we as parents are free to speak our minds. And even better, the courts have held that students do not sacrifice their free speech rights once the school bell rings. It’s up to us as parents and students to support our teachers. If you want to make sure your child has the opportunity to hear the president encourage them to work hard and stay in school, then let your school officials know about it. If your school is already planning to broadcast the address, then thank them for doing it. If a teacher makes the mistake of actually voicing an opinion, stand up for her.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, it’s clear that there are some very frightened people in this country. Change can be threatening. We have chosen a new political direction. The leader of the free world is now a man who might have been a slave only a few generations ago.

These sad people are so afraid that when they look at the president, they see a boogeyman from whom they must protect their children. They deserve our pity, but that doesn’t mean we have to let their irrational fears win the day.

Now is a time to stand up for our public educators. If a single one of them loses her job, it will be our fault.

This Is How Democracy Works

Last night I took our cool new light rail link to Westlake Center for a health care reform rally. I found out about it via email a couple of days ago. I knew our congressman-for-life Jim McDermott was going to be keynoting, so I figured there would be a decent crowd, but otherwise national press coverage lead me to expect a milquetoast turn-out and some unruly opposition.

But this is Seattle. We’re a kick-ass, professionally run Democratic Party city. Political opposition more often comes from the left than the right. We were not going to let the loyal opposition drown us out. I’m terrible at guessing these things, but the turnout impressed me: at least 2000, and maybe as many as 10,000, but it didn’t really matter.

This is how democracy works. I was not there out of ideological passion, but I wasn’t there cynically either. I go to political rallies because it’s important to sometimes vote with your body. Earlier this summer, the opposition scared me by its ability to turn out bodies at health care town hall meetings, but we are clearly in the majority and the only way we can fail to achieve meaningful health care reform is if we don’t make this fact clear to our political leaders by showing up.

Every political rally to which I’ve ever been, starts out the same way. We kind of mill around while efficient young people representing various unions and other organizations hand out signs, stickers and the opportunity to sign a petition or two. There are a few hippish-types, but mostly it’s a bunch of the middle-aged, middle-class people we see at the grocery store. It’s just us and we’re always a little awkward and self-conscious.

A band called My Parade kicked off the event. Many of the older people felt they were too loud, but no one seemed upset that the very charming lead singer kept saying fuck. A few of us tried to rock out, but you know, we're out of practice. I’m sure my 12-year-old would have been embarrassed.

Nothing unexpected happened. We heard from a father with employer provided health insurance whose son has lymphoma, but has to wait 6 months to start treatment for purely bureaucratic reasons. The owner of Cupcake Royale told us how 25 cents of every cupcake she sells now goes to pay for her employees’ insurance, and that’s for coverage that’s not nearly as good as what she could afford last year. The pastor who emceed the event had us practice 3 simple chants. Dr. Jim McDermott was there to assure us that he is doing the job he was elected to do: represent us in congress.

As each speaker stepped up to the microphone, with each repetition of Hey Hey Ho, with each heartbreaking story, with each repetition of the simple facts, with each reference to the two dozen frightened people “across the street” with their signs that read socialism, or government is evil, with each mention of Teddy Kennedy, we became less awkward, more united. By the time the pastor asked, “Can you feel it? Can you feel that we’ve already won?” our confidence was soaring. This is how you’re supposed to feel at a kick-ass, professionally run political rally.

We will wind up with meaningful healthcare reform. We will wind up with a strong public option that will, over time, evolve into Medicare for all. We will pay for it through the premium payments from those under 65. These premiums will be much lower than private insurance can charge because there is no need to the generate profits, bizarrely high executive salaries, or gigantic marketing/lobbying budgets. Health care costs will be controlled by the bargaining power of an enormous pool of customers, which the public option will inevitably attract. It will kick the butt of the private sector by being more efficient, while producing better results, like what happens in the rest of the industrialized world. Private insurance will have to compete or die.

Ayn Rand (who I was into as a 9th grader until I realized that I didn’t want to live in a world in which selfishness was considered a virtue) will just have to roll over in her grave. Capitalism is cool, but not unregulated capitalism. And sometimes it’s just plain immoral. There is no morality in an industry that is motivated to deny healthcare and/or drive families into bankruptcy.

By now, I don’t think there are many regular citizens who haven’t made up their minds. The lines are drawn and the time for persuasion is over. All that’s left is to make this fact clear to the US Senate, which still seems to think there’s something left to debate. Our own Washington State senators are on our side. Patty Murray has been on the bandwagon from the start. Maria Cantwell has been slower to come to the table, but when I called her office earlier this week to ask about her position, the woman I spoke with assured me the senator is in favor of a “strong public option” and not the watered down “co-op” idea as was rumored.

But we must keep the pressure on. Yesterday, the White House re-floated the idea of giving the private insurers a couple years to meet some sort of benchmarks and only if they don’t, would it “trigger” a public option. This plan would mean the sacrifice of thousands more American lives and thousand more bankruptcies, while executives take home billion dollar paychecks. I simply do not trust them to do anything but make one more last grab for money. This is what’s called a trial balloon. If we don’t shoot it down, our political leaders will run with it. Please call your representatives and the White House and let them know you are against the “trigger” idea. This is how democracy works.

As the rally broke up, the pastor urged us to shake one another’s hands and say, “Thank you.” Loud, motivational baby-boom music like Don’t Stop and Higher Ground filled the void left by the speakers causing middle-aged, middle-class people to unselfconsciously dance in public.

Many of us took a tour of the tiny fenced-off area across the street where, at most, two dozen counter-protesters morosely mingled. They were not the kind of people you see at the grocery store. I thought it was an urban legend, but there really was an elderly man who proudly announced that he was on Medicare, but carried a sign that read, “Keep Your Government Hands Off My Private Insurance.” Shame on those who have lied to him. There were several guys in their late teens wearing baseball caps with images of guns or Confederate flags, and a couple more who were slightly older wearing suits that looked like they might have belonged to their fathers. Most of them covered their faces when someone turned a camera on them. They seemed frightened. They looked like they needed a hug and a whispered assurance that everything was going to be alright.

As I boarded the train to head home, I fell into conversation with an older Mexican-American man. We talked about healthcare reform and art. It turns out he is a Beacon Hill neighborhood activist with whom I have several friends in common. When he got off at Qwest Field to go to the Seahawks game, a young African-American man leaned across the aisle to tell me that he knows my companion and he is, “a great man.”

We talked about the rally and reminded each other that Barack Obama has proven to be a smart politician who plays chess while everyone else is playing checkers. I said, “I hope he takes a strong stance on the public option in his speech next week.”

He answered, “I think he will.”

I said, “He hasn’t so far, but he’s fond of the FDR line about if you want me to support change you’re going to have to . . .”

And he interrupted to finish my sentence, “. . . make me.”

This is a truly historic opportunity. When the G20 meets later this year, the US will be the only nation represented that does not provide universal healthcare. We will be dead last on the list in terms of health care outcomes, and first on the list in terms of cost. There will never be a better time. We’ve been trying to get this done since the other great Teddy – Roosevelt – first proposed it. The mid-term elections will likely see the opposition taking back some seats in congress and that may be enough to doom us if we don't get it done now.

The next couple months are important. We must make them do it.

This is how democracy works.