If You Don't Know Where You're Going . . .

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.

Eleven 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.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

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Limits

In limitations he first shows himself the master. ~Goethe

It can be very frightening for a child not to have limits. Not only can the world outside be frightening, but the world inside, the world of feelings, can also be scary when you're not sure you can manage those feelings by yourself. ~Mister Rogers 

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about a boy who regularly peeks at a collection of cars that we keep on a shelf behind a piece of fabric. Each time he did so, I reminded him, "That's closed," before gently leading him away. He's not the first two-year-old to peek longingly behind the curtains and want to learn about what he sees there.

That particular post was about the challenge he faced, and how we dealt with it, when the cars were finally "open." A few commenters chided me for not just letting the boy play with those cars when he first showed an interest, one writing, "You stood in the way of his curiosity."

Like most preschool classrooms, much of our storage is inside the classroom, and we have a lot of stuff crammed onto those shelves: for better or worse, this is a reality of our environment. I've been doing this for a long time. I know, from experience, what happens when everything is "open." I'll never forget finding a neophyte parent-teacher who I'd apparently not properly briefed on the concept of "open" and "closed," sitting on the floor surrounded by a dozen board game boxes, puzzle boxes, and other storage containers, the contents of which were strewn about her. Two-year-olds were struggling to walk, stumbling, kicking, and breaking things underfoot; a couple kids were crying, while others were manically pulling more things off the "closed" shelves.

The parent was aware that something had gone wrong. "I thought I was just letting them play the way you always talk about," she said to me as we stayed together after class to tackle the gargantuan sorting process. And it's true, I do talk an awful lot about the importance of children playing freely.

Not long ago, I wrote another post about how I planned an art project by, essentially, choosing what things to which the children would have access and pre-programming others in the hopes that it would lead to the children discovering a new way to use common materials. I don't always think through projects in such detail like this, which is why I wrote about this one, although I usually have at least some idea about how I expect the children will engage with the materials I've provided. In this case, amazingly, it worked the way I'd envisioned. A reader detected hypocrisy (my word, not his) in the juxtaposition of this kind of environmental management on the teacher's part and my bedrock assertion that children learn best when they play freely.

Underpinning both of those posts, and in fact just about every post I write here, is the idea of "environmental management," which is, after all, one of the primary roles of a teacher in a play-based curriculum. In fact, I often say that my main responsibility is to set things up; to prepare the space. Once the kids arrive, the work of learning is up to them. My job, in other words, is to set the limits within which the children, for that day at least, will play freely: to coordinate with what the Reggio Emilia educational approach refers to as "the third teacher." This is true for everything we do at Woodland Park. We, in effect, "open" some materials/spaces and "close" others. Sometimes we have ideas about where our set up might guide the children, although truthfully, more often than not it doesn't go the way we expect, as the children, within the additional limits of the rules we have democratically established together, experiment with the materials/spaces as best serves their individual and collective curiosities. And this is as it should be. The goal is not to satisfy the teacher's expectations (although it's pretty cool when that happens), but rather their own curiosity.

It is within these environmental and social limits that free play happens. It is within these limits that we strive to avoid the "language of command," which means that there is no one there telling kids things like, "Do it like this," or "Today we're making flowers." Instead, we we make informative statements like, "We have scissors, tape, construction paper . . ." or "This is what Suzy made," then leave them to do their own thinking. This is what I mean when I talk about playing freely.

In working with our "third teacher" (the first and second being parents and classroom teachers) I am not working all on my own even if I am the one responsible for setting things up. Every classroom set up is, in reality a collaboration between me, both the changeable and fixed aspects of our environment, parents, and, the children themselves. It is my job to interpret the feedback I receive on a daily basis from my educational partners then to manage the environment in such a way that we are, together, pursuing our collective and individual interests, questions, and passions.

That is largely what I'm doing as the children play-learn: collecting this feedback by listening and observing, then responding to it. When it seems that the children are "bouncing off the walls," for instance, it often means I've set the limits too narrowly for this particular group of kids on this particular day. When the children seem aimless, stumbling, kicking things, breaking things, and crying, it tells me that I may have set the limits too broadly for this particular group of kids on this particular day. When children completely ignore one of our classroom invitations, it's a sign I need to rethink the materials/space because it clearly is not serving their pursuit of knowledge. When children fall on something en masse it tells me that I should consider finding ways to expand the limits.

In a broader sense, we know that limits are vital to young children. As Dr. Laura Markham writes in her new book, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids:

. . . kids who never need to "manage" themselves to accommodate limits and rise to expectations have a harder time developing self-discipline . . . Limits keep our children safe and healthy and support them in learning social norms so that they can function happily in society. And if we set limits empathically, kids are more likely to internalize the ability to set limits for themselves, which is otherwise known as self-discipline.

Dr. Markham is talking about parenting and behavior here, but the principle of limits is also, obviously, applicable to all teaching and learning.

When I've listened and observed well, our environment fully engages most of the kids, inviting them to play freely, but there are always a few who peek behind the curtains, children curious about the limits we've set for them, and what lies just beyond. That too is as it should be.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

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They'll Refuse To Waste Students' Time

Our family has a lot of friends whose children attend Garfield High School in Seattle, a large, well-regarded public school. Yesterday, the teachers there unanimously voted to refuse to administer our state's standardized test this semester.

I've written a lot here about the insidiousness of standardized testing and the entire corporate education reform effort, which is really a thinly disguised attempt to bust unions, de-professionalize teaching, and privatize our public schools (Here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here . . . you get the idea. If you really want to go deep, click on the "education reform" tag at the bottom of this post or under the "topics" heading in the right hand column to read everything I've written over the years.) 

I applaud these teachers and am proud they are in my city. We don't have the deep pockets of the other side, but we do have reason and research. None of what the corporate reformers are pushing, from standardized testing, to standardized curricula, to charter schools, has ever been demonstrated to improve education. In fact, if anything, the data suggests that this corporate reform agenda impoverishes education.

Push-back from teachers, parents and students (all indications are that the Garfield student body supports their teachers) is how we will prevail. Across the country parents are choosing to opt their kids out of this testing and teachers are rebelling. Please parents, support your children and their teachers. Our schools, of course, could always be made better, but this is the opposite of what research tells us is the way to do it.

I stand behind the Garfield teachers.

M E D I A   A D V I S O R Y

T H U R S D A Y,   J A N U A R Y   1 0 ,   2 0 1 3

Teachers at Garfield High Say MAP Test is Counterproductive,

Say They’ll Refuse to Waste Students’ Time, School’s Resources

 

—PRESS CONFERENCE TODAY—

What: Press conference to announce Garfield High School’s opposition to the MAP test

When: Thursday, January 10, 3:00 p.m.

Where: Garfield High School (400 23rd Avenue Seattle, WA 98122) in Room 206

For more information:

Jesse Hagopian, Teacher Garfield HS, 206-962-1685, hagopian.jesse@gmail.com

SEATTLE – In perhaps the first instance anywhere in the nation, teachers at Seattle’s Garfield High School will announce this afternoon their refusal to administer a standardized test that students in other high schools across the district are scheduled to take in the first part of January. Known as the MAP test, it purports to evaluate student progress and skill in reading and math. The teachers contend that it wastes time, money, and precious school resources.

            “Our teachers have come together and agree that the MAP test is not good for our students, nor is it an appropriate or useful tool in measuring progress,” says Kris McBride, who serves as Academic Dean and Testing Coordinator at Garfield.  “Additionally, students don’t take it seriously.  It produces specious results, and wreaks havoc on limited school resources during the weeks and weeks the test is administered.”

            McBride explained that the MAP test, which stands for Measure of Academic Progress, is administered two to three times each year to 9^th grade students as well as those receiving extra support services.  The students are told the test will have no impact on their grades or class standing, and, because of this, students tend to give it little thought to the test and hurry through it.  In addition, there seems to be little overlap between what teachers are expected to teach (state and district standards) and what is measured on the test. 

            Despite this flaw, McBride states, results of the MAP tests will be used by district officials to help evaluate the effectiveness of instructors who give the test. “Our teachers feel strongly that this type of evaluative tool is unfair based on the abundance of problems with the exam, the content, and the statistical insignificance of the students’ scores,” she says.

            Refusing to administer a district-mandated test is not a decision the school’s teachers made casually, or without serious internal discussion.

            “Those of us who give this test have talked about it for several years,” explained Mallory Clarke, Garfield’s Reading Specialist. “When we heard that district representatives themselves reported that the margin of error for this test is greater than an individual student’s expected score increase, we were appalled!” 

            After the affected faculty decided unanimously to make a stand against the MAP test, they told the rest of Garfield’s faculty of their decision. In a December 19 vote, the rest of the school’s teachers voted overwhelmingly to support their colleagues’ refusal to administer the test. Not a single teacher voted against the action. Four abstained from voting. the rest voted to support it.

            “We really think our teachers are making the right decision,” said student body president Obadiah Stephens-Terry.“I know when I took the test, it didn’t seem relevant to what we were studying in class– and we have great classes here at Garfield. I know students who just go through the motions when taking the test, did it as quickly as possible so that they could do something more useful with their time.”  History teacher Jesse Hagopian said, “What frustrates me about the MAP test is that the computer labs are monopolized for weeks by the MAP test, making research projects very difficult to assign.” Hagopian added “This especially hurts students who don’t have a computer at home.”

            The $4 million MAP test was purchased by Seattle Public Schools during the tenure of former Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson, who left her position in 2011 and sadly passed away in 2012. Goodloe-Johnson sat on the board of directors of Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA), the company that markets the MAP test. At the time, some pointed out this potential conflict of interest for Goodloe-Johnson, but the district went ahead with the purchase nonetheless.  NWEA itself warns that districts should not use the map test to evaluate teachers. We teachers of Garfield High School believe that the NWEA is right—this test should not be used to evaluate teachers.  For secondary teachers the test cannot provide useful information about students’ skills and progress.  Still worse, this test should not rob students of precious class time away from instruction. “We believe the negative aspects of the MAP test so outweigh the positive ones that we are willing to take this step,” said Language Arts teacher Adam Gish.

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Magnet Painting!

I honestly don't know if this idea is original or stolen, but I call it magnet painting and it's been a staple at Woodland Park since my first year teaching.

Our set-up is to use large blocks to raise squares of lucite so there is enough room underneath each one for your hands to fit comfortably like in the picture above. The idea then is to put a few drops of paint on top the lucite along with a few magnetic marbles (ours came from an old magnetic marble building set). You can also just use bits of metal like paper clips, lightweight chains, small screws, and such, although in that case you might find you need to thin the tempera a little with water.

The kids then paint by holding a magnet (we use magnet wands, although it could be any strong-ish magnet) under the lucite and paint by moving the marbles around through the paint via the magic of magnetism. When finished, the painting is "saved" by removing the marbles, then pressing a piece of paper on top to take a print.

This is how we've always done it at Woodland Park. And it's always been kind of a mess. The art-parent generally finds herself in an ongoing clean-up project: wiping clean the lucite surface for each new kid; wiping clean the magnet wands as the kids, seeking more direct control over their medium, inevitably try sticking their magnet directly into the paint; wiping clean the marbles between painters. And then there's the need to help kids organize their drops of paint, print making, and turn-taking. 

Yesterday, Audrey's dad Caleb was our art parent. I explained the concept to him when he arrived, apparently not doing so clearly enough because when I turned around I found that instead of saving the paper for a print-making stage, he had just put the paper directly on the lucite, then the paint atop the paper.

I immediately regretted all those years of having set it up the other way. Now the kids were painting directly on the paper, greatly reducing the need for wiping up between painters.

His second innovation was to, instead of starting the kids off with a couple dollops of paint on their paper, put the paint into bowls along with the marbles. The kids then just picked the marbles they wanted, dropped them on their painting surface and they were off. Not only did this make the project more child-focused, removing an entire adult-controlled step, but by reducing the amount of paint through which the kids were moving the marbles, made it, in fact, much less frustrating. He still found himself occasionally wiping the kids' magnet wands clean, but by making those marbles easier to control, he reduced the urged to stick the magnets directly in the paint.

Typically, this project is one that keeps the art-parent on her toes, cleaning, re-setting things, managing turn-taking, and helping to get finished art (usually dripping with paint) to the drying racks. Now, with these new innovations, Caleb got to spend his time as art-parent doing what both he and I would prefer the adults in the room be doing: talking to the kids, commenting on the process, and even making his own magnet paintings. 

This is reason number 612 why I love teaching in a cooperative preschool. I really ought to amend the tagline at the top of this blog to read "Teaching and learning from preschoolers and their parents."

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

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Digging A Hole To China

There is something fundamental about digging holes to China. During most of my 11 years at Woodland Park, we didn't have a sand pit, which meant we did most of our digging in mud or in our sensory table.

Muddy holes don't work so well for digging to China because they're always refilling themselves. Sensory table holes don't work so well because there's not enough depth to spark our imaginations.  Holes dug in the damp sand, however . . . Now that's what you need to dig a hole to China.

As a boy, I participated in many a journey through the center of the earth, and in all of the years that Woodland Park has had a sand pit, the children I teach have dug their own holes to China. And I know that we're not the only ones.

You would think we would have better relations with the Chinese with all the coming and going between our nations. After all, we're neighbors, living just one deep hole away from one another.

Of course, quite honestly, I don't recall having ever made it all the way to China. Come to think of it, despite all that digging over all those decades, I've never heard of anyone actually arriving on the other side of the earth. I'm not even certain that China is where we would end up were we, in fact, to succeed in popping through to the other side.

As we started our most recent hole to China, we wondered aloud about that. There was some speculation that we would instead end up in Africa or Mexico or grandma's house in Chicago or the middle of the Indian Ocean. And then there was some worry about the molten core because, we informed ourselves, it's made out of lava. We agreed that if lava came "oozing out" we would want to run. None of these doubts made us stop digging.

At one point, Calder, who understands his geography, said, "I don't think we could really dig all the way to China. It's really far."

After thinking, Erik answered, "Maybe there are some Chinese kids digging to us."

Calder shrugged, "We could meet them in the middle." Then they got back to work.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

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Touching And Being Touched

A few years ago, our annual viral "scare" arrived in the form of hand foot and mouth disease (HFMD), a common childhood illness that causes discomfort in the form of blisters on the aforementioned hands, feet and mouth, but with very few real dangers attached to it. The fact that it only turned up in a single child doesn't mean it didn't spread throughout the community in the form of worry.

Like with the Swine Flu (H1N1) a couple years back, parents were understandably concerned, some overly so, but who can blame them? Most of us knew little about the illness and we're talking about our "babies." HFMD certainly sounded more exotic that a run-of-the-mill cold or flu. So, in spite of the relative harmlessness of this particular viral illness, we, as a community, spent a couple days in a bit of a tizzy as we learned what it was all about. And, as we do every year in the aftermath of our first virus, we settled back into a place where we were all talking about the importance of hand washing (if you click on this link, please make sure the read the excellent comments as well, especially the one from my sister Amy at the very bottom, whose take on preschool hand washing I agree with entirely).

You see, that's the genius of a virus like the one that causes HFMD. It takes advantage of one of our basic human drives: the need to touch one another with our hands. And while most viral illness can also be transmitted via airborne means, they are most often passed from person to person through our hands. You see, pure genius: taking advantage of one of the most beautiful parts of being human to make us sick.

This is a particularly vexing challenge for a preschool, where physical touch is central to the curriculum whether we like it or not. It's simply what young children do -- and it's what we adults do when we're with them.

At the end of our Pre-3 day, the children always, without prompting from me, surge forward to give me a hug. The first time it happened, I was surprised and flattered, but I've come to learn that it really has nothing to do with me in particular: it's simply the children expressing a sense of connection or community or gratitude or love or whatever that thing is that drives us to lay our hands on other people.

Whenever I sit down for a moment, little hands are suddenly on every part of my body, instinctively caressing me, playing with my hair, fiddling with my fingers, poking, prodding, using me for support, sitting on my lap. Many of the children have learned I like to have my back scratched, so there's often quite a bit of that (a talent I hope their parents get to appreciate at home).

Their hands are always all over one another as well, holding hands, wrestling, sharing.

There is a lot research out there demonstrating the evolutionary basis for our need to touch and be touched. We all know, for instance, that if a baby isn't touched enough, even if its other basic necessities are handled, it will just roll over a die. But, I don't need any more evidence than what I receive every day in the classroom in the form of those little hands. Touching and being touched, I'm convinced, is as vital to our survival as food, air and water.

Of course, this is easy to remember when we're working with young children. Viruses be damned, we aren't going to stop because the benefits, even at the price of blisters on our hands, feet and mouth, far outweigh the cost.

As I move around the classroom, I often don't even notice that my hand is on a child's shoulder as she paints, or on the small of his back as he leans over a puzzle. In fact, being a cooperative preschool, with lots of the children's parents in the room working with me, I'm often startled to find my hand is unconsciously resting on one of their shoulders or backs. And in spite of how inappropriate that would be in most circumstances, no one has ever called me out on it at preschool.

And isn't in a shame that so many of us "outgrow" touching? I suppose as we become adults, touch becomes sexualized and many of us reserve it for that, or we fear that our hand on another person's shoulder will be misinterpreted as sexual, and often it is. So we grow cautious, not wanting to be misunderstood, reserving our hands for family and trusted friends, offering only handshakes to everyone else.

Maybe that's why I'm so proud of having helped to found the Superhuggers, our group of be-caped adults who boldly dispense hugs to strangers at public events, most notably the Fremont Summer Solstice Parade. And maybe that's why I'm so reluctant to give it up, even though its impact as performance art waned long ago. I recall the build-up to our first foray into recklessly laying our hands on strangers. We worried we'd get slugged, we worried we'd be groped, we worried we'd be sued, we worried we'd contract every virus known to man. We had no idea what we were getting into. We came up with all kinds of strategies for identifying the people who were "open" to a hug and avoiding the ones who might slug, grope or sue.

At the end of that first parade, we sat together on the slope of the grassy hill at the center of Gasworks Park, glowing from the experience of having hugged 12,000 strangers. And while there had been a certain amount of low-level groping, no one had been slugged, and there had only been a handful of people who declined our advances. And while those concerns had been the focus of our conversations prior to the parade, they were now mere incidentals to the stories each of us had about the connections we made with our fellow humans. Sharing physical touch with hundreds of strangers is a feeling like no other. It makes me feel bigger, stronger, and connected. There is no way anyone could go through that experience and not come away loving your fellow man.

And yes, several of the Superhuggers finished off June with runny noses and coughs, an exceedingly small price to pay.

I certainly don't wish blisters on the hands, feet and mouth of anyone. We will strive to be vigorous in adhering to Woodland Parks' common sense hand washing policies and procedures. But that's the best we can do, because not touching one another is simply out of the question.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

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How We Build Our World

Together we're a genius. ~Six Feet Under

If it were only about teaching famous three R's, then we wouldn't need schools, at least for most kids. There would be no need to come together every day if the purpose of education were strictly to learn academic skills, at least in the early years because, quite frankly, these are not particularly difficult things for humans to teach or to learn. We wouldn't need all those "instructional hours." In fact, if education were merely a matter of math and literacy, I can think of few teaching methods more inefficient than what we call school.

We need schools because education is much bigger than academics, something politicians of all stripes fail to comprehend. School is about learning to live in a community with other free and equal citizens. That's the reason we need schools. School is where we practice fairness, fitting in, standing out, forging partnerships, sharing, accommodating, tolerating, celebrating, and getting our own needs met, while helping meet the needs of others. School is where we learn what we need to know about building community, which is, after all, what human animals are all about.

I know a lot of homeschoolers read this blog. It was a choice we considered for our daughter, but rejected because I didn't think I was up to single-handedly cobbling together a big enough  "social life" for my child. I applaud those of you who manage it, but we chose school, not for the academics, but for the opportunity it offered to give our child practice in building things together.

And that's what we do all day in school, really, when all is said and done: build things together.

The first child arrives, drops to her knees and gets busy with her chosen work. This is perhaps no different than what she does at home. What makes it school is the arrival of others and the struggle and joy of figuring out how to make that work.

We build our school together each year, day-by-day and block-by-block. It's no accident that this is also how we build our world.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

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