Deer Park

This is the legendary poem Deer Park (Wang Wei):

鹿柴 (王维)

空山不见人,

但闻人语响.

返景入深林,

复照青苔上.

It was written during the Tang Dynasty by a poet who is often referred to as Poetry Buddha.

Here is one translation into English:

On this lonely mountain I see no one,

Yet I hear the echo of voices.

Rays of sunlight enter into the deep forest,

Shining once more upon green moss.

There are, however, many other translations, some that seem to convey completely different, even contradictory meanings. I'm thinking of this poem this morning because among my holiday gifts is a book entitled Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei by Eliot Weinberger. It is a look at this ancient poem from nineteen different perspectives, although as the author points out in the introduction there are an infinite number of ways to interpret the poem. These are simply the ones that fit this particular book.

I'm excited to read the book because it is, in part, about the challenge of "translating" a poem that was written using a pictographic alphabet into a phonetic one. There is no word-for-word translation possible because phonetic symbols are visual representations of sounds, whereas pictographic symbols represent ideas, concepts and object. This means that each symbol is open to interpretation. Our English language alphabet is comprised of a meager 26 letters. It's impossible to know exactly how many "letters" make up the ancient Chinese alphabet, although scholars place it as over 50,000 and probably more than 100,000. 

Scientists tell us that new technologies re-wire our brains, which has caused a great deal of hand wringing over how things like computers and smartphones are rewiring our children, but no technology has rewired humans more than the phonetic alphabet. It's hard not to reflect on everything we lose when reducing human experience to a small collection of sounds. It's hard not to reflect on how much richer our understanding of the world would be if we had stuck with pictographs. The phonetic alphabet is an attempt to create a narrow, if not singular, perspective, whereas pictographs seek to create an infinitely wide and inclusive perspective, one that is open to multiple, even infinite, interpretations. A phonetic alphabet is about conveying information as concretely and unambiguously as possible, whereas a pictographic alphabet seeks to create the whole picture, contradictions and all.

I wonder if the exploding use of emojis and stylized selfies in social media and elsewhere doesn't represent a deep desire to create a new, more inclusive way of communicating that acknowledges there is always more than one way to understand our world. A smiley face, after all, says so much more than the word "smile." I wonder if our phonetic alphabet induced prejudice in favor of precision and explicitness, blinding us to the true wonder of experience. I wonder if our reliance on a phonetic alphabet hasn't rewired us in ways that make us believe, falsely, in absolute truth, in right and wrong answers, in my-way-or-the highway.

As an early childhood educator, I've spent my career working amongst humans we label as "pre-literate." In other words, these are humans who have not been rewired by the technology of the phonetic alphabet. All of them begin interpreting images and making meaningful marks long before they can even conceive of what we call reading or writing. When we bend over them with our questions of "What is it?" or "What does it mean?" we are revealing our phonetic alphabet prejudiced brains and the limits of our own understanding, not to mention confusing the children. This is part of how the phonetic alphabet rewires us.

The older I get, the more aware I've become of how literacy, as we currently define it, limits my understanding. This is why, I believe, we must learn to actively seek out perspectives other than our own, and especially look for perspectives that add to, alter, or even contradict what we think we understand. At least this is what we must do if we are truth seekers. Ambiguity is truth and certainty is most certainly a lie.

******

 

"Teacher Tom, our caped hero of all things righteous in the early childhood world, inspires us to be heroic in our own work with young children, and reminds us that it is the children who are the heroes of the story as they embark on adventures of discovery, wonder, democracy, and play." ~Rusty Keeler

If you liked reading this post, you might also enjoy one of my books. To find out more, Click here! 

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!

Sitting And Watching

As a boy of six-years-old, I objected to the term "babysitter." For one thing, I wasn't a baby, and for another, the word conjured the image of babies being sat upon. 

By the time I was 10, old enough to be entrusted with the care of children back in the early 70's, it made more sense. After all, most little kids were "babies," with all their whining and fussing, although no one did much sitting on my watch. My counter to whining and fussing was to actively play with my charges. After all, I was, by virtue of being a big kid, a figure of some glamour, someone to be looked up to, and having recently been a little kid myself, I knew it. I would spend the first few hours performing the role of games master, romping right along with them, winding them up, tiring them out, then packing them off to bed, making a big deal of allowing them to stay up past their bed times if only they would agree to not tell on me.

By the time our daughter Josephine was old enough to babysit (which in the 00's was 12), I'd evolved once more. I now placed the emphasis on the "sitting." As a teacher, I'd figured out that a big part of the adult role with young children is sitting (or standing or kneeling or squatting) and watching (another word for babysitting, as in "watching the kids"). I told Josephine that she could entertain the kids if she wanted, but that babysitting was a job with the description in its title. 

The longer I've worked with children, the more time I spend sitting and watching. Of course, there's more to it than that, but the sitting and watching remain at the core of what I do. It's a policy of non-interference, of creating space in which children are free to pursue their own interests in their own way. The watching is, of course, partly about keeping them safe and, in certain circumstances, protecting property, but mostly it's about understanding. Usually, when we assert that "all behavior is communication" we are referring to some sort of misbehavior, but it applies to all behavior, be it building with blocks, hiding treasures, drawing a picture, or running in circles. So perhaps the word "listening" is better than "watching," although it is a listening that is done, as Eleanor Duckworth says, "with our whole being," because that's what it takes to understand. When adults don't make the effort to understand, we react to children based upon our fears, assumptions, and prejudices, thereby misunderstanding, which, more often than not, leads to even more misbehavior as the child struggles to be understood.

Sitting and watching is the not so secret sauce.

We live in an era of adult intervention. The prevailing idea of parenting or teaching or babysitting is that we must constantly be guiding or teaching or correcting, that sitting and watching is laziness, that if we aren't constantly enriching the children's world we are neglecting them. This lies at the heart of much of the stress and guilt parents find themselves feeling. 

Janet Lansbury advises young parents to lay their baby on a blanket on the floor and just enjoy watching them. Professional play workers say that their job is to "loiter with intent." Eleanor Duckworth wants us to shut up and listen with our whole selves. In past generations when stay-at-home parents (usually mothers) were the norm, children were usually left free to entertain themselves, which is to say play in their rooms, in their gardens, or around the neighborhood, without the constraints of adult cautions, corrections, or, heaven forbid, lectures. 

This is the natural habitat of childhood. When we step back, when we sit, we leave a space that is perfectly conducive to the proper development and education of young children. When we watch, when we listen to what they are communicating, we will understand when, how, and if they need us. And most of the time, all they need from us is to know where we can be found and that we love them.

******

 

"Teacher Tom, our caped hero of all things righteous in the early childhood world, inspires us to be heroic in our own work with young children, and reminds us that it is the children who are the heroes of the story as they embark on adventures of discovery, wonder, democracy, and play." ~Rusty Keeler

If you liked reading this post, you might also enjoy one of my books. To find out more, Click here! 

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!

Boredom

When I talk to adults about their years of schooling, they rarely talk about what they learned in math class. They talk about teachers. They talk about their social life. And at some point almost all of them talk about the boredom. 

Boredom researcher John Eastwood from York University in Canada defines boredom as "The aversive experience of wanting, but being unable to engage in satisfying activity." He and others have found that boredom is linked to, and in some circumstances potentially the cause of, depression and anger, pathological gambling, bad driving, sensation seeking and impulsivity, and lowered levels of self-actualization. This is unsurprising because, after all, the feeling of boredom is very similar to the symptoms of clinical depression -- emptiness, sadness, lack of focus, limited attention span, apathy, and lethargy.

Other researchers believe that boredom provides the important function of motivating people to engage in activities that they find more meaningful than those before them. It is a spur to creativity. This is the thinking behind those who urge parents to "let your kids get bored" over summer or holiday breaks.

So, it seems that some amount of boredom is a good thing, but too much is potentially harmful. This is an important thing to think about when it comes to standard schooling. Because teachers are charged with administering a particular curriculum to all children, whether they are interested or not, we too often place our children in a position of boredom from which there is no escape. If they try to engage in activities that are more meaningful, like fidgeting, goofing off, or trying to change the subject, which is apparently the evolutionary purpose behind boredom, we reprimand and punish them.

Many teachers go to great lengths to make the curriculum interesting in an attempt to curb boredom and many children ultimately figure out how to take an interest for the same reason. But for many children, the boredom begins to affect their mental health.

When I was a boy, adults would tell me, "Only boring people get bored" in an attempt to shame me out of my boredom. There's a lot of that in our society, this idea that experiencing boredom too often is some kind of character flaw. This is how we shift the blame onto individuals rather than admit that our schools have a boredom problem.

This is a problem that self-directed learning (or play-based learning) will never have because when boredom arises, the children have options, as nature intended.

******

 

"Teacher Tom, our caped hero of all things righteous in the early childhood world, inspires us to be heroic in our own work with young children, and reminds us that it is the children who are the heroes of the story as they embark on adventures of discovery, wonder, democracy, and play." ~Rusty Keeler

If you liked reading this post, you might also enjoy one of my books. To find out more, Click here! 

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!

Play Is The Greatest Threat To The Status Quo

"Adolescence" was invented in the mid-1800's by the warlike Prussian nation. They had just suffered a humiliating military defeat at the hands of Napoleon and felt their downfall was due, at least in part, to their soldiers not being obedient enough. Some had even run away at the prospect of dying for their nation.

Part of their plan to create a more loyal and malleable population was the invention of schools. As Tyson Yunkaporta writes in his book Sand Talk, the idea was to slow the "transition from childhood to adulthood, so that it would take years rather than, for example, the months it takes in Indigenous rites of passage." The goal was to "create a permanent state of childlike compliance in adults," so they designed schools around the same methods used to break horses and other domestic animals: separating the young from their parents, confining them in enclosed spaces, limiting access to their natural habitat, and using rewards and punishments to force compliance with meaningless tasks. This Prussian method of compliance-based schooling was a boon for both for the military as well as the economy, which is why it became the foundation for most of what passes for education in the industrialized world today.

Shockingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, the Prussian slogan for their educational system was Arbiet macht frei (Work sets you free), which was infamously employed a century later at the gates of Nazi concentration camps.

We tell children they can grow up to be anything they want to be. We say it even though we know it's a lie. Most of us do not get to be whatever we want to be. We say it, however, because others have said it to us. We say it because we don't want to crush their little spirits with the truth that work is in their future. We say it because it the is one of the mantras we use to inspire them to keep their noses to the grindstone. Oh sure, we allow them to play at being artists, dancers, princesses, and athletes, but only while they are very young. Soon enough, and in some cases even during their preschool years, we begin to pressure them, both subtly and not-so-subtly to at least prepare a "fall back plan," like accounting or computer science. 

I imagine there are some readers here who are thinking, "But, Teacher Tom, you can be anything you want to be. You only have to work hard enough and never give up." How is that different than Arbiet macht frei?

A few days ago US Secretary of Education Migual Cardona sent a message from an official social media account: "Every student should have access to an education that aligns with industry demands and evolves to meet the demands of tomorrow's global workforce." People try to tell me that today's schools are nothing like the old Prussian model, but even our top education policymaker seems to disagree. We are here, it seems, to serve the economy, not the other way around. Arbiet macht frei?

Yunkaporta points out that the word "work" does not even exist in many Indigenous languages. Indeed, the "work" his people did do prior to colonization was confined to a couple hours a day and was comprised of things many of us now do as a break from work like gardening, cooking, hunting, hiking, camping, tinkering, and fishing. They spent the rest of their time building relationships, making art, dancing, playing games (almost always cooperative), telling stories, and making music. Indeed, they spent their time doing the very things that our youngest children do when left alone to be whatever they want to be -- not when they grow up, but right now. Play, not work, sets us free.

In many ways, "You can be anything you want" is just the contemporary version of Arbiet macht frei. In many ways, our complaints about children being distracted, not staying on task, and only wanting to play video games all day, are the very complaints the colonizers had about Indigenous people they encountered around the globe. And just as we did with those populations, we are doing to our children, generation after generation. No wonder societal change is nearly impossible. No wonder the rich keep getting richer. No wonder inequality of one kind just morphs into inequality of another. We are taught that a life of work will somehow set us free, when all it really does is sustain the economy.

You might ask: But what can we do about it? After all, this is the way it is. Certainly, we can't tell our children to just stop working. Believe me, I get that. I've spent the better part of the past two decades trying to get people to see that there is a better, more democratic, more equitable, and more human way to do school; that play, not work, is the secret to a population of critical thinkers instead of obedient drones. And I'm not the only one. Yet it doesn't seem we've moved the needle very much, except perhaps in some small corners where play is nurtured and protected like an endangered species. 

And that's what we can do. The Prussian model seeks to create a population for whom work, no matter how mind-numbing or back-breaking, is the only hope. That's why they try to inspire us with the promise of a freedom that will never come. When we keep play alive in our own lives, in the lives of our children, even if it is just in the nooks and crannies, we are creating real hope for freedom. If you are reading this, you are probably one of those people keeping play alive. In this world, play is the one thing that can give us genuine hope. It is the only path to freedom. And that is why play is the greatest threat to the status quo.

It's play, not work, that will set us free.

******

 

"Teacher Tom, our caped hero of all things righteous in the early childhood world, inspires us to be heroic in our own work with young children, and reminds us that it is the children who are the heroes of the story as they embark on adventures of discovery, wonder, democracy, and play." ~Rusty Keeler

If you liked reading this post, you might also enjoy one of my books. To find out more, Click here! 

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

The Return Of Light

I've been awaking to darkness for the last few weeks. I’d have to say that the short winter days are one of the most challenging aspects of life in the northern tier, but things are turning around. The Winter Solstice occurred on the west coast of the US today at 1:48 p.m., marking the end of our ever-longer nights and the return of light.

Not to lessen the significance of Christmas, Hanukkah or any of the other festivals of lights, but this astrological event is the original reason for the season. The Earth is tilted on its axis at, on average, a 23.5-degree angle and today is when the North Pole was farthest from the sun, causing it to appear to rise and set in the same place. We call it the first day of winter, and while the days will now grow longer by increments until the Summer Solstice in June, the average temperature of the “top” part of the globe will continue to drop as the oceans slowly lose the heat they still store from the warm summer months.

Humans can hardly think without resorting to metaphor and there is none more profound than this. It’s not an accident that this is a time for reflection as well as celebrating new beginnings. It’s not an accident that we seek out the people who mean the most to us, family and friends, those we love and without whom we live in perpetual winter. It’s not an accident that Christians retell the story of the birth of a child, the son of God, the light of hope in a darkened world. It’s not an accident that we give one another gifts and wish each other merriness, happiness and cheer – the darkness is passing, buck up, light is returning, have hope.

Winter is often used as a metaphor for death, but the comparison is superficial. The trees may not have leaves, the forests may have been temporarily emptied by hibernation and migration, there may be fewer children on the play grounds and at the beaches, and it may stay that way for some months to come, but we shouldn't mistake stillness for death.

The word “Solstice” comes from the Latin phrase for “sun stands still.” We spend the rest of the year in motion, moving forward, making progress. But if we can hold still long enough to listen, we hear winter whispering to slow down, take stock, cut back, rest, tend to the core of what makes life worthy of its name. All is calm. All is bright.

Even the sun stands still.

******

 

"Teacher Tom, our caped hero of all things righteous in the early childhood world, inspires us to be heroic in our own work with young children, and reminds us that it is the children who are the heroes of the story as they embark on adventures of discovery, wonder, democracy, and play." ~Rusty Keeler

If you liked reading this post, you might also enjoy one of my books. To find out more, Click here! 

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

"This Is How Spirit Works"

Karntakuringu Jakurrpa

I've been driving cars for 45 years. It's been decades since I spent time and energy thinking about driving. I just do it. When I was first behind the wheel, when I was learning about driving, I had to think about every aspect of what I was doing, but today it is second nature.

As Tyson Yunkaporta explains it in his book Sand Talk: "At the simplest level, when we hold a tool, our brain recognizes it as an extension of our arm. It isn't really part of our body, but it becomes an embodied extension of our neural processes."

This ability to make and use tools, like hammers or cars, is one of the things that makes Homo sapiens the species we are. Of course, other species, like apes, otters, and crows, use tools, but none to the extent that we do.

I recently observed a toddler stop to consider a stick on the ground. On wobbly legs, she stood over that stick for a moment, before carefully, awkwardly, bending at the waist and knees to get closer to it. Again, she paused to catch her balance before reaching out her hand, fingers splayed. It took her a couple attempts to grasp hold of it. She fell on her bottom in the effort to stand upright again, but then, without dropping the stick, she pushed herself back onto her feet. She then began testing the world with that stick, tapping it on the ground, poking tree trunks, sticking it into holes. It had become "an embodied extension of (her) neural processes."

We've all observed young humans doing these kinds of things. This urge to extend our bodies and minds out into our environment is, in many ways, what learning is all about. Reggio Emilia educators consider "the environment" be a teacher, equal in significance to human teachers. Indigenous wisdom, no matter where we find it in the world, has always acknowledged the interconnectedness between we humans and the rest of creation.

"At more complex levels," writes Yunkaporta, "the meaning we make with places, people, and objects and the way we organize interactions between these things become an extension of our thinking. Through meaning-making, we effectively store information outside our brains, in objects, places, and relationships with others." (Italics are mine)

Recently, I went golfing for the first time in 30 years. I was concerned I would make a fool of myself, and I did, but not nearly to the degree I'd feared. Indeed, the moment I picked up a club, I was reconnected to the golf clubs of my youth. I thought of my father's persimmon wood drivers, then my father, then of taking those clubs to our local municipal course and the pride of having the pro there enthuse over their rarity and beauty. I thought I'd forgotten everything about golf, but the moment I took my first swing, my body and mind embodied much of the knowledge I had stored away in those clubs from long ago. As I went around the course, I was in the past as much as the present, as the course itself -- the grass, the sand traps, the greens, the balls, the tees -- taught and re-taught knowledge, even wisdom, that I'd left stored there long ago.

Many of us will gather with our extended families over the holidays where we will will reconnect with knowledge that we keep stored in our relationships with others. Perhaps we will spend time in our childhood homes or engaging in rituals and traditions that reconnect us to things we thought we'd forgotten. If the lessons we learned were of kindness and love, those will surround us. If they were harsh or sad, we will resist or avoid the people, places, or things that store our pain, which is probably why so many of us find the holidays challenging.

Our children are just beginning this process of extending themselves into the world, of connecting their neural processes with their environment. They are just beginning to store their knowledge and wisdom outside of their brains. They will learn things in school, although most of it will remain in school, stored there in the classrooms, teachers, and classmates. Their important connections will be made with the people, places, and things from life itself.

"If you use a familiar object to help you encode new knowledge that you are learning," write Yunkaporta, "then when you pick up that object or even just visualize it, you instantly remember what you learned. It has become a tangible metaphor, an overlap between the two worlds." This goes for people and places as well as things. Writes Yunkaporta, "This is how spirit works."

******

 

"Teacher Tom, our caped hero of all things righteous in the early childhood world, inspires us to be heroic in our own work with young children, and reminds us that it is the children who are the heroes of the story as they embark on adventures of discovery, wonder, democracy, and play." ~Rusty Keeler

If you liked reading this post, you might also enjoy one of my books. To find out more, Click here! 

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!

"I Didn't Hear You Bang The Old Bangeroo"

I always used a hand drum as the signal for transitions. At some point, I started referring to it as "the old bangeroo."

For instance, when it was time to tidy up, I'd say, "I guess it's time for the old bangeroo." Several kids would usually object, joyfully, "It's a drum, Teacher Tom!"

"Well, I call it a bangeroo because I'm going to bang it for clean up time."

Sometimes I would say I'm going to bang it so loud that their brains are going to come shooting out of their ears. Sometimes I would say I'm going to bang it so loud that their heads are going to pop off of their shoulders, bounce off the ceiling and come down on someone else's body. Sometimes I would drop the bangeroo bit and instead pretend it's the "clean up time banjo" or "trumpet" or some other instrument as the children corrected me, "It's a drum, Teacher Tom!" Whatever the case, I typically made something of a show of it, one that could go on for several minutes before finally signaling that it was time for our transition.

I started doing this as just another goofy thing to do, something to make our day a little more fun, but over the years I've come to see that it actually provided a function. Young children are notoriously reluctant about transitions, and I don't blame them, I feel it every Monday morning, but this process, one in which I simply goof around for a few minutes, tends to draw the children together and allows them an opportunity to "prepare" themselves for the impending transition. In fact, as I go on, it's quite common for the children to start demanding that I bang the drum as I go through my schtick, especially as I stretch it out. And for those not drawn in by my show, those who need to finish playing, it lets them know they need to start wrapping things up in a way far more concrete than, say, the classic "five minute warning," which is meaningless to very young kids.

Often, by the time I actually bang the drum, kids are standing over their playthings, poised to go into action, anticipating the starting pistol, so to speak. And they usually make short work of it.

One day, we were playing with our wooden trains. We have a big box of tracks and a big box of trains. I try to discourage the kids from just dumping the boxes because all those small items quickly get scattered across the entire space, leaving it unusable as a building area, which results in kids mostly just walking on and kicking through the mess. That said, someone almost always has the idea of dumping the boxes. When it happened on this day, I waited until the dumper had found what he wanted, then uprighted the box and began refilling it, just by way of keeping things tidy.

A girl looked at me with wrinkled eyebrows, "I didn't hear you bang the old bangeroo."

"I didn't."

"Then why are you putting things away?"

"Oh, I'm just getting some of these tracks back in the box so kids don't walk on them. When kids walk on them, they sometimes get broken or people trip and get hurt."

"Oh."

Seconds later, another child, "Teacher Tom, did you bang the old bangeroo?"

"No."

"But you're cleaning up." I repeated my explanation.

Moments later, another, "When did you bang the old bangeroo?"

"I didn't."

Then, without a word, the kids started packing things away, sorting the trains into the train box and the tracks into the track box. I said, "Hey guys, I haven't banged the old bangeroo. It's not clean-up time yet."

And a boy paused long enough to say to me, "Yes it is. You just forgot to bang the old bangeroo."

So I banged it, catching up with them for I am supposed to be their leader.

******

 

"Teacher Tom, our caped hero of all things righteous in the early childhood world, inspires us to be heroic in our own work with young children, and reminds us that it is the children who are the heroes of the story as they embark on adventures of discovery, wonder, democracy, and play." ~Rusty Keeler

If you liked reading this post, you might also enjoy one of my books. To find out more, Click here! 

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!

Would I Say This To An Adult?

"The grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and, for children, it's tiresome always giving them explanations." This is perhaps the most famous line from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's novella The Little Prince.

It's memorable and funny, to adults at least, because in this case the child is exasperated with adult ignorance instead of the other way around. It's also instructive because it shows us ourselves in a kind of mirror.

Over the years, I've found it useful to regularly look in that mirror. Before saying something about or to a child, I try to listen to how it would sound if I were speaking about or to an adult who I care for.

Few of us would say, for instance, "Get your butt over here!" to an adult. Of course, most of us wouldn't say that to a child either, but if you do hear someone shouting this, it will almost assuredly be an adult shouting at a child. What would I say to an adult in this case? Probably nothing because I'm in no position to boss anyone around, especially so rudely. 

And speaking of commands, how about something more benign, like, "Get in the car." Would I say this to an adult? Even with a gentle, lilting tone? Only if I were angry and I wanted them to know it. Saying, "Get in the car, please" might even be worse. If it's an adult whose goodwill I want to maintain, I'd likely to say something less directive like, "It's time to go." Or perhaps I'd simply announce, "I'm heading to the car" or "I'll meet you at the car" or "I hate being late" or I'd look at my watch and ask, "Where did we park?" 

But it's not just commands. Imagine saying any of these things to or about an adult.

"If you stop crying, I'll buy you a cupcake." 

"What are you going to be when you grow up?"

"She's just shy."

"They're always trying to kill themselves."

"No dessert until you've finished dinner."

"Because I said so!"

When I imagine saying any of these things with regard to an adult, I hear myself being controlling or dismissive or manipulative. I hear myself talking to or about someone as if they are ignorant or incapable. When I imagine myself being at the receiving end of these words, I understand why young children might react badly. These are not things I'd say to or about an adult whose good opinion I value, so it's worth wondering about why I might say them to or about a child whose good opinion I value.

******

 

"Teacher Tom, our caped hero of all things righteous in the early childhood world, inspires us to be heroic in our own work with young children, and reminds us that it is the children who are the heroes of the story as they embark on adventures of discovery, wonder, democracy, and play." ~Rusty Keeler

If you liked reading this post, you might also enjoy one of my books. To find out more, Click here! 

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!

Wondering About "Baby" Games

A child psychologist friend once told me that he kept a doll house in his office, explaining that he could often learn more about a child while playing "family" with them than in any number of hours of traditional talk therapy. I'm no therapist, but I can certainly see the potential there.

"I'm this baby."

"I'm the mommy bunny."

"I'm a baby too."

"But I'm the littler baby."

"I want to be the littlest baby."

Just in how they choose their roles, there's a whole world of aspiration and query. Over the years I've noted that more children want to play the "baby" role, the younger and more helpless the better. For a long time, I assumed that "mommy" was the power role, the one that went to the child with the strongest urge to be in control, but I know now, as every child knows who has ever lost her place in the family to a younger sibling, it's the baby who really wields the power. Their helplessness demands attention and that's what the babies do in these games.

A group of our four and five year olds had been playing "baby" games for most of the year, typically assuming the roles of baby tigers or baby polar bears or other types of baby animals. There were no mommies in these games, but rather owners who were forever wrestling those naughty babies back into their beds or cages or caves or homes in order to "keep them safe." I'm sure my child psychologist friend would have a field day with these games filled with misbehavior and compulsion, these games where the baby, no matter how it behaved, continued to be cared for and loved. But as a teacher, I don't need to know what it means: I simply need to understand that the children are engaged in experiments they have designed to answer their unique social-emotional questions.

There have been times when I would drop to my knees in the midst of these games and assume the role of "middle" or "oldest" child, the roles that appeared to me to have the least power, then attempt to role model how one can assume power (or satisfaction or control or whatever) from this role. Or maybe I would take on another role, hoping to somehow "teach" a lesson through my behavior within the game. They were misguided efforts at best: I had taken over their game to answer questions they weren't asking, skewing their data, scuttling their journey, making it about my adult attempts at social-emotional engineering rather than their own purposeful and meaningful exploration of the real world as they experienced it.

Today, as children play house, I simply listen, even when they say things that make me cringe, even when the mommies boss the babies or the babies behave like mini-tyrants, even when I notice that no one wants to be the middle or oldest child. It's not my job to know what it means, that's for them (and perhaps a future therapist) to know. Mine is to create the space, to step back, and to wonder.

******

 

"Teacher Tom, our caped hero of all things righteous in the early childhood world, inspires us to be heroic in our own work with young children, and reminds us that it is the children who are the heroes of the story as they embark on adventures of discovery, wonder, democracy, and play." ~Rusty Keeler

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"I'd Rather Be Outside, Playing Video Games, With My Friends"

In January of 2000, I began touring kindergartens in anticipation of our daughter moving on from preschool. We had already decided that the local public school was off the table, largely because we knew one of the kindergarten teachers socially and he had told us, flatly, "I would never send my own son there."

I wasn't yet Teacher Tom, but after two years of attending cooperative preschool alongside our girl, I at least had an idea about what I was looking for. I knew I wanted to find a place where social-emotional learning was emphasized, where play continued to stand at the center, and where academic-style instruction was minimal. One of the first schools I toured, the school that our friend the kindergarten teacher had actually chosen for his own son, was very proud of its computer lab. I'll never forget how the director of admissions executed the "reveal," swinging the door open with a kind of ta-da gesture. These were the days when laptops were still considered gimmicky. What we saw was a room with a couple dozen matching desktop computers rigidly lined up on desks. I was told that our daughter, if she enrolled here, would get to spend at least three hours a week in that grim room.

At the time, I didn't know enough to be appalled. Instead, I felt as if they were trying to solve a problem we didn't have. I had no concerns about my middle-class American child learning to use a computer. This was the generation growing up with them, after all, the way my generation had grown up with television. Even then, I was aware that these labs (and several of the schools I toured proudly showed me theirs) were going to very quickly become a joke to a generation growing up immersed in computer technology.

Little did I know that Indian computer scientist Sugata Mitra was thinking similar thoughts. Just a few months earlier, he had installed a computer in a kiosk in an Indian slum that was designed to be freely accessible to the local children, most of whom were not attending any sort of school at all. Within hours, the kids, with no instruction at all, were surfing the internet. Six months later, hundreds of these kids were functionally computer literate, sending emails, operating software and games, and even doing a bit of troubleshooting. They came up with their own terminology for what the things they were discovering. This experiment lead Mitra to install computers throughout India in what came to be known as the "Hole in the Wall" project.

At the time, adult people were amazed. After all, these new-fangled computer thingies were complicated, cutting-edge technology, yet these uneducated street urchins figured them out in no time at all and with no help from teachers.

As Mitra and his team tweaked and tested these hole in the wall computers, they found that computers installed indoors didn't produce nearly the same results. They also found that sharing the computers, rather than one-person-per-computer, was essential to the learning process. That's because when left to their own devices, the children relied upon one another. It wasn't a process of each child learning things on their own, but rather of one child figuring something out then sharing it with all the other children in a process that I've come to think of as "viral learning." 

Over my years as a preschool teacher who eschewed computer technology in the classroom, I've observed this viral learning process again and again.

Mitra also discovered that if adults were supervising this process, the learning stopped happening, especially if the adults tried to instruct. I've observed this phenomenon as well.

Some have tried to assert that Mitra's findings, which are truly amazing, reveal something about computer technology, but from where I sit, it clearly shows us the centrality of both social and self-directed learning. This is how humans have educated themselves throughout our 300,000 years as a species. We make a huge mistake when we set up school like those outmoded computer labs, indoors, with students alone at their desks, eyes forward, and lips sealed. We are meant to learn together, in community, and through our own curiosity.

Inspired by a paragraph in Peter Gray's book Free to Learn, I went through a phase when I would ask children if they would rather be indoors or outdoors. Virtually all of them answered "outdoors." Then I ask them if they would rather be playing video games or playing with their friends. Most chose their friends. But one day a thoughtful boy, replied, "I'd rather be outside, playing video games, with my friends."

That's a boy who wanted to learn at full capacity.

******

 

"Teacher Tom, our caped hero of all things righteous in the early childhood world, inspires us to be heroic in our own work with young children, and reminds us that it is the children who are the heroes of the story as they embark on adventures of discovery, wonder, democracy, and play." ~Rusty Keeler

If you liked reading this post, you might also enjoy one of my books. To find out more, Click here! 

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!