A Reward For Our Hard Work

Among the thousands of loose parts in our outdoor classroom are a few of these small tins in that originally held candy. One in particular has been of interest lately: an Altoids container that I spray painted silver several years ago when I was making end-of-the-year gifts for the children.

It was a pretty cool gift, I thought. Inside I'd put florist marbles to which I'd glued magnets, the idea being that the kids could use them to decorate the box as they saw fit, then store them inside when they were done. Many parents later told me their kids had discovered the entire box, with the magnets inside, could be stuck to the fridge door which is where their children kept and played with them. This box was a leftover from that project and has one way or another wound up outdoors, no one but me any longer knowing its origin.

What makes this box of particular interest, what makes it a loose part among the thousands that allows it to float to the surface in the first place is that there's something inside. I know it's not those old florist marble magnets because when we shake the box it makes a rattling sound. What makes it repeatedly float to the surface is that the lid is stuck shut.

On a regular basis children will bring it to me with the idea that I'll open it for them after they've discovered their own hands aren't strong enough. I will not open it for them, but I will talk with them about it. I will sit down on the ground and noodle the challenge through with them, talking about what might be inside, which for all I know could be a few common pebbles, but in our discussion become treasures with value beyond imagination, magic things that can make us fly, or seeds we can plant that will grow into banana trees.

These girls are wearing a pair of our fabric "toys" (Poppys) we received awhile back from Fafu Toys. They told me they were monks. When I asked what that meant, they said it meant that they had to be quiet. When I pointed out that they weren't being particularly quiet, one of them answered as if I were being particularly dense, "It's just pretend, Teacher Tom."

We've tried throwing it against a wall. We've tried dropping it from a high place. But mostly we've taken turns putting our thumbs up under the rim and straining with all our might. Every now and then someone will have the idea of using something as a lever. They have the idea of how the physics will work, but not the word "pry," which I share with them as we hunt for something that will work for the purpose. We've broken dozens of sticks in the effort.

Yesterday, Henry suggested a screwdriver. It was unclear to me whether he meant it to be used as a pry bar or if he had the idea of somehow unscrewing the lid. So yesterday we went at it with a screwdriver, the children taking turns poking at the box with it. If you're at all familiar with Altoids boxes, you'll know that they are hinged with small "flanges" that are cut from the bottom of the box and curled through small holes in the lid. At one point Marit had a breakthrough, "Look!" She'd managed to pry one of these hinges open, leaving a small rectangular hole.

We took turns peering into the hole to see if we could suss out what was inside. A few of us thought we saw "something," but no one was able to confidently say what it was. The hole, however, was exactly the right size for inserting the screwdriver, which we took turns doing.

As has happened now for months, we finally gave up on the box, dropping it here or there to be picked up on some other day and struggled and speculated over, a conversation piece that brings us together, a challenge that requires all of us. But before we did, 2-year-old Theo, who had only been involved as an observer, raced over to us with another box he'd found, this one a Fisherman's Friend tin. He barged into our circle shaking the box he'd brought us as if to show us that his too had something inside. Then he opened it to reveal a collection of florist marbles he'd collected. He beamed as we each took one, a reward, I guess, for our hard work.

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The Box It Came In

When something is very, very valuable and/or very, very fragile and you need to move down the block or around the world, it needs to be packed very, very carefully.

A few weeks ago we managed to acquire a crate that was recently used to move a half million dollar sculpture by the artist Alexander Calder. 

This is an amazing piece of furniture. I call it that because that's how well built it is; made to withstand pretty much anything. The wood itself is what I'd call "furniture grade" and it's built to withstand pretty much anything that could happen during move.

The inside is lined with 1-inch thick foam core, cut to precisely fit around the inside walls, then there is a 2-inch layer of spongy foam inside of that. The artwork itself was packed inside of another box that went inside this one and all the dead space was filled with inflatable packing material.

I introduced it by saying, "We have this box."

"What's inside?"

"What do you think is inside?"

We spent some time wish-guess: "Candy," "Tigers," "A truck." We listened to hear if it was making any noise. We smelled it. Finally I suggested, "Maybe there are some words that tell us what's inside."

The kids crawled around outside the box, finding the various labels.

"I think it's full of umbrellas." And sure enough there was an icon of rain falling on an umbrella to warn the shippers that the crate ought not get wet.

"There's broken glass in there! . . . I don't think there's broken glass in there," said one child, confused by the icon of broken stemware intended to suggest that the contents were fragile.

Everyone agreed that the arrow that pointed up meant that we had the right side up.

I read the words on some of the labels to them. We learned that whatever was inside must weight 74 pounds and that it either came from, or was going to, a place called Long Island City. One of the children had been to Long Island before and told us about her cousins' house.

After all of that, I was actually starting to worry that they kids would be disappointed to find it empty when we finally opened it, but that fear was unfounded. Several of the kids immediately clambered inside, bouncing on the squishy foam bottom. 

We discovered that it held 4 children at a time. I asked if they wanted to get "mailed" somewhere and they agreed they wanted to go to Long Island City, so everyone ducked their heads while I placed the heavy lid over them. Several of us pounded on the top with our fists saying we were hammering it on tightly. When we opened it, they were in Long Island City! Welcome! We played this game over and over with different kids and different destinations.

We then tested out the protective properties of the crate and all that foam by "dumping" the kids out: slowly tipping the box on its side, then back to its "this side up" position. We mostly did it with only one child inside, but we also tried it with 2 and 3 kids all packed together as well.

Finally, we tipped the crate on its end and tried to climb on top. Only one of us was able to do it unassisted, so we retrieved a step ladder from the sand pit and took turns climbing up and then back down.

At one point I told the kids what the crate had originally been used for. None of them were impressed, but they sure loved the box it came in.

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Exactly What We Need To Learn

Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. ~John Dewey

At the end of the day as I go through stacks of the artwork we make at Woodland Park, I often find a painting or two that were clearly created by the hand of a grown-up. There are some, I know, who would see that as evidence that an adult has been directing the kids, or some who would fret that this exhibition of "superior skill" will somehow intimidate a child or otherwise impede or unduly influence his artistic production.

I see it as evidence that one of our parent-teachers was playing with the kids, which is one of the things I ask of them.

As a cooperative preschool, our classroom is more heavily populated with adults than most and they are there to learn every bit as much as the kids. In fact, each of them are enrolled in North Seattle Community College as students earning parent education credits. People often ask me, "Sure, a play-based curriculum is great for young children, but what about as they get older? Doesn't there have to be more direct instruction?" 

I see adults learning through play, through experience, through creative exploration every day. I see them learning through "life itself."

I've been a teacher here now for over a decade. I've taken a few early childhood classes, but hold no specialized degree in education (in fact, my degree is in journalism). My primary training for this job was the apprenticeship I received while working for 3 years alongside experienced teachers and parent educators as my daughter went through her cooperative preschool, doing exactly what the parents in my classes are now doing: playing with the kids and observing how these more practiced adults played with them. Two of my own former parent-teachers have now gone on to become full-fledged teachers in their own right, and a third just left with that plan in mind.

When I look around at the 40 or so cooperative schools in our system, I mostly see teachers who started, as I did, as parents in their own child's cooperative. When I look at the dozen or so parent educators who work with us, I see the same. Of course, many of them have gone on to secure degrees, and even those who don't, like me, have taken traditional classes, attended workshops, and continue to read, but the foundation for all of us was play. 

And it continues every day as we allow ourselves to explore with the children. We use the same paints, brushes and paper and sit in the same little chairs in the same cheery rooms, playing, but of course we're not learning the same things. Instead, we're learning exactly what we need to learn as we struggle and experiment and fail and succeed. That's the beauty of a play-based curriculum: everyone learns exactly what they need to learn.

And that's why, when I come across the paintings made by adults, I save them just as I would a child's, rolling them up and sending them home.

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"The Illusory Cloak Of Prediction"

One of the most useful classes I took in college, in a vocational sense, was a class called Advertising Agencies, taught by a professor who had just left his job at a big Madison Avenue shop. We spent most of our time learning how to "sell" our ideas to our superiors and clients, the basis of which was the written proposal. It was a real eye-opener for me, a kid who fancied himself a creative writer, suddenly challenged to more or less forget what I knew about grammar, crafting sentences, and creating narrative structure, and to instead pack as much information as I possibly could into bullet points and fragments, starting with a conclusion then backfilling with the strategies and tactics that would be the stepping stones to success.

When I landed my first job, it was this skill, this ability to create concise, yet detailed, logical, step-by-step plans, that got me the most kudos and brought me to the attention of those higher up the pyramid. In fact, I made one of them literally cry with joy in a meeting based on having pulled together a vital proposal on a deadline that the rest of the team thought we certainly must miss. It got me invited to a lot of meetings I wouldn't have otherwise been senior enough to attend because my bosses wanted me there the shape the discussion into a blueprint for next steps. I loved it: it was the perfect marriage of left-brain and right-brain. By the time I left that job I was pretty much writing every plan and proposal that came out of our office. 

It took me a couple years, however, to figure out that no matter how brilliant my words on paper, no matter how precisely I laid out the timeline and benchmarks, nothing ever went according to plan. I would sometimes, part way into a project, pull our plan out of the filing cabinet and marvel at how "off the tracks" we were. Seriously. This doesn't mean we weren't successful, because we were most of the time, but as great as my written plans were to get everyone going, once the "sale" was made, once people got involved, we might as well have tossed it all out the window. Sometimes even the actual objective would change in the process of real people doing real work.

A couple days ago in a Facebook comment on my post Not Bad for a Failure, reader Hsiao-Ling shared a quote from the authors Margaret J. Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers. This is a quote from their book A Simpler Way:

Emergence is so common to our experience that it's a wonder we don't recognize it, that we still believe we must plan everything into existence. How much of any human endeavor comes to fruition from precise plans unfolding step by step, just as their designers describe? If we look at any successful human activity, we see that what led to success was the newly discovered capacity of people. They came together and invented new ways of doing something. They explored new realms of ingenuity. They made it happen by responding in the moment and by changing as they went along.

I've come a long way since those days as a little junior executive, taking such pride in his plans and such frustration in their destiny as file drawer fodder. When I first started teaching, I put a lot of effort into planning out our school days, but I'd already moved past expecting that those plans would be of any use other than to ease my anxiety.

Our plans, blueprints, and diagrams have made it difficult to see this wonderful creative capacity growing around us all the time. We fear surprise and retreat to caution. We would rather know what's in store than be caught off guard by new possibilities . . . What are we guarding against? Is newness so fearsome?

What I was attempting to guard against back then was failure, of everything running off the rails, but now? After over a decade of playing with children, I've learned that it is exactly that "surprise" that let's me know we've been successful. It's not the plan I've put together, whether on paper or in my head, but rather the "new possibilities" that emerge from us that makes it all worthwhile.

Every act of organizing is an experiment. We begin with desire, with a sense of purpose and direction. But we enter the experience vulnerable, unprotected by the illusory cloak of prediction. We acknowledge that we don't know how this work will actually unfold. We discover what we are capable of as we go along. We engage with others for the experiment. We are willing to commit to a system whose effectiveness cannot be seen until it is in motion . . . Every act of organizing is an act of faith. We hope for things unseen which are true.

Once our plans have given us a sense of purpose and direction, a filing cabinet is exactly where they belong. Because once we've engaged with others for the experiment no one can predict where our creativity will take us.

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The River Flows

When I was a child, I thought that all I needed to change the world was to grow older.

As a young man, I thought that all I needed was to set forth, engage, and wrestle it into a new shape.

And there are those who've done it that way, conquering this or that, making a mark here and there, blazing their trails through forest, field and city.

But there is also the force of change that is a rock that stays simply in the middle of the river, bending the flow around it, shaping a rapid or swirling an eddy or causing the stillness of a reflecting pool.

That's the way teachers change the world, at least if we stay there long enough, being there to guide the course of events through the passage of children rushing by, creating shared experiences through years and generations.

Those rocks, over time, are in turn shaped by the river, made smoother, more accommodating, yet in the end it's the rocks together that make the shape of the river.

That's why there are those who fear teachers. They know the power of the rock to teach each child that passes through those simple lessons, like the patience of waiting your turn . . .

. . . or the power of working together.

And if your purposes are not served by the things we all teach, year after year, like the joy of free expression . . .

. . . or the importance of critical thinking . . .

. . . or the excitement of intermingling our imaginations . . .

. . . I can see how it might make you rail at teachers who, by being rocks, are thwarting plans that call for people who will not question too much, nor think too creatively. You might blame the teachers when the grown up people wind up not being the way you want them to be . . .

. . . and are instead who they want to be, doing what they know is right, demanding fairness, sharing, and cooperation, insisting that you are the one standing outside the flow.

Unlike parents, whose role is to be along for the ride, teachers stay where we are, deploying our dried pasta necklaces . . .

. . . our soapy water . . .

. . . our blocks . . .

. . . and our puzzles . . .

. . . year over year, again and again, making our part of the river flow into channels it might not have otherwise known to flow . . .

. . . not teaching people what to think, but how. 

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!