Experimental Dance

    


Children know it's play. They know what play is, even if they typically can't define it with anything other than anecdotes, usually about whatever it is they're doing at the time. Play is swinging! Play is making trains! Play is trying to make a sand catapult!

I could regale you with a longwinded definition of play, one I've been honing in my public speaking appearances for the past three years, but at bottom, when it comes down to it, the core of play is experimentation. Perhaps not the rational, step-over-step experimentation of the scientific method, but an individualized approach unfettered by the strict rules of peer reviewable science.

In a very real sense, almost everything we do in our school is an experiment of some sort: physical, psychological, emotional, intellectual, artistic, or even spiritual. And I'm not just talking about the children. This goes for me, the teacher, as well.

For instance, some months ago I came across the term "pallet swing" and immediately envisioned the device you see in these pictures. I had just acquired a new pallet, smaller and with wider slats than is typical, which seemed like a good candidate to hang from the spot where we had previously hung other experimental swings (rope, tire, ladder, etc.). I used rope I had at hand: 150 lb. test, cotton wrapped in a colored nylon. I tied it through a pair of metal loops that had, years before my time, been used for the chains of a more traditional swing. The children's experiments with this original design resulted in a broken rope by the end of the first day.

 

That sent me to the hardware store for 450 lb. test nylon rope. Determining that the metal loops, due to the children's assertive experiments, had more or less "sawed" the previous rope to the point of breaking, this time I cut four individual lengths of rope and tied each one directly around the overhead bar which would reduce the friction that had caused the initial equipment failure. It took some doing to get the whole thing level and nylon rope is slippery enough that I had to explore several knot-tying techniques before settling on one that I thought would hold up to the children's play.

By now, most children, of all ages, have tested the pallet swing, the youngest often just pushing and twirling it while remaining firmly planted on the ground, but the older kids, especially a group of girls, have made a concentrated study of it.

One of the reasons it had struck me as such a good idea, was that with only two traditional swings and one trapeze bar, our limited resources had made the swing set a focal point of regular conflict and this innovation seemed like it could offer four new seats in one go, which is why I've attempted to label it "the sharing swing," implying that it's suitable for more than one kid at a time.

In the beginning, however, the individual members of our team of girl scientists stared at me blankly when I used the term, waiting for me to stop talking before going back to their solitary experiments, each of them exploring the possibilities of sitting, standing, and asking for others to push them while others awaited their turn. It frustrated me, but now that a couple months have passed, I can now see that this was a necessary process, as the girls needed to acquire knowledge in order to share it with one another as they have now begun play together. This sharing is crucial to children's experiments, just as it is with real scientists who are always building upon the work of colleagues.

The girls have discovered, for instance, that while they can cram as many as a half dozen bodies onto the "sharing swing" at once, four seems to be the correct number. This number was arrived at over a period of experimentation and negotiation. They have also discovered that while any of them can set the swing into motion on their own by standing, it's virtually impossible to sit and swing without help. Since we discourage adults from pushing the children on any of our swings, that means that one of them must take the role pusher.

Here's the problem, however: resting, the swing hangs about chest high on most of them, which means that when it is freely swinging the arc carries it through the same altitude that is most often occupied by their heads presenting a hazard what with it being made of wood with sharp corners and all. No one wants to take that to the head. It has taken some time, but to solve this problem, a problem they would not have had to solve had adults been doing the pushing, they have devised a method whereby the pusher never actually releases the swing, but rather keeps two hands on it as it moves through its back-and-forth arc. (Sadly, my pictures here only reveal the feet of the pusher as she does her job.) They have developed their own method of turn-taking, the intricacies of which are a mystery to me.

A second avenue of experimental exploration with the pallet swing by this team of scientists has been what they call "spinning." As the name implies, this involves one or more children sitting in the pallet, while someone turns the apparatus around and around, twisting my four lengths of 450lb. test rope together, then releasing it, giving the passengers a wild, spinning ride. They have now been engaged in these experiments for a couple months, growing increasing knowledgeable, both as individuals and as a group, and as their knowledge has grown, so has their courage.

As the adult responsible for creating the pallet swing in the first place and, more importantly, as an adult responsible for the children's safety, I've been watching carefully. In the beginning I tried to always stay nearby. I noted that there is a point, just as the ropes fully release their twisted embrace that the entire thing lurches suddenly. I worried that if a child was not prepared she might lose her grip and fly off, so I took to giving a verbal warning just before it happened, "Aaaaand whomp!" I still do it for the younger children who are not as far along in their experiments, but for these girls, the need for it, if there ever was one, is long past.

Lately, they have been twisting themselves up so high that the passengers must lie almost perfectly flat in order to fit under the ropes. They've determined that it takes two of them to wind the thing up that high and they have, importantly, also learned to be wary of the pallet as it spins, saying, "Ready? Let go!" before ducking out of the way. These were mental experiments they performed to figure this out: no child has been injured in the process.

Seeing the stresses they are putting on my ropes and pallet, I've been checking everything two or three times a day, often retying my knots when they look like they've slipped a bit. It's become a kind of experimental dance we are doing together, all of us learning to do things that have never been done before on the face of the Earth.

The children just call it play.

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Dense With Learning

     

Oh sure, we hear all about extraordinary things like light-bulb-over-the-head epiphanies and ludicrous claims like babies who can read, but most learning happens on such a small scale, and in such mundane moments, that it's often overlooked. Once you know what you're looking for, however, once you're attuned to what learning looks like, you see it everywhere, in every moment, as children play according to their own lights. And the teacher's primary role is to simply be there and narrate.

Indeed, play, as opposed to the kind of education that relies on direct instruction, is so dense with learning that it's virtually impossible to not see it in every moment.

A group of 2-3 year olds were horsing around up by the cast iron pump, which sits in the upper level of our two-level sand pit. Acadia came to me with a request, "Build a sand castle, Teacher Tom."

I answered, "You build a sand castle. Do I look like a kid?"

She thought that was funny, "No, you look like a grown-up."

After a moment, Zinn said, "I built a sand castle."

Acadia and I looked at him, then at the ground nearby. Spotting nothing that looked like a sand castle, I guessed that he had misspoken, employing the present tense when he was referring to the future, a not so uncommon occurrence, so replied, "Zinn is a kid. He's going to build a sand castle."

He corrected me, "I already built a sand castle." He pointed to a ridge of sand between his feet. 

Acadia was delighted, "That's a little sand castle."

Zinn replied, "I'm gonna smash it," then proceeded to stomp it flat.

Acadia said, "Build another one."

Zinn responded by spreading his feet apart, then dragging them together, pushing the damp sand into another ridge between his feet. And again, he said, "I'm gonna smash it." He then repeated the process several times. He stopped narrating his actions, so I took it up. "Zinn made a sand castle," then "Zinn smashed his sand castle."

Spencer, who was looking on, then made his own sand castle, perfectly imitating Zinn's technique. I said, "Spencer made a sand castle," and then "Spencer smashed his sand castle."

By now Acadia had seen enough and she too made a sand castle, smashed it, then made another, as I continued to narrate.

After a short study, Calvin joined the game. Cecilia followed suit. Then Alice.

This all took no more than three minutes, each child learning Zinn's technique from the next, an idea passed on from child to child.

One might ask, But what's the point? And my response might be, "What's the point of learning anything?" I mean, it's true that knowing how to make a "sand castle" between one's feet isn't likely to be on any tests, nor, down the road, a vocational skill or resume builder. As much as others might try to shape it another way, education, at least in the early years, isn't about the trivia that is learned, but rather the practice of satisfying our curiosity, and in the case of schools, of doing so within the context of our fellow humans. 

Moments later, Cecilia was putting her foot atop a shovel by way of using her body weight to sink it into the sand. I began narrating her attempts and it became the next technique that several of her classmates were inspired to try for themselves. And from there it went on, one moment to the next, each dense with learning.

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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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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It Buoys Me

Last week I shared some good news with you about pushing back against the corporate education "reform" agenda. I've written well over 200 posts on various aspects of this topic, going back to 2009 when this blog was in its infancy. What first caught my attention back then was the ever-narrowing public school curriculum coupled with an ever-increasing focus on vocational skills and the marginalization of the knowledge and experiences required to be fully-functioning citizens in a self-governing democracy. High stakes standardized testing is a part of that corporate for-profit agenda, and it's that aspect that has finally galvanized our small movement into a growing one, one that's getting harder and harder to ignore.

I'm not saying we're going to win, nor do I even know what a democratic win would look like, but with recent news that over half of Seattle's Garfield High School's junior class are opting out of the Common Core aligned SBAC test, with tens of thousands of students opting out of these tests nationwide, with Congress now proposing new legislation that will declaw the US Department of Education, and with major media beginning to take notice, we have definitely made it a fight.

Our opponents have deep pockets. After all, they are predatorily stalking an "industry" that is approaching $1 trillion a year, making it the second largest segment of the US economy after only healthcare. That's right, there are billions in profits to be earned off the labor of our children, just as there billions being earned off the suffering of people who are sick and dying, and our opponents are funded by those who would profit from that, a sad commentary, I think, on the cruelty of neoliberal economic policies. 

They have the money, but we're starting to show that we have the numbers with our powerful, truly grassroots alliance of students, parents, and teachers leading the parade. And that's how those of us who are not wealthy and powerful must make it happen: we start a parade and as it grows our "leaders" rush to join us. It may sound like cynical joke, but that's how it's supposed to happen. Over the last couple of years, for instance, many of the largest teacher's unions have, often tentatively, joined us. Politicians of all stripes have begun not just giving us lip service but actually taking actions to move states away from the corporate reform agenda. Last week, the Seattle/King County NAACP threw its support behind the Garfield High School community and the wider opt out movement in general.

If we win, when we win, they will then rush to take credit, but no mass movement starts with these "leaders."

This movement started with students, parents, and teachers and has grown because we are right, because we have the best interests of children and our democracy at heart. We have rallied both conservatives and liberals to our side. We have rallied folks from every part of our nation. We are doing it school by school, city by city, and state by state. Media reports often make it seem like an overnight sensation, but I've been at it for six years and others were there long before me.

No one ever said that democracy would be fast or easy, and something needs to be done about the influence of cold, hard cash on our system, but our movement, this movement lead by students, parents, and teachers, is evidence that it can still be done. We are nowhere near finished and the "leaders" who are rushing around to the front of our parade are prone to be blown this way and that by political winds, but our grassroots core is as solid as any I've ever known. I'm not declaring victory, not by a long shot, but we are winning and it buoys me.

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To Have These Experiences

Not long ago, I wrote about setting a plank of wood across a pair of tires as a kind of prompt. Last week I did a similar thing with a plank between a pair of ladders.

We've recently acquired some new, thicker planks, because we were going through one-inch planks at an alarming rate. The oldest children had started breaking them earlier in the year when they discovered they could create a "diving board" by anchoring one end under the gate, leaving the longer end to extend out over the flight of three stairs. They jumped, downhill into wood chips. Some of the kids really got into the springiness of wood, which is how we lost two of them. These new boards aren't as springy but they do have some bounce and aren't liable to break.

We started by cautiously balancing on my set up, but once we discovered the springiness all anyone wanted to do was jump off. Usually it was one at a time, but some of the kids grew proficient enough that they could bounce together, synchronizing sometimes, but mostly moving gingerly so as not to topple anyone, a feat of cooperation of which they would not have been capable only a few months ago.

After awhile, someone had the idea of arranging tires as targets. We began calling them "holes." Then the holes starting going somewhere, like China or Mexico or Iowa. We announced where we were going before jumping, sometimes asking before we leapt, "Is this the one that goes to Disneyland?" There were heated arguments over which tire hole lead where.

In this case, I would say I was playing with the kids, which means I was trying really hard to not take over, but rather attempting to play as an equal. These new, thicker planks can even accommodate a bouncy adult, so I traveled by tire hole to places like Iceland and Broadway.

It was such a simple thing, really, a plank of wood suspended 18-inches above the ground. It was a challenge, an irresistible challenge, one that allowed us to master it, then to use it to make up a game to play with our friends.

This should be why we send our children to school: to have these experiences.

Later, when the older children arrived, they immediately dismantled it to create their own challenge, a maze of planks along which they balanced. They did not play around with the springiness. I wonder if they're wary, at least in part, because they know they can break: a caution taken from experience.

They did, however, anchor one of the planks under the gate as they had done earlier in the year with the "diving board," using it to prop up another plank. It worked, but the big problem with their set up was that there are times when people need to come and go through that gate. I myself went through three times. On the third time I re-entered, I opened the gate a little too wide, removing the plank's anchor. No one was standing on it at the time, but it did cause a chain reaction of planks. I helped the kids re-set their game and was halfway down the hill when Yuri ran up to me, "You made Henry fall!"

"I did?" I looked back up the hill and Henry was dusting himself off as a parent-teacher checked him out. When I got to Henry, I said, "I'm sorry I knocked you down."

Henry said, through tears, "You didn't knock me down. I fell on my own."

"That's not right!" objected Yuri. "Teacher Tom did it when he opened the gate." Yuri then lead us through a description of the chain reaction he had observed, indicating that my actions had caused a plank to "fly up" which caused Henry to lose his balance.

I said, "I think I did knock you down."

And Henry said, "That's okay. I've knocked lots of people down.

Forgiveness, empathy, and an understanding of at least this aspect of the human condition: this too, is why we send our children to school.

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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In The Bushes

This is a blog mostly about preschool aged children, but being the parent of a teenager, I'm here to tell you, as unlikely as it might sound to those of you with the younger kids, that's where they're all headed.

When our daughter Josephine was in sixth grade, she and a friend wanted to go to a dance, at night, in an all-ages venue. This wasn't the usual chaperoned school event, although I'd heard of the organization hosting it and knew nothing bad about it. On the other hand, I'd often walked by the place and been slightly taken aback by the scruffy looking teens hanging out there, although it was purely a reaction to their clothing and hair, not behavior. I'd spoken with her friend's father so I knew we were all on board with the plan of us each driving, and our kids meeting up there. As we got close to the venue, Josephine asked, "You're not going to walk me to the door are you?"

"If I don't, how will I know you've hooked up with your friend?"

"We're meeting right out by the street. You'll see us."

"Okay."

"Thank you. Mama would walk me to the door. She'd probably try to come inside."

"Really? She would do that? I wouldn't do that."

She paused for a moment, then said, "No, you'd just pretend to leave me, then hide in the bushes." And sure enough, she was more or less onto my plan, which was to drop her off, park the car nearby, then spend my evening within a 2-block radius eating dinner and window shopping. It bugged her, but at the same time I think she also felt a little relieved to know that I'd be nearby, just in case. It's not that I distrusted her, but rather that I didn't trust those other kids and what they might all do together. I often look back on that as my first real experience as the parent of a teen.

Probably the most common response I get from new acquaintances when I mention my teenager is something along the lines of, "That must be stressful," or "A challenging age," or just, "Good luck." It's a sort of culture-wide joke we tell about teens, one we think we have the right to tell, I guess, because not so long ago (or so it seems), we were all dopey, mopey, distracted teens ourselves. That this characterization wasn't matching my experience as a parent, however, made me wonder over what we think about adolescents.

I've genuinely loved being the parent of a teen. I like her teen friends. I don't mind her messy room, her clothes, her music, or even the fact that she seems to spend all her free time trying to expand her social world. In fact, I admire her persistence and energy, wishing I had a little more of it myself. Other parents bemoan the fact that all their kids want to do is "hang out," even forbidding it, worried that it's just a set-up for getting into trouble, and it is. But I think I understand it: after a decade or more of being relentlessly on her parents' radar, being off it, just hanging out with friends out in the world, is sometimes enough of a unique experience all by itself.

And while I'll never come to peace with some of the risks she's taken, and will likely take in the future, there's also a piece of me that knows, deep down, that she's going to do whatever it is she wants to do, try whatever it is she's wants to try, and the only say I really have is to give her my best, most honest advice, and love her. Indeed this is the bottom line truth for every parent, so if I'm going to do that job, I need to do everything I can to keep those lines of communication wide open, to not be overly shocked or punitive or despairing, but rather to have conversations about the real risks and rewards. I've sometimes felt the pull toward putting the hammer down the way other parents do, to just say, "Because I say so." The world of drinking, drugs, sex, and driving, after all, has laid waste to too many young lives, but authoritarian parenting is far more likely to lead to the chaotic, chronic behaviors we label as delinquent. So while I attempted to walk the middle ground, when I erred, it was on the side of permissiveness, starting with a desire to say "yes," if only she gave me time to think about it; time for us to talk about it; time for me to find a good hiding place in the bushes.

Sometimes after our talks, she decided to not take the risk after all. More often she went ahead with her plans then later told stories of being there with all her friends whose parents had put their foot down in righteous opposition and then had no idea where their child was or what she was doing. The kids were all there taking the same "risk," but at least I knew where mine was, equipped with my best advice, whether she took it or not. 

One of my most eye-opening reads on the topic was a fascinating article in National Geographic entitled Teenage Brains, in which author David Dobbs discusses teenaged brain development (which goes on into our early to mid-20's) in the context of evolution.

The resulting account of the adolescent brain . . . casts the teen less as a rough draft than as an exquisitely sensitive, highly adaptable creature wired almost perfectly for the job of moving from the safety of home into the complicated world outside.

These are the years when our brains and bodies are making the final preparations to leave the nest, to head out into that thrilling, dangerous world, and whatever we feel about it as parents, it is their destiny. As neuroscientist B.J. Casey puts it:

We're so used to seeing adolescence as a problem. But the more we learn about what really makes this period unique, the more adolescence starts to seem like a highly functional, even adaptive period. It's exactly what you'd need to do the things you have to do then.

I'll let you click over and read the entire article about the biology behind why adolescents take risks, seek novelty, and bond so passionately with their peers. It's all adaptive behavior even if we sometimes view it as quite the opposite. I walked away with a renewed admiration for the teenaged brain, but this is the part that stands out for me:

We parents, of course, often stumble too, as we try to walk the blurry line between helping and hindering our kids as they adapt to adulthood. The United States spends about a billion dollars a year on programs to counsel adolescents on violence, gangs, suicide, sex, substance abuse, and other potential pitfalls. Few of them work.

Yet we can and do help. We can ward off some of the world's worst hazards and nudge adolescents toward appropriate responses to the rest. Studies show that when parents engage and guide their teens with a light but steady hand, staying connected but allowing independence, their kids generally do much better in life. Adolescents want to learn primarily, but not entirely, from their friends. At some level and at some times (and it's the parent's job to spot when), the teen recognizes that the parent can offer certain kernels of wisdom -- knowledge valued not because it comes from parental authority but because it comes from the parent's own struggles to learn how the world turns. The teen rightly perceives that she must understand not just her parents' world but also the one she is entering. Yet if allowed to, she can appreciate that her parents once faced the same problems and may remember a few things worth knowing.

In the meantime, you'll find me hiding in the bushes.

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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Good News! Good On Us!

It's easy to fall into despair over the democratic process and there are still plenty of issues on which we the people are being ignored, but there are also weeks like this one when the promise of self-governance seems to still be alive and kicking.

Back in February I wrote about Seattle's Nathan Hale High School Senate, a body made up of students, parents, teachers, and administrators, voting almost unanimously to refuse to administer the new high stakes Common Core test to 11th graders. The response from Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Larry Nyland, a man appointed to his position by the school board via a blatantly undemocratic process that specifically sought to minimize parent and community input, threatened the school's teachers with not just suspensions, but with a loss of their livelihood by yanking their teaching certificates. Despite this, public school communities throughout the Seattle region, from Edmonds to Tacoma to Bill Gates' backyard in Redmond, have issued formal objections to this testing.

What many of us have been waiting for is the response from the students, parents, and teachers at Seattle's Garfield High School. Two years ago, that public school community made national news, becoming the focal point in the pushback against the overuse of high stakes standardized testing by walking out on a state mandated test, which resulted in that particular test, the MAP, no longer being mandatory. Win! There has been much talk in the meantime about whether or not the Garfield community would refuse to take part in this first year of Common Core tests as well. The big question was whether or not the teachers would be willing to put their livelihoods on the line.

As Garfield's teachers considered whether or not they were willing to take the risk of opting out in light of the threats made against Nathan Hale's teachers "an amazing thing happened," in the words of Garfield teacher, author, and education activist Jesse Hagopian:

Parents began organizing a mass opt out campaign . . . We soon realized that the students who were being asked to take the 11th grade SBA are the very same class whose families helped lead the boycott of the MAP test when the students were in 9th grade back in 2013! I am excited to announce that the parent opt out campaign at Garfield High School has resulted in 221 students already opting out of the 11th grade SBA with two weeks to go before the test is supposed to be administered!

That's enough opt outs that the majority of students will not be taking the test, meaning that teachers will continue teaching instead of administering the test. Wow. I reckon this also invalidates the test for school and teacher assessment purposes. This is how to do it: an alliance of students, parents, and teachers. 

This is the sort of thing that needs to be happening across the country, and indeed is happening. There are already 60,000 students opting out of these tests in New York state alone, for instance, a place that was an early adopter of the disastrous Common Core national curriculum. 

Democracy is more than voting.

And this isn't the only good news. Earlier this year, I wrote about current Congressional efforts to reauthorize the federal No Child Left Behind Law, the legislation that sired the Common Core and our irrational obsession with for-profit high stakes testing. This week, Senators Lamar Alexander and my own Patty Murray announced a bi-partisan agreement on reauthorization legislation that. As education historian and author Diane Ravitch writes:

One may quibble with details, but the bottom line is that this bill defangs the US Department of Education; it no longer will exert control over every school with mandates. This bill strips the status quo of federal power to ruin schools and the lives of children and educators.

Holy cow! They're listening! I'm as surprised as anyone that democracy seems to even be working at the federal level.

There will still be testing, but it's left up to the state's to decide what to do with the data, which means that the federal government can no longer twist our arms behind our backs with the threat of withholding funding. Teacher assessments will be left up to states. Indeed, the entire bill seems to be telling Education Secretary Arne Duncan to take a long walk on a short dock. Peter Greene, writing on his blog Curmudgucation, has put together an encouraging summary of what he finds in the bill. I'm not at all happy with the big, wet sloppy kiss it gives to charter schools, but it appears that the dream of nationally standardized education is dead, and Common Core itself may now be on life support.

Of course, individual states may now very well impose similar or worse education policies, so that's where students, parents, and teachers need to turn our attentions because believe me, our deep-pocket opponents, those who will profit from children laboring in test score coal mines, are not about to stop. The promise of democracy is that "numbers" beats "money." In this case, at least, that appears to be the direction things are starting to go.

Good on us! Now on to our state capitols!

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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