"Rise Up, Babies, RISE UP"

The Seattle teachers strike has been suspended and is likely over, pending a ratification of the tentative agreement by the full membership. School will begin on Thursday, a week and a day later than originally scheduled.

It's been a remarkable week in many ways, most impressive being the widespread, vocal support of the strike by the community at large and especially among parents. This isn't to say it hasn't been an emotional roller coaster for the teachers and that there haven't been heated exchanges around dinner tables and in the comment sections of news articles, but for the most part the people of Seattle stood in solidarity with our teachers.

According to the Seattle Education Association's Facebook page, it appears that most of the union's "priority issues" were addressed:

• Recess: Guaranteed 30 minutes of recess for all elementary students
• Reasonable testing: New policies to reduce the over-testing of our students
• Professional pay: Base salary increases of 3 percent, 2 percent and 4.5 percent, plus the state COLA (cost of living adjustment) of 4.8 percent
• Fair teacher and staff evaluations: Test scores will no longer be tied to teacher evaluations, plus there is new contract language that supports teachers' professional growth
• Educator workload relief: Additional staff to reduce workloads and provide student services
• Student equity around discipline and the opportunity gap: Creating race and equity teams at 30 of the district's schools
• The administration's proposal to lengthen the school day: Teachers will be compensated for additional work.

I've not seen the details, but there certainly are lot of things to be happy about. This is a strong statement in favor of children and education in our city and against corporate-style education reform. It's not everything they wanted, but compromise is always the end-result of negotiation.

Over this past week and a day, we've hosted a number of older siblings at the preschool and kindergarten. Every one of them could explain what was happening. They understood the strike and while they might not have had a firm grasp of the details, they did understand that the teachers were standing up not only for themselves, but their students as well. They also understood that their parents supported their teachers. What a powerful way to start a new school year.

As parent, musician, and activist Kimya Dawson wrote yesterday in The Stranger:

What better lessons can the children learn? We will fight for you. We will rise up against oppression. We will rise up against inequality. We will rise up against your cool beautiful spirits being squashed so they can turn you into another passive cog in their corrupt corporate machine that tuns a blind eye as kids are piped from schools into prisons. You are important. We love you for you. We don't have to take it.

Thank you Seattle teachers. You've inspired me and you've taught your students one of the most important lessons of their young lives. This is not the end, but the beginning. Now that we've seen the power of students, parents, and teachers sticking together in solidarity, we know that there is nothing we can't do.

Rise up, babies, RISE UP. Together we can change the world.

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It Was Enough

Like many classrooms, a lot of our stuff is stored in cabinets and on shelves (and atop cabinets and shelves) in the classroom itself. I chose what aspects of the "third teacher" will be available to the children, which means only a fraction of our toys are "open" on any given day. I suppose, ideally, we wouldn't have to resort of in-class storage, and that the cabinets and shelves would be home to an ever rotating collection of things that are always "open," but the realities of space make that impossible.

During the first week or so of class, children who are new to our school often want to get out more toys. With the older kids, they'll usually ask if they can play with this or that, while the younger kids just start rummaging around. This is not a hard thing to do given that most of our shelves are covered by curtains that are easily pushed aside.

People often ask me, why, if we have a play-based, child-lead curriculum, I don't just let the kids decide what they want to play with and when? Why are some things "closed?" The short answer is because otherwise it's simply too much.

Researchers tell us that the more toys children have, especially for kids under five, the less they actually play. According to Kathy Sylvia, professor of education psychology at Oxford University:

When (children) have a large number of toys there seems to be a distraction element, and when children are distracted they do not learn or play well.

Michael Malone, professors of early childhood education at the University of Cincinnati says:

More is not necessarily better. This is a myth that needs to be extinguished from western suburban culture. Our work shows that having fewer toys is associated with less solitary play and increased sharing. Conversely, too many toys can cause a sense of 'overload'.

While every child is different, the ballpark recommendation is that two dozen toys is a good number for a preschool aged child. That sounds about right for the classroom as well. Yesterday, for instance, I chose to "open" some blocks, puzzles, and rubber band boards. There were some water wheels and containers in the water table. We painted at easels. There was play dough along with a collection of related tools, like cookie cutters and pizza wheels. There were stuffed animals, books, baby dolls, devil duckies, our "every day" cars, costumes, and a few other odds and ends.

It was enough.

When a child wants more, however, I will say something like, "You want to play with that. Would you like it to be open tomorrow?" Some of them plead or even cry. But this only happens with the kids who are new to us, and then only during the first few days of school. The children who have been with us for awhile know the score. 

For instance, yesterday Owen asked me, "Can we play with the trains tomorrow?"

I answered, "Yes," and he was satisfied because he knew we would.

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Children Inspire Me

Children inspire me. 

Today is our first day of preschool, but our new kindergarten was in session for three days last week with Teacher Rachel. On Friday, I had the privilege of substitute teaching for two hours.

When I arrived, the kids were mostly outdoors, although a couple were still inside finishing up their lunches. The first thing the kids did was to inform me that "the pump is broken," referring to the cast iron water pump we've installed at the top of our two-level sandpit. We hauled it down to the workbench, half the kids in tow, to dismantle it to see what was wrong. I probably take the pump apart a dozen times a year. Usually the problem is a wood chip or a bit of something or other that has found it's way into the works, causing the system to be insufficiently air tight. This time, however, there was nothing evident, so we gave it a general cleaning and took a good look at how the apparatus works, checking out the leather fittings and thinking through how the pumping motion draws water up the pipe and out the spout. Sabine sorted our set of crescent wrenches. Several of the other kids monkeyed around with the flap that opens and closes with the water motion. Others wanted to touch the plumber's grease we used to lubricate the cylinder.

We reassembled the pump. Grady and Henry brought over a bucket of water which we used to test our "repair" work. There was a bit of cheering when it pulled up water, although Wyatt worried that we were getting the workbench wet. He knows that we sometimes use electrical things there and so normally try to avoid having water in the area.

The pump back in place, we engaged in an all-hands-on deck hydraulic engineering project, working together to create channels through which we could direct the water as it flowed down the hill.

A couple of the girls decided they didn't want to get wet, so took a clutch of ropes to the top of the concrete slide where they tied a web of ropes between the lilac trunks. Stupidly, I asked, "What are you making," and Francis answered, "We're not making anything; we're just tying."

A bit later, we built a space ship from old car tires and other odds and ends from around the place. There was talk of "evil aliens." When I said I was worried about "evil aliens," I was informed that we were the evil aliens and that we had light sabers. I did the thing where I play dumb, saying I had no idea what a 'saber' was, and that perhaps they were talking about "light stabbers." No, it was "light sabers," and several of them took a crack at explaining it to me, none of whom mentioned Star Wars. A couple of the guys got silly and thought of 'sound sabers.' "They would be really loud!"

I moved along then, back through the sand pit were a trio were trying to get the water to flow through pipes and tubes. One of them is a fifth grader, or will be once the Seattle public school teacher strike is resolved. As a cooperative in which parents are required to work as parent-teachers one day a week, we are welcoming older siblings to come along with their younger brothers and sisters until the strike is over. 

The days when elementary school kids are amongst us are often the most wonderful. One of my fondest preschool memories is the day Sylvia's older brother Zachary taught us how to build Mouse Trap. 

At one point this older brother said to me, "Now I get it; it's five year old logic." 

I asked, "What do you mean?" 

"It doesn't make sense, but it makes sense to a five-year-old."

He said it with a magnificent tone of worldliness and admiration. Just perfect.

I took a seat at the now empty workbench. Teacher Rachel had left us a note about a "special project." What could it be? A couple of the kids thought it should be erupting the volcano. There was a movement in that direction, but Bodhi reminded us about power tools. He thought we should use the power tools. There was a debate in the offing, when the evil aliens attacked, and they were loud.

They were acting like they were playing punk rock guitars, crowding in on us, shouting us down. There is an upright vacuum cleaner handle that we keep down by the workbench. I picked it up and pretended to use it as a guitar. Ket really wanted it for himself, so I gave it to him. The other kids starting picking up sticks and other objects to use as their guitars. Someone brought over a garbage can lid and children started banging on it.

Our older friend interrupted us, "Does anyone want to learn about the Beatles and the Rolling Stones? I learned all about them at a place called School of Rock."

A few of the kids stopped banging and making screeching guitar sounds to listen. The noise didn't stop by any measure, but the volume dropped enough that he was encouraged to quickly tell us that they were famous bands, the band members' names, and that he knew all the words to Satisfaction. "We could perform that song. I'll be Mick Jagger. He's the singer for the Rolling Stones."

Ket said, "I'll be the guitar player."

"Then you're Keith Richards."

Ket wielded his axe impressively.

By now there were probably 10 kids engaged in our game, most of whom wanted to know who they were, so we started naming Johns, Charlies, Pauls, Ronnies, and Ringos. Then we rocked out.

That's when Silas shouted to me, "Maybe this is the special project! Maybe we need the karaoke machine!" When my daughter was young, we owned a karaoke machine. Now the school owns it. It has two microphones and amplifies your voice. That was a good idea.

As I plugged in the machine, Wyatt said, referring to the workbench, "Now we really can't have water down here."

I managed an initial round of turn taking, then left it to the kids to figure out. They deferred to the older boy who was subsequently fair, even benevolent.

At our closing circle for the day, we wound up discussing things that had happened during the day that we hadn't liked. A couple of kids had been hit. One had had water poured on him. We agreed to not do that stuff again. Then we read a story.

And the truth is that this is only a fraction of what we did in those two hours. Now I'm inspired for school to start.

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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Where The Real Blame Belongs

On Wednesday, I made a bicycle "solidarity tour" of the picket lines of striking Seattle teachers in front of an elementary school, a middle school, and a high school. At each stop, I found teachers I know as well as former students who were out with their parents in support of the strike. No one wants this strike. The teachers sure don't, the parents sure don't, the district sure doesn't, and the children definitely don't: every one of them with whom I have spoken is eager for school to start.

From where I sit, there seems to be widespread support for this strike, although I've learned to avoid the comments sections of the articles I read. Whatever is going on in my world, there are still some very vocal knee-jerk teacher haters out there. I don't know if there are lot of them because, when polled, Americans tend to think highly of public school teachers, at least compared to members of other professions, but the haters are loud, mean, and dismally uninformed. Of course, much of the bile is directed at the idea of a union more than the teachers themselves, which shouldn't be surprising given the relentless campaign against working Americans that has been waged by economic elites for the past three decades, an effort that has even succeeded in convincing many working people to oppose unions. (Yes, economic elites have always been engaged in class warfare against the rest of us, but it has really ramped up since the 1970's, culminating in the election of Ronald Reagan whose first order to business was to bust the air traffic controller's union.)

On Labor Day, I posted here about why we should all support unions. There is nothing more American. Corporations are dictatorships set up within our democracy: unions seek to bring democracy into the workplace where it belongs. And as I wrote on Monday, I cannot think of anything more "capitalistic" than for professionals with a skill to sell banding together to get the best deal possible, both in terms of pay and working conditions. I cannot see how that is any different than what corporate lawyers do when they negotiate their contracts. In fact, their stockholders would sue them if they didn't strive to get the best deal possible.

The difference here, of course, is that Seattle's teachers are striking for more than a pay raise, something they have foregone for going on six years without even a cost of living adjustment in this city where prices (especially for rent) are skyrocketing. At the core of the teachers' demands is nothing less than the beginnings of a unified pushback against the billionaire-funded corporate-style education reform agenda that has been wrecking havoc on our public schools, starting in 2001 with the unfunded mandates of No Child Left Behind act right up to the current federal drill-and-kill testing curriculum known as Common Core.

Right across the country, despite mountains of evidence that ample time to play outdoors leads to cognitive gains in children, recess has been disappearing. In some Seattle schools, especially those serving lower income populations, recess time is down to an abusive 15 minutes per day. Seattle teachers are demanding a minimum of 30 minutes per day, still shockingly low, but like I said, this is the beginning of a pushback.

Right across the country, despite mountains of evidence that high stakes standardized testing is, at best, a waste of time, and at worst literally causing brain damage, the number of hours children spend being testing and in preparing for being tested continues to rise until it has become the core of what our children and teachers are doing with their time on the planet. Seattle teachers are demanding that standardized testing be reduced to only those that are federally mandated.

Right across the country, despite mountains of evidence that systemic institutional racism is built into public education, billionaire reformers continue to absurdly assert, without any supporting evidence, that their "tough love" focus on all-academics-all-the-time will magically solve our nation's race problems. Seattle teachers are demanding that all schools take concrete steps to directly address the racism that hurts the prospects of minority students.

Right across the country, vital student mental health support programs are being cut. Seattle teachers are demanding adequate funding and workload caps for school counselors and psychologists.

Sadly, this week, Seattle's school board voted 5-1 in favor of authorizing legal action against the teachers. The lone dissenter was our own Sue Peters who won her seat over a candidate who was lavishly supported by the same billionaires who are funding the corporate take-over of our schools nationally, unconstitutional charter school initiatives, and, in fact, are largely to blame for this very strike.

That's right, it's easy to point fingers the district for this mess, and indeed they share some of it. After all, they had all summer to negotiate in good faith, but instead waited until the week before school started to not only outright reject the teacher's proposal, but counter with longer school days, for which teachers would not be compensated. But the truth is that in many ways the district's hands are tied by a state legislature that is currently paying a court-ordered $100,000 per day in fines because of their unconstitutional refusal to fully fund education in our state.

Last May, thousands of teachers across more than 60 school districts walked out in a one-day protest against Olympia lawmakers' criminal inability to represent the people they were elected to represent. And it's a bi-partisan problem, with both Republicans and Democrats, as they are on a federal level, colluding against public schools in defiance of a clear public mandate. In 2000, state voters overwhelmingly approved annual cost of living pay adjustments for teachers, but the legislature has suspended it every year since 2008, which is why teacher pay has, in real dollars, actually declined dramatically over the past six years. Voters also voted to reduce class sizes across the state, but the legislature has refused to fund it. In 2012, the state Supreme Court held in that the legislature's chronic underfunding of public schools was unconstitutional and this year held the body in contempt of court, hence the $100,000 per day fine.

So why should we blame the billionaires? Because many of the very same billionaires who are funding the corporatization of our schools and who funded the unconstitutional charter school initiative in our state and who tried to buy a school board seat for one of their own, are also behind our state having the most regressive tax system in the country. We don't even have an income tax, which leaves our state without many options when it comes to funding such things as education, meaning the rich get richer while our kids stay at home and our teachers strike.

And so, largely because of the greed of the super wealthy, our teachers are forced to march on sidewalks instead of teaching our children. That is where the real blame belongs.

Update: This is an interesting article about where things might be headed if a solution is not found soon. In and nutshell, however, should the state legislature continue to drag its feet on public education, the court can order all schools closed across the state until funding is in place. There is precedent for this happening in other states, including New Jersey in the 1970's, where the upshot was the introduction of a state income tax. Another thing I learned from this article is that our state's constitution says that education is "the paramount duty" of the state -- not "a" paramount duty, but the paramount duty. That seems to suggest that, legally, nothing can be funded ahead of our schools. Go teachers! Solidarity!

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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This Difficult Business Of Other People

Marcus was working on a cardboard block tower. Lilyanna was helping.

They built it as high as they could, arriving at a point when they struggled to reach the top. It was really quite beautiful, these 2-year-olds spontaneously coming together in common cause like this, not talking, just doing. It takes a combination of concentration and speed to build something that tall, with another person, in a crowded classroom where everything is being continually jostled. But when they arrived at that point where their bodies were not tall enough to reach, their agenda's diverged. Marcus clearly wanted to pursue the challenge of continuing to make it even taller, while Lilyanna joyfully pretended to fall, intentionally pulling the building down with her, where she lay on the floor laughing as the blocks rained down on her.

Marcus reacted by lowering his eyebrows, appearing irritated and slightly aghast, I think not at Lilyanna, but rather, if I had to guess, at the lost opportunity. He'd perhaps been planning to find a chair or something else to stand on, to reach even higher. He then went back to rebuilding, with Lilyanna once more pitching in. They went through this full cycle six times, each go around reaching that point where their agendas diverged and the walls came tumbling down.

The general ethic of our classroom is that if you build it, only you can knock it down, but we don't really have a way to deal with this, when they build it together toward different purposes. I suppose I could have, after a couple repetitions, suggested that each child build her own building, but I didn't, mainly because Marcus didn't seem particularly upset (in fact, he appeared rather philosophical) and usually when young children repeat a play pattern over and over I interpret that as a sign that they are trying to learn something that is personally important.

It's impossible to have a judgement here, to side with one child or another. Each was pursuing his own perfectly legitimate, viable agenda. It was incredible when they merged, and that they merged for so long. Together, for a time, they built higher and faster than either could have alone. I even suspect that had Lilyanna been able to hold off just few minutes longer, those agendas would have re-converged and they could have knocked it down together, because that had often in the past been the destiny of Marcus' towers, but that is the way life with the other people sometimes works.

All human problems and all human glories result from the great truth that we go about our individual lives working our own unique agendas. From our first cries, using our only tool for connecting with the other humans, we seek out sensations, connections, and even objects that in some way satisfy those agendas, and we pursue them relentlessly. We have our conscious agendas and our unconscious agendas, overt and covert, ones we announce proudly and those we shamefully leave unspoken. And these agendas shape how we engage with the world. There are so many agendas working at so many purposes at any given time, that it seems a miracle that we ever get together on anything at all.

This is a big part of why we're in preschool, to learn to work our agendas together; to learn how to find where they match, because together we can do things that we can't alone, but also to learn how to deal with those inevitable times when they diverge and the building comes crashing down around us. 

There are some hard, complicated lessons to learn about agendas. There are times, of course, when we must stand and fight, but we also must learn to pick our battles. There are times when we must step aside. Sometimes we must conclude, as Marcus finally did, that we will not be able to complete our agenda today, and learn when to walk away, hopefully to return another day. Most often we need to talk, to compromise, to find a way to alter our agendas in order for them to imperfectly merge in order to achieve a kind of "second best" result that leaves all parties both satisfied and dissatisfied. And, naturally, the more people, the more agendas that must be included, the more difficult it gets. This whole business of living with the other people is an emotional tangle, full of pointy parts to navigate, made even more challenging as we begin to understand that those other people are navigating too. But as difficult as it is, it's important because it's exactly the process of picking our way through this jumble of agendas that teaches us empathy, which is just another complication in this complicated business.

Some days I have no idea how any towers ever get built in the world. It all seems so impossible.

Yet we keep doing it, throughout our lives, re-engaging in this difficult business of other people.

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You Could Run A School Like Ours On This Stuff

My wife and I recently returned from New York City. We were there to help our daughter get settled into her new life as a student at NYU, a campus that must be among the most densely populated in US, located as it is in the heart of one of our most densely populated cities. I'm an advocate for increasing density in our cities on environmental grounds, a position for which I've advocated on these pages. It's a topic that generates more controversy around here than when I take a stand against spanking or guns.

We were staying at a hotel in Tribeca and as is my habit when visiting new places, I was up at the crack of dawn to take long walks. To give you an idea, one morning I walked the seam of Broadway from Canal Street to 83rd on the upper west side. On another day, my wife joined me on a jaunt across the Williamsburg Bridge into Brooklyn. But before setting out each morning, I enjoyed a relatively quiet (by New York standards) stroll around Soho where, daily, I found the most compelling evidence ever for urban density, at least if you're a preschool teacher.

Soho retailers and restaurants leave the best stuff in their curbside garbage piles. If our play-based, cooperative school was located in Manhattan, I would be raiding those piles on a daily basis. I mean, just take a look at the pictures below. These all came from a tour of less than 30 minutes on the morning of the day we flew back to Seattle.

You could run a school like ours on this stuff. Some days were better than others. This was sort of an average day.

One of my mantras is that preschools don't exist to use stuff: one of our major societal function is to finish using stuff.

People ask, "But what will the kids do with it?" I don't need to know. I've been doing this long enough to know that they will find plenty to do with most of it, often amazing things. We have far junkier junk on our playground already. And the few items that lay fallow? Well, big deal, it was already garbage.

I've done a little dumpster diving here in Seattle, but that takes more commitment than just raiding one of these tidy curbside piles. And I'm not the only one; even during the creation of this photo essay, I saw several items go home with happy foragers.

I think this may be one of my biggest knee-jerk aversions to education corporations like Pearson Education. They're making billions off selling new stuff to schools when the best stuff is just lying around, free for the taking. If I were the king of early childhood education, I can guarantee we would do it both better and cheaper.

And just look how tidily the cardboard is packed up. It's a middle class bag lady's dream.

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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