A School At "The End Of The World"

In yesterday's post, I discussed the minimalist interior of an Icelandic preschool called Kaldársel, which I described as being located in an old farm house at the "end of the world."

It felt like that because our group of four foreign preschool teachers were the last ones left on the Play Iceland bus and we had been driving on a winding gravel road through a classic Icelandic landscape for quite some time before finally stopping at this solitary building. As we stepped from the bus we were attacked by a fierce, cold, wet wind that swept across that flat landscape unobstructed. My first thought was that I'd underdressed.

The teachers spied us through the window and waved us around the building. That's when we saw the river, a shallow thing that dog-legged right up to the school, complete with a small water fall. These kids had their own river!

We spent the next half hour or so indoors, where our host guided us through a powerpoint orientation, then we were told, "We're going outside now. We'll be out there for at least two hours." 

We'd been advised to pack rain pants, which I'd done, but had intentionally, and foolishly, left them behind when this Seattle boy had determined from the comfort of his Reykjavik hotel room that this wasn't "real rain." As we bundled up, the teachers took one look at us and said, "We have extra pants for you to use." In yesterday's post, I mentioned traveling light. Well for all the benefits, one of the downsides is that if you get your only pair of pants wet, you're wearing them wet until they dry on your body, so needless to say, I was quite grateful for the rain pants. As it turns out, it's quite common for Icelandic schools to provide wet/cold weather over-clothes for their teachers.

The children made no fuss about bundling up. Indeed, one of the most common comments among Play Iceland participants, whatever schools they visited, was that we heard very little whining or complaining from children around anything, be it bundling up, eating unfamiliar food, or doing worksheets (and we did see some of that). Of course, that may have had to do with the fact that we don't understand the language, but at least we didn't see any of the teachers engage in those long negotiations so common in American settings.

We set out on a hike together. Along the way we were shown the ruins of an abandoned sheep fold where the children sometimes play. Another group on the following day played with the children in the ruins of a farm house, "rusty nails and everything." As we walked, a teacher pointed out for me a forest  in the distance that they sometimes visit. She said it took about a half hour to hike there.

And this wasn't easy hiking. So much of the cracked and broken Icelandic landscape looks to me like it was molten lava just yesterday. As we picked our way from rock to rock, always watching out for holes into which a child could easily fall or in which an adult could easily break a leg, the children chattered. I could have sworn they were birds, a thought that recurred to me each time I heard kids speaking the Icelandic language. Perhaps the teachers were cautioning the children, but it sure didn't sound like it. Everyone but we visitors had clearly done this before.

After about 20 minutes we came upon a hole under the lava that was larger than those we'd previously seen. It was a cave, "a 100 meter cave," and we were going in. The children equipped themselves with headlamps. We adults were encouraged to use our smartphones to light the way. Tourists pay good money to be shown lava caves in Iceland, but nothing can possibly top being guided by four and five year olds. It was much darker than most of my photos indicate because of the flash. The terrain was rugged. The walls were damp. There were places so narrow that had I been on my own, I'd have turned back. The ceiling was low enough that we big people were forced to duck, even crouch in parts.

At one point the children started to shout something. When we asked, we were told they were calling for the trolls. As I mentioned last week, polls show that 80 percent of Icelanders believe in fairies. They also believe in trolls and even adults speak of them without any hint of mockery.

We stopped for a snack of orange slices and bananas, then headed back to the farmhouse, the dark cave having been our only respite from the cold, wind and rain. Back there, the children got busy in the river or playing on the mossy rocks or building with a pile of lumber, which, along with a few pots and pans, were the only "toys" in this wild, natural place.

Our entire group was beyond impressed. Gobsmacked would probably be a better word. 

Everyone went indoors for lunch, although we were told by the group that visited on the second day when the weather was a little less Icelandic, that there was normally an outdoor dining option. We ate fish and rice, simple and hearty. I sat beside a boy who had the fork and knife skills of an adult. I took advantage of having a teacher with us to translate, asking him, "Have you ever seen a troll?"

"No, but I know their house is the cave."

"How do you know?"

"I can smell them."

"What do they smell like?"

"They don't bathe."

After lunch, most of us spent the rest of the day outdoors, getting cold and wet and having a blast.

The Woodland Park Cooperative School does not have a lava cave, nor do we have a river, sheep fold ruins, a forest, or the luxury of a natural place where cars and other hazards of modern life are so remote as to not to be a concern. Kaldársel has no fences and the children can roam as far and wide as they care to. We have fences.

While I envy them all of that, it does me no good to wish our school anywhere but where it is, in the middle of a city. We are an urban school and our "natural habitat" is dictated by that. I've written before about how I fear that our selfish love of nature, our desire to push farther and farther into it, making it even more remote, is destroying it. I love nature enough to live in a city and I do believe that ever-denser cities are at least part of the answer to making sure our world does not become completely uninhabitable for humans. We have plenty of natural wonders around here, indeed, I feel I live in god's country, but I'm not going to load our city kids on busses and take them to the end of the world each day.

I love everything about what I saw of Kaldársel, but as I've reflected on my experience there I've asked myself not "Why can't we be a nature school?" but rather, "What is our lava cave?" Where can we go on a 20 minute hike through our urban terrain fraught at least as many hazards and challenges as an Icelandic landscape? I mean, we have a troll living under the Aurora Bridge which is only a block away from our front door. We've visited local chocolate factories and music shops and bakeries and breweries, both on foot and by bus, all within the same 30 minute range as the Kaldársel forest or 100 meter cave. Sometimes we even visit the remnants of forests that still exist in our large city parks.

Our schools cannot all be the same, nor should they be. They each exist to serve a community of families and my community has chosen to live in the city. Our school will always reflect that, but what I've brought home from Kaldársel is that we could do a much better job of going outside our fences and making our neighborhood our school.

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The Disease Of Stuff

There is a pile of stuff that lives in my neighborhood. This is what it looks like:

It moves around inside a strictly proscribed area, first to one side, then another, around the intersection of Dexter and Denny. I've never seen it on the move, but it does move. Sometimes there is a person inside the stuff. I've seen toes sticking out between those shopping carts, moving just enough to betray the life that hides in there. This is a mentally ill person, no question, and this person is a symptom of a societal illness that thrives at the intersection of greed, poverty, helplessness, and stuff.

Stuff is a big deal in American culture, maybe the defining deal. Everyone has too much: too many cars, too many TVs, too much clothing, too many closets and garages and cellars stuffed with stuff. And we all crave more stuff. Even our mentally ill street people have too much stuff. It's not just an American affliction, of course: Australians suffer from it, as do people in the UK, and Canada, but I would have to say that the US is ground zero for the plague of stuff. We hear people sing the praises of "scaling down" or "simplifying," but from where I sit, it seems more like a fashion than a movement.

Several years ago, I became acutely aware that my stuff was owning me, rather than the other way around, which lead to a purging project that reached a peak earlier this year when I gave away my car, but I still have more stuff than is healthy.

One of the things I enjoy most about traveling is that it can give one a true sense of how much stuff one really needs. Two summers ago, I spent an entire month in Australia and New Zealand with only as much stuff as could fit in my modest back pack. I was, in the spirit of traveling light, frustrated on my final day in Iceland last week when I realized that I'd packed four articles of clothing that I hadn't even worn. Next time, I'll travel with even less.

I've been thinking about stuff since my return from Iceland. I was there to take part in the Play Iceland conference, along with some 40 other play-based early childhood practitioners, where we attempted to immerse ourselves in the educational methods of another culture. For many of us, one of the most obvious and profound differences between Icelandic preschools and the ones we teach at in the US, UK, and Canada, was how little stuff we saw at the schools we visited. One incredible school at which my group spent a day, a place located at the end of the world called Kaldársel (which I will write more about in the coming days), was set in an old farm house that had once been used as a summer camp. It featured no more than a dozen toys for 30+ kids. Seriously. The pictures you see in this post are interior shots of the school. 

In fairness, the focus of this particular school is its remarkable outdoor setting, but on the day we visited it was cold, windy and rainy, and many of the children chose to stay indoors where they found plenty to do, goofing around on the bunk beds, running around the gym, playing house in the toilet stalls, and trying to figure out the foosball table, a relic from a different era. They were as active and engaged as any children I've seen in any school: such is the power of play.

My own school is comparatively stuffed with stuff, even if only a very small portion of it is available to the children on any given day, but we're a Spartan barracks compared to many American preschools. As I watched these Icelandic preschoolers "make do" with so little, I thought of places I'd seen back home with rooms full of computers, walls and shelves crammed with "educational materials," and floors bestrewn with toys. The children I saw at Kaldársel clearly thrived without any of it.

I doubt that Woodland Park will ever pare down to the bones like and, in fairness, most of the schools we saw in Iceland had more toys than we actually saw: Icelandic teachers, I think, are better about putting everything away behind closet doors when the play is done. As a man of Scandinavian heritage, I suspect that there is more than just pedagogy at work here. Scandinavian design is renowned for it's clean simplicity and clutter is anathema to that, so some of what we witnessed, I'm sure, was cultural aesthetics.

Still, the teachers I spoke to confirmed that the minimalist approach to toys was a conscious decision, one that is supported by evidence that too much stuff can overstimulate and over stresses young children, and indeed, all of us.

Upon my return to Seattle, I stopped by my school. When I looked over the fence at the playground, it looked as it always does, junkyard chic, but it did strike me as a bit chock-a-block, a bit overwhelming, a bit too cluttered. This trip to Iceland was good for me, in the way travel is always good for a person: it gets you out of your "house." In this case it got me out of my American house of stuff where I could see that is, indeed, a house of stuff.

I'm going to be thinking about this for awhile, and part of that will include taking my own pulse and reading my own temperature, as well as that of the kids. We're American after all and this disease of stuff is highly contagious.

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Why Are We Afraid Of Children Playing?

Geysir, sometimes known as the Great Geysir, is a geyser in southwest Iceland. It was the first one known to Europeans and, as such, is the namesake of all the subsequent geysers discovered around the globe. Last week, I had the opportunity to visit Geysir where I joined a flock of tourists standing around a wet, steamy hole in the ground, waiting, waiting, waiting, until suddenly a giant dome of water, a bubble several meters across, would form before explosively bursting to send a spectacular tower of boiling water into the sky. 

In a couple posts last week I mentioned the weeklong Play Iceland conference I attended with some 40 other likeminded play-based early childhood educators. This group is about more than just professional development for teachers being presented in an exotic location: it is, I think, part of an international grassroots movement to elevate our understanding of free play. This is important stuff, because if everyone understood play, the world would be transformed.

I first learned about Play Iceland through, Hulda Hreiðarsdóttir, the proprietor of Fafu Toys, a company that evolved into Fafunia, "a place or space where parents and practitioners can support learning and skill building through play." Yes, she had toys and furniture and other things to sell, but what she was always focused on was this grassroots movement. When I committed myself to attend this conference, one of my highest motivations was to meet this woman, whose charm, spirit, and dedication came through even online. Sadly, I never had the chance: she died suddenly, in her sleep, last May at the age of 32. Fittingly, one of her favorite expressions was "Life is random." Indeed.

Her friends and family, in her honor, carried on and now I count myself among them, even if I never actually met her in life. The next step for Play Iceland is to take the playful magic of this place and these people and carry it out into the world. On our final evening together, Tom Shea, Hulda's partner, announced International Play Iceland, with the intention of holding conferences in the US and Australia. He asked me, "Are you in?" and without hesitation, I answered, "Yes!"

In Friday's post, I attempted to encapsulate the message I tried to convey to my fellow conference attendees when it came my turn to speak on our final night. Alone, we are outside-the-mainstream preschool teachers, on the fringes, thriving in the pockets of air that are rising to the surface as the Titanic of corporate-sponsored, factory-inspired education begins to sink. But if we can join our bubbles together, in our neighborhoods, our cities, our provinces, our nations, and across the world; if we can bring our message to the families who already love and trust us, even if it's just one and two at a time; if we can grow this grassroots movement in solidarity with one another, we can become a bubble that puts Geysir to shame, and no one, no matter how much money or power they have, can stand in our way. I will only point to our own recent local teachers strike, one actively supported by parents, as an example of what we can do when we come together on behalf of our children. No force on earth can stand before teachers, parents, and children united.

And there is simply nothing more universal, more necessary, more unifying, than play.

On our final night, while chatting around our dinner table, we asked ourselves the question, "Why do the powers that be seem so afraid of children playing?" And honestly, when we look around us, at every step, those with authority seem hellbent upon squashing play; be it with fear-mongering about the pedophile or drug dealer lurking around every corner; or fear-mongering that we are on the verge of economic collapse because our schools aren't producing the test scores we need to beat the Chinese; or fear mongering about learning loss during summer breaks; or fear-monger about how your child will fall behind if she doesn't have the latest educational toy or isn't reading by the time he is four; or fear-mongering about scrapes, bruises and broken bones; or, in general, fear-mongering about any form of unstructured time, even going so far as to limit recess, in the name of more desk time, to a mere 15 minutes per day. They apparently want our children corralled and controlled and programmed from the moment they are born, doing pretty much anything but playing freely, according to their own desires, instincts and passions the way they were born to do.

They fear children playing because in their hearts they know that if humans are allowed to freely engage with the world, outdoors, unsupervised, with few toys, lots of time, and in the company of other children, they will overturn the world order in a single generation. They fear that their precariously balanced applecart of command and control will be toppled, that their profits will plummet, that their power will crumble, and that they won't have anyone left to wield the guns and cudgels they need to keep us all in line. They fear that if children are allowed to play, they will grow up to both expect freedom and have the critical thinking and creative abilities to make it happen.

As I wrote on Friday, I'm not interested in hearing about what's impossible. We see evidence of this grassroots movement springing up everywhere we look. You may have to look carefully, but our tiny bubbles are all around us, from Iceland to China, from Australia to Greece, and from the US to England. We are rising to the surface, forming together into larger and larger bubbles, until like the Great Geysir we will be so big they won't be able to ignore us.

In the coming days, as I reflect upon my trip, the things I learned, and the people I met there, I hope to inspire you in your little bubble and, in the spirit of Play Iceland, I expect to see you in the bigger one we form together.

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The Impossible

Eight-year-old children ride their bikes around downtown Reykjavik without the escort of an adult. I've seen them with my own eyes. I wrote earlier this week about meeting actual Icelandic fairies, but in some ways, seeing this is even more astonishing. I witnessed a group of three boys who all looked to be younger than 12, looking for trouble, toss a pebble through the doorway of a shop, then run away, hopping a locked gate to escape. I ran into them less than a block later, giggling into one another's red faces at having gotten away with their unsupervised bit of mischief. If the fairies had been a visitation from mythology, these children had come to me from the past.

Not long ago, I wrote that I sometimes feel like the Lorax, charged with some of the last seeds left over from the Golden Age of childhood play, but I've found that there is at least one place where it still flourishes "in the wild."

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." ~Margaret Mead

When I was in third grade back in the 1960's, not so long ago, I attended a school in which all the students were white. The following year, the courts found that segregated schools were inherently discriminatory and ordered them desegregated. One of my neighbors warned me before I stepped onto the bus that was to take me to Atlas Road Elementary School that "people defecate in the ditches on the side of the road over there." In those days the n-word was used freely and it was just taken for granted that black children were inferior to white in every way. I remember when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.

Today, I live in a country that has elected a black President, not once but twice. I'm not suggesting that racism is gone by any means, but if you had suggested to anyone from my childhood that we would elect a black man to the nation's highest office, they would have told you it was impossible.

We now all have front row seats for observing another impossibility becoming reality. Even ten years ago, had you suggested that same sex marriage would be the law of the land, most of us would have said it was impossible, yet here we are now, only a few years later, standing on the threshold of that reality.

I'm not interested in hearing about something being impossible.

There are laws and attitudes and fears to overcome, there have been several generations of parents who have taken it on faith that their children cannot, for whatever reason, live a childhood of being outdoors, unsupervised, left to their own devices, with lots of time, in the company of other children. We've replaced it with screens and "activities," and overflowing toy boxes, because we know they need something, yet when we tell ourselves the truth we know in our hearts that it's a poor replacement for actual freedom.

I've just spent a week here in Iceland with a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens who know the world needs to change, each with a pocket full of Truffula seeds. I'm not interested in hearing about the impossible.

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Mom Was Right

Back in the 1960's, most of the children I knew went to school when they were six-years-old, first grade. A few of us attended kindergarten, which was not part of the public schools, at five. I have a February birthday, so there was never any question about me, but when it came time for my younger brother to start, my mother, quite controversially, decided to "hold him back" a year. Today, this is a common practice, but at the time it was a fairly radical notion. It all made perfect sense to me as an older brother. She said she thought it would be better for him to be one of the oldest children in his class rather than one of the youngest.

I don't think either she or my brother ever regretted that decision. When my own daughter began to approach school age, I asked mom about it. She said, "Once your children have left home, they're gone forever. I think it's best to keep them with you as long as you can." This is the advice I give the parents at Woodland Park when they ask me to weigh in on the issue of "red shirting," a practice that is much more common today, albeit still controversial.

Of course, there are a host of pedagogical and developmental reasons for waiting a year and every child and family is different, but when it comes right down to it, I have no problem with placing the emotional one ahead of the others, but to each his own. This is a decision best made by parents, although I will point out that in the US, at least, the curriculum being pursued in our public school kindergartens much more closely resembles what we were doing in first of even second grade back in the 1960's.

At the same time, we've seen an explosion of very young children being diagnosed with "disorders" and conditions that impact what we call self-regulation or self-control, ranging from struggles with inattention and hyperactivity right through ADHD and related things. It has become such a "problem" that in some age groups nearly 10 percent have been labeled with a diagnosis and close to 5 percent nationwide are on medications designed to control it (in some parts of the country the prescription of medications is close to 10 percent of the entire population of boys enrolled in public schools).

Of course, many of us teaching in the early years say that this explosion is really just an indictment of a school system that is increasingly forcing young children into developmentally inappropriate situations, that it is unhealthy to expect even children who appear to "handle it" to be to sit at desks and focus on directive tasks for so much of their days.

A recent Stanford University study seems to support this point of view:

According to the study . . . children who started kindergarten a year later showed significantly lower levels of inattention and hyperactivity, which are jointly considered a key indicator of self regulation. The beneficial result was found to persist even at age 11.

 In other words, mom was right.





 

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Icelandic Fairies

I'm currently in Iceland, taking part in an incredible weeklong conference called Play Iceland. I fully intend to share some of my stories with you here on the blog, but sadly, it will have to wait until next week when I'm back home because I'm unable to get my new electronic devices to communicate with one another, leaving my photographs trapped on my phone, and, quite frankly, I'm unwilling to waste any of my precious time here trying to figure it out.

That said, there is one story I must share with you.

On Monday, a group of us were visiting a small preschool for the day. Over the course of the visit, happy, curious children had, naturally, approached me with information and questions and, unless one of their teachers was nearby to translate or the context was obvious, I was left to smile, shrug, laugh or otherwise attempt to convey my lack of comprehension as well as appreciation and warmth. It's a frustration that all of us here for Play Iceland have shared in one way or another.

Near the end of our visit, I stepped into a room where I found a clutch of children sitting together on the floor. Again, they attempted to draw me in with what were clearly inquiries, and, purely because I was out of ideas, I began to sing. Specifically, I began to sing a song called "Mother Gooney Bird," a silly song accompanied by exaggerated full-body gestures. They sat and listened to my show. By the time I was done, several more kids had come in to see what was going on. The children called for an encore, so this time I indicated I wanted them to join me, which they did eagerly. I was so thrilled with having finally made a genuine connection that I launched into another song, and then another. By the end, there were at least a dozen children singing and dancing with me, along with the rest of my Play Iceland cohort, taking part in the sort of circle time we typically share back home. We might well still be at it were we not finally cut off by the arrival of the bus to take us foreigners back to our hotel.

It was exhilarating, I'm certain the children enjoyed themselves, and I don't think their proper teachers were too upset with me. That evening, however, as I lay in bed reflecting on the day, I began to feel a bit stupid. I mean, here I had come all this way to learn from another culture, but had instead sort of imposed my own culture on them in a selfish act of preschool imperialism. I made a vow that I would henceforth stick to my role as observer.

During yesterday's preschool visit, as hard as it was, I strove to remain aloof, without, of course, being unfriendly. I was quiet, stuck to the walls and corners, and took notes in my little notebook. I made it through lunch with this stance, tall and reflective, chatting with teachers when they approached me, but otherwise trying to understand how things worked at this school. At one point, however, a group of three 5-year-olds took notice of me as I stood on the playground. They whispered together for a moment, then walked in my direction in a row. As they approached, they said together, "Good morning, good morning, good morning," then ran off to giggle. Clearly they had been told enough about me to know I spoke English. After more whispering, they returned, saying, "Yes, yes, yes." It was a charming game, clearly designed to find a way to connect with me. I was quite touched and so, because I'm not a complete jerk, began repeating their English language words to them, smiling, and saying, "Tag," which I know means "thank you" in Icelandic.

After several rounds of this, however, in the spirit of my vow, I bid them "Good bye," then began to walk to another part of the playground.

They followed me, saying, "Good bye, good bye, good bye," not yet ready for our game to end.

I smiled, I waved, I said, "Tag," then again attempted to walk away.

"Good morning, good morning, good morning."

They were not going to let me exit willingly, so we made our way across the yard like this, a few steps at a time, them reaching out to me in my native language, with me thanking them and attempting to say bye-bye.

And then they began to serenade me. It was evidently one of their school songs, complete with hand gestures. Only a heartless cretin could walk away from that, so I stopped and turned fully toward them. At the end, I clapped and thanked them. They launched into another song, then another.

I gave up and sat on the pavement. Other children joined them. They sang, then, like Icelandic fairies, they began to dance around me, skipping together, slide stepping, hopping. There were at least a dozen of them by now, their cheeks flush, eyes on me the whole time. A couple of them carried small evergreen tree branches which they held over their heads. After each song, they began to come together around me in a spontaneous group hug, their faces, ringed by the hoods of their rain suits, so close to mine that their breath fogged up my glasses. Some of them even kissed my cheeks before then breaking into another song.

For at least a half an hour then, they danced around me, singing, hugging, kissing. I didn't want to confuse them with tears, so I fought them down. I was sitting in a puddle, but I couldn't bring myself to care. I clapped after each song, saying thank you over and over. They bowed to me, giggled, then sang again as they shared their culture with me.

Finally, their teachers pulled them away. It was time to go back inside. Several of them ran back out for a final hug, a final kiss, a final hot breath on my cheek. Left alone out there, I found my legs not really working properly. It had been overwhelming. The emotion I felt has no name.

Back indoors, I attempted to resume my stance of wallflower. I poked my head into a room of toddlers who hardly took notice of me. Then I felt a tug on my shirt. I turned to find two of my friends. With a flurry of words that sounded to me like birds chirping, they took my hands and pulled me into their classroom, where they sat me down and began bringing books to me. Soon I was surrounded again, being shown pictures, being taught Icelandic words, which I tried to repeat back to them. I asked a teacher if they were meant to be doing something else and she waved my concern away. The ones who were not pressing into me with books, were around a table, doing something with crayons and pencils. Then amidst the books I began to see slips of paper pre-printed with "Hello, my name is . . ." after which they had written their names in their own 5-year-old handwriting. I gave my best effort at pronouncing them.

And then they began drawing pictures for me.

The ones you see illustrating this post are from my new friend Inge, one of the girls who had started it all. I still have not been able to name the emotion they brought up in me. It's a transcendent mixture of gratitude, joy, magic, and love. Indeed, I feel I've been changed by these children who would have none of my feigned aloofness.

I've been told that 80 percent of Icelanders believe in fairies. Count me among them.

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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