Work And Responsibility

On Wednesday, our 4-5's class took a field trip to the Center for Wooden Boats on the south shores Lake Union in downtown Seattle, the lake at the heart of the city. I very much look forward to this field trip and not just because I live in the neighborhood.

First off, I'm an unabashed civic booster and proud that ours is a city that supports an institution dedicated to preserving this ancient utilitarian art form. But more importantly for us, they offer an adventure for preschoolers that involves making your own wooden boat using hand tools and crewing a short cruise paddling an umiaq, a traditional skin-on-frame canoe. When I polled the children yesterday at circle time, most of them reported that both activities were their favorites. 

It's an exotic in-city destination if only because the entire facility is floating on the lake, tethered like houseboats to docks, right there in the shadow of our equally field trip worthy Museum of History and Industry. 

We do more carpentry at our school than most, I reckon, and the kids were expertly enthusiastic about using brace-and-bit drills, hammers, and scissors to festoon wooden boat blanks with wine corks, bottle caps, twine, and fabric scraps: a wheel-house Woodland Park project. The classroom, with wooden rowing sculls hanging from the ceiling and views out toward the lake makes a great workshop. It's definitely an adults-help-kids kind of activity, which is perfect for a cooperative school like ours with lots of adult hands available for holding nails and tying knots.

The highlight for me, however, is getting out on the water. I didn't grow up around boats, so every time out on the water is special, and I'm especially fond of being on Lake Union. The picture illustrating this post is of us looking back toward my neighborhood, with the core of downtown being just over the horizon, the Space Needle off screen to the right, and our school in Fremont behind us. There are a couple dozen construction cranes visible from out on the water. This is where we live, these families of Woodland Park. It seems that most locals are bemoaning our city's rapid growth, but I like it: indeed, my family has chosen to live right in the middle of it.

Prior to setting out, Skipper Brant, a skipper with whom I've sailed before, gave us an important run-down on the proper use of paddles (not oars), and basic water safety. This is a time when direct instruction is appropriate, because, after all, we were going to be engaging in an inherently risky activity and the price one pays for that is to receive important safety information like how to hold a paddle so that you don't hit other people. I completely loved watching our crew earnestly walking together, each holding her paddle in the proper "oars up" position, while staying in the middle of the dock as the skipper had cautioned. This is when a little drilling is meaningful, as opposed the make-work drilling kids do to prepare for high stakes standardized testing.

Setting out together in a umiaq with our community of preschoolers and parents, it took all of our concentration at first. We strove to row together according the cadence that Skipper Brant had taught us, while holding our paddles properly, staying seated and, of course, keeping an eye out for the float planes we all know reside at this end of the lake. This was not "fun" in the stereotypical sense: there was hard work and responsibility and we, as a community of preschoolers stepped up to it together. Yes, of course, Brant, an expert boatsman seated in the stern provided much of our momentum and all of our steering, but it was clear that the children perceived the realness of their own part in making this happen. No paddles were dropped in the water, no one tried to stand up, no one squirmed or whined or messed with one another, although a few took little breaks to allow their paddles to drag through the water.

When we reached our most distant point, we stopped, placed our paddles in the "rest position," then drifted for a bit, taking in this special view of our habitat.

Yesterday, as we debriefed about our field trip we got excited about the idea of trying to build our own umiaq, a conversation that involved a lot of debate about how we were going to go about capturing a walrus, which provides the traditional hide that is stretched over the wooden frame. When the reality of going to Alaska and then actually killing and skinning a 3,400 pound sea creature sunk in, however, we decided we could instead use "thick fabric" like they do at the Center for Wooden Boats. I wish we had more than a single week left of school: I'd like to see where that enthusiasm would take us.

Instead, we floated our wooden boats in the sensory table, which is how young children have always first practiced being out on the water, but now we did it with some first-hand knowledge of the work and responsibility that the reality entails.

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Pressure And Listening

"I think the young feel pressured by the older generation. 

But I realized it isn't just the older generation doing the pressuring. 

Young people are pressuring older people to change, too, and it can make us feel uncomfortable. 

But it isn't all bad either.

I know how much I learned from my parents and teachers, and now I know for sure that I'm learning from my children and the young people I work with.

I don't do everything they want me to do, and they don't do everything I want them to do, but we know down deep we'd really be impoverished if we didn't have each other."

"More and more I've come to understand that listening is one of the most important things we can do for one another. 

Whether the other be an adult or a child, our engagement in listening to who that person is can often be our greatest gift. 

Whether that person is speaking or playing or dancing, building or singing or painting, if we care, we can listen." ~Mister Rogers

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Real Rigor

The opposite of play is not work, it's rote. ~Dr. Edward Hallowell

Our outdoor classroom is one big slope and within that slope there are many ups and downs, reflecting our city which iss built on hills. We're forever experimenting with gravity out there, rolling and flowing things downhill or dragging and pushing things up. There are parts of the space that are so steep one needs a running start to get to the top and there is very little flat upon which to rest one's legs.

We have a pair of wagons, which are regularly used on the hills. Once, we made an airplane. 

From my photos, it's easy to see the physics and engineering learning, but those were minor aspects, side-effects, of the bigger, more important project, which was figuring out how to get along with the other people.

There are those who question the "rigor" of a play-based curriculum when, in fact, we're engaged in the most rigorous curriculum known to mankind. There is simply no greater or more important challenge than the one of balancing our own individual desires and needs with those of the other humans with whom we find ourselves. 

A play-based curriculum is rigorous because of it's subject matter, which is the all-important one of getting along with the one another, something children are passionate about. Traditional schools, on the other hand, are rigorous simply because they attempt to teach less interesting things by rote, lecture, and text book, the most difficult way to learn new things because most children find them tedious and frustrating. It's an artificial rigor designed, I guess, to make the adults feel important.

Many people confuse hating school with rigor, saying things like, "It prepares them for life," but those of us who work in a play-based environment spend our days amongst children who love school, who arrive each day eager to tackle the challenges of community, and I would assert that there is no better preparation for life. Make no mistake, it's not pure joy, it's not all laughter. There are tears. There is conflict. There is negotiating and compromise. Children might complain, but they return each day eager to engage, to figure out the things they are most driven to figure out: the most important things of all.

There was so much to learn about flying our airplane together. Would it be safe? Where would everyone sit? How many of us can go at a time? Who gets to steer? Who rides and who "launches?" How do we get it back to the top of the hill? How do we make sure everyone gets a turn?

For the most part, we adults stood back, taking a few pictures, letting the kids work it out. Sure, the first few times they launched themselves down the hill, I jogged just ahead of them, prepared to intervene in the name of safety, but as it turned out on this day, I was unnecessary, even when the airplane crashed and burned.

I'll take the real rigor of play over the artificial rigor of rote any day. And so would the kids.

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Cruel, Sadistic Bastards

Last week, I spent an evening with a friend who is a public school teacher here in Seattle. I knew her before she became a teacher. We've had long discussions over the years about what's wrong with public education, and specifically about the disastrous Common Core national curriculum, the one that was developed largely by career bureaucrats and for-profit testing companies with precious little input from actual teachers, especially those who work with young children. She has always taken a more cavalier approach than me, insisting that fads like this come and go and that she was confident that she would be able to engage her students in "real learning" between the cracks.

She was not feeling that way last week. Her school was in the midst of administering high stakes standardized testing that were supposedly Common Core aligned. I say "supposedly" because who knows? No one outside the classroom is allowed to see the questions being asked -- not the school board, not the administration, not the parents, and certainly not the taxpayers who are on the hook for this mess. Only teachers and students are allowed to see the questions on the day of the test and they are emphatically not allowed to discuss the questions with anyone, even with one another. The companies that make these tests are actually monitoring the social media accounts of older students to make sure they don't discuss anything "proprietary." 

My friend's students were freaking out in anticipation, some in tears, some in ways that sounded bizarre to me. She is not even allowed to tell the kids' parents that they have the right to opt their children out of these tests, even when parents came to specifically ask her if they can opt out. 

Even if these test measured anything worthwhile (and they don't), the results will be useless to my friend, just as they are useless to all teachers, because by the time she receives them, it will be next fall: she may not even be teaching at that school, let alone working with those kids. And even if she did find herself still teaching one of them, she would have no way of knowing what he needs to do to improve because the whole damned thing is secret. Not even the President is allowed to see these tests that we spend billions on each year.

I can only draw one conclusion, the companies that make these tests and the state superintendents of eduction who signed contacts with these companies are all cruel, sadistic bastards. They are making the lives of children hell and they are making the lives of teachers hell, all under the cloak of secrecy and hollow assurances of "trust us." They are making a generation of children hate school even more than they already hate it and they're doing it exclusively for a greasy buck because there is simply no educational value in what they are doing. None, and no one is even attempting to make that case any longer.

A parent recently shared with me a letter she received from the school district in response to her decision to opt her child out of the tests. The superintendent's main argument was that she was placing her child's school's funding in jeopardy (although he did, laughably, also evoke her child's infamous "permanent recored").

I'm sick of these ignorant charlatans. What fools we've been to buy their cleverly concocted snake oil. These tests are designed to make failures of children. To wit, a test question which was anonymously revealed by a teacher in which 4th graders were asked to write essays based upon a reading assignment that was written at a 7th grade reading level (and a high school interest level). The failure is intentional because the very companies who make these super secret tests can then turn around and sell text books and other bogus "learning" materials to families and schools with the cynical promise of helping their little failures do better next time.

Companies like Pearson Education are grifters of the highest order. What a scam: we have secret tests, we make everyone associated with them sign non-disclosure agreements, the school districts aren't even allowed to tell families that the test are optional, then they freaking fail the kids on purpose just to get deeper into our pocketbooks. I'll say it again, these corporations and the people who contract with them, are cruel, sadistic bastards.

And believe me, the words I've used in this post are mild compared to the ones that are going through my head.

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Star Wars

In 1977, my girlfriend and I viewed a midnight showing of a sci-fi movie called Star Wars. We had heard nothing about it prior to entering the theater -- the attraction had been the show time. I saw the next two sequels, then lost interest, but obviously the rest of the world did not. 

Of course, the franchise today has taken over the world. Even two-year-olds wear the t-shirts to school. They all know what is meant by terms like "light saber," "Darth Vader," and "R2D2," and as the kids get older, there is a great deal of cache in knowing the more esoteric trivia. There are preschool Star Wars experts just as there are preschool dinosaur experts.

I have some reservations about showing these violent action movies to preschoolers, although in fairness, most of the kids I teach have received their Star Wars education second-hand, through brand marketing and their dramatic play with the few kids who have indeed watched one or more of the films. It's impossible to escape in much the way it's impossible to escape at least some knowledge of the latest Disney princess.

This is the world we live in and the children are not idiots. Star Wars is clearly important, not just to preschoolers but to the rest of society. It's not a fad: fads don't last 40 years. No, this is by now an important piece of culture, if not art, one that has become so ingrained in or society that the children have decided they must approach it like a course of study. At any given moment on our playground, there are light sabers being wielded, for instance. There is one kindergarten boy who spends most of his time outside using a stick pony to practice his slow motion fencing moves, sometimes with others, but often all alone with his imaginary opponents. There are long, intense debates among the children about the "light side" versus the "dark side," who is related to whom, and whether or not a storm trooper can be defeated with this or that particular weapon. It's obviously more important for boys to learn these things (because even the robots in the movie are "boys"), but girls are making a study of it as well, more often as critics than as participants, although there is some of that as well.

I know there are some schools that ban Star Wars play (indeed, all play that involves weapons or fighting), but I hardly think that's wise. I mean, we're talking about culturally significant art here, something that surpasses even Harry Potter, if only because it has been with us long enough that many of its biggest fans are parents of these children. I am not saying that Star Wars is great art any more than I would say that the music of Miley Cyrus is great art, but it is undoubtedly art of such power that banning it only pushes it underground with the rest of the forbidden fruit.

I cannot stop the children from playing Star Wars even if I wanted to and I don't. It doesn't inspire me, but it certainly inspires a large swath of my fellow citizens and that's why we will play Star Wars at preschool: not because it's what I want to teach, but because that's what the children want to learn. That's what child-led education is all about.

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Small, Well-Crafted Objects

"Teacher Tom? Wanna hear about my game?"

"Yes."

He arranged the small, cube-shaped wooden blocks for a moment, gathering brown ones together. 

"This game is called Mud Brick." When I didn't say anything, he clarified, "Because they're brown like mud."

"How do you play Mud Brick?"

He gathered white blocks together, "You get these and you try to break through the mud brick wall, like this." He demonstrated by shuttling a white block toward the mud brick wall, breaking through. "I get a bonus for that."

"May I have a turn?"

"Sure!" He pushed the white blocks closer to me. I did my best to imitate his technique.

He enthused, "Look! You got two points!" He showed me the two blocks that indicated two points. He then reached into the pile of blocks and sorted out red, green and blue blocks, "I have another game. This one is called Fire in the Hole." It was a similar game, but included a vertical dimension.

The following day he created a game called Pumpkin Squash because "pumpkin squash are orange."

I've had these blocks in my life for as long as I've been teaching. Indeed, they predate me at the school. They are old, but because they were stained and not painted, there is no chipping. The colors have certainly faded since they were made, but they remain clean, crisp things. I'm drawn to small, well-crafted objects and I include these blocks in that category. 

They are accompanied by a set of cards that suggest designs children may choose to imitate. They're nice, sturdy cards that have survived for decades, but they contribute nothing pedagogically. That said, I nevertheless often make them available to the kids alongside the blocks. I'm waiting for that day when they speak to a single child. I know that day will come because, in their way, they are small, well-crafted objects as well.

These blocks were manufactured, I assume, to encourage children to explore color, pattern, sequencing, shape, dimension, and other mathematical concepts. And for at least one child, that's exactly what they did. For most kids in our classroom, most years, these blocks are "drive-by" playthings, often just knocked onto the floor and left to be underfoot, but they don't take up too much space and they are, after all, small, well-crafted objects. One never disposes of small, well-crafted objects.

Some time after having learned to play Pumpkin Squash, I happened by the red table upon which I'd put the blocks. A crowd of kids, including our games master, were attempting to knock down towers by throwing cubes at them. This is where their mathematical explorations had taken them. When I suggested that throwing blocks in a confined space might risk injuring others, I was informed that they had already calculated it into the game. "If you hit someone," they explained, "you lose two points."

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Something To Make And To Look At

Last week, I took our wheel-less skateboard into the the sandpit row boat and began assembling a piece of art from the found objects at hand.

After a few minutes children began to pause in their play to watch me, then ask, "What are you doing, Teacher Tom?"

"I'm making something."

"What is it?"

I stopped myself from saying "art," and instead answered, "It's something to make and to look at."

The key component, the aspect over which I fussed, was a piece of wood that I had balanced over a fulcrum made from a stick. I said, "This part is very delicate. If it gets bumped, it won't balance any more."

The children gathered round, carefully, so as not to jostle my artwork, tucking their knees and feet carefully under themselves as they sat. This was taking place in the center of our very active playground, our slow, precise movements contrasting with the large motor play going on around us. I was working with stones, leaves, wine corks, bottle caps, florist marbles, sticks, and other bits of wood, the sort of debris that is close at hand on our playground. I moved the elements meticulously, arranging them, then nudging them from one place to another in tiny increments. I muttered to myself as I worked, "This needs to be a little bit more over here . . . Ah, too much . . . There, that's just the way I want it . . ." 

Soon, the children felt the urge to help: "Do you need more jewels, Teacher Tom?"

"Yes, I think I could use one or two more."

The children then began to scavenge for likely additions to the piece. The only ones I rejected were the ones made from plastic, saying that I only wanted to use "natural materials," a category in which I included wine corks, florist marbles, and bottle caps. At first the children would only hand their contributions to me, not wanting to disturb what I'd created so far, demonstrating incredible respect for my work, reading my cues of quiet artistic focus. One of the children stumbled and accidentally bumped the skateboard, causing the pieces to shift a bit. Everyone froze for a moment, then, without prompting, one of them said, "Don't worry, Teacher Tom, I can put everything right back where it was."

I had not instructed them in how to help me. I had only explained what I was doing. I'd not asked them not to touch it. I'd not forbidden them from pitching in. I'd simply sat there, engaged in making my piece of art and, as part of their play, their freely chosen activity, they had decided to join me, to take on my "tone" and my "focus." 

I then moved away from my artwork under some presence, not going far, but making a point of looking away, of turning my back, of moving on to something else. One of the children said, "We'll take care of it, Teacher Tom." Before long, it wasn't mine any longer, but rather ours, as the kids sat together, first discussing the piece, then, consulting together, making small, precise additions, carefully rearranging bits, rejecting pieces that didn't fit their definition of "natural." For a good fifteen minutes, the children both curated and created their piece of art on that skateboard until finally, inevitably, their flow carried them away to something else.

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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A Green Room Spring Update

With spring fully upon us, I thought it might be time for an update on our "green room."

Last year, at about this time, a University of Washington design/build team completed a green house for us. We have now had a year to experiment with this new addition to our teaching team. She sat relatively fallow last summer as we all dispersed and we hadn't made appropriate plans. In the fall we found ourselves dealing with rats who were interested in what food we did try to grow. Then winter hit us with its cold, short days, but as we approached spring we had figured things out: adding a grow light, purchasing some heated pads to encourage germination, and, most importantly getting the kids more involved. We've found that squirt bottle watering, refilling one's own watering can at the rain barrel, planting new seeds, transplanting, and snacking are the most popular activities.

Now, it's a real growing concern. We still have a lot to learn, especially about rotating crops over to the "grazing garden" on the playground side of the school. And we'll be much better about timing things next year, but we're currently looking at a healthy crop of tomatoes, kale, lettuce, snap peas, pole beans, and nasturtiums. Indeed, we're already on our second crop of kale. 

There are herbs like rosemary, lavender, sage, thyme, mint, chives, and basil.

We spouted radishes, carrots, brussels sprouts, beets, broccoli, zucchini, cucumber, and celery. We're experimenting with jalapeño peppers (the kids' choice: they all wanted to grow them for their dads), artichoke, snow peas, sweet potatoes, and a pumpkin that we transplanted from where it took root in our worm bin.

We are fast developing into a community of garden grazers. We're having trouble keeping leaves on our leafy green things, which is just fine given that we will have replacement plants from the green house ready once those are gone.

This is just the beginning. We still have a lot to learn. My personal short term goal is see just how much we can produce, to fill the green house and its surrounding outdoor beds with so much green it's hard to move, all with food hanging from every branch and stem. I'm shooting for a significant, even overwhelming, autumn bounty when we return at the end of summer. I'd really love to have so much that we can make donations to local food banks.

And I'm looking forward to keeping everyone updated on our progress.

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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