Preschool Literacy

A couple times a week, we have a "journal station" in our 4-5's class. We provide construction paper, recycled printer paper, a stapler, markers or crayons, and a parent-teacher whose job is to take dictation from the children. I wanted to share this as an example of how children who are not yet "reading," are nevertheless literate. Note, for instance, the author/illustrator's use of picture book conventions like spreading illustrations across two pages, the inclusion of a blurb for the back cover, and a clear beginning, middle, and end. He also was clearly considering his audience (classmates) by including "super heroes" (which have been a big part of our classroom dramatic play so far this year), silliness like "rabbit cars" (which he knows will generate laughter), and a reference to the familiar painting of a dragon that lives in our classroom.

"Once there was a monster. A scary monster.

"Then that scary monster went out to go to a really fancy restaurant where only people that were nice would go to. Then the people saw the monster and they said, 'The super heroes should get that monster quick!'

"Then Bat Rabbit got that monster.

"Then Super Rabbit was driving his car. A rabbit car!

"Then Mr. Rabbit's car went in his garage where his parking spot was.

"That's good. Super Rabbit saves the day. The End.

Back cover "blurb": "This is a story about the red dragon in the picture at Woodland Park Preschool."

And here's the dragon he's writing about:

This is what preschool literacy looks like.

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Lying

Sometimes a kid will run ahead of her parents and arrive at school a few seconds ahead of them. When that happens, I often joke, "Hey, did you drive yourself to school today?" Normally, children laugh and let me know that mom is right behind them, but last week one boy paused, looked at me wide-eyed, and said as earnestly as he could, "Yes."

"You drove your own car?"

"Yes."

When other children challenged him, "Kids can't drive cars!" he stuck to his story, "I can drive a car." His mother had been delayed by a conversation on the playground, but when she entered the room, he looked from us to her, then quietly went about washing his hands, not saying another word, although for the rest of the week, when mom wasn't around, he went back to insisting that he could drive a car.

We want our children to be honest, of course, but they all lie at one time or another. In fact, lying is probably a necessary stage of cognitive development:

Lying, it turns out, is actually a sign of something good happening in the developing brain. Dishonesty requires some mental heavy lifting, like figuring out what another person knows and how to use that information to your advantage. Many kids start experimenting with stretching the truth between ages 3 and 4. "In a way, it's almost like they exercise a new ability," (developmental psychologist Victoria) Talwar says. "And part of that is, 'Mommy doesn't know what I just did.' . . . That thought sounds simple, but it's actually quite profound. It means that a child is developing what scientists call theory of mind -- the ability to understand the perspectives of other people and realize that those perspectives are sometimes different.

Now, in my example, my joke had created an easy opportunity for a lie, but you can see that "heavy lifting" in action. The boy recognized that none of us could know how he had gotten to school because we hadn't been there, so told us a story that he felt, I presume, made him look cool. The moment his mother was on the scene, however, he clammed up knowing that she was the only one who could refute him.

Of course, as far as lies go, this was an inconsequential one, so the rest of us treated it like a sort of joke he was telling in response to mine, but sometimes a child's lies are more consequential. For instance, the other day I accidentally "busted" one of our kindergarteners with his pockets full of florist marbles he'd collected on the playground. Although he was clearly attempting to take this community property as his own, he swore up and down that his intent all along was to leave them outside when he went home. Last week, a three-year-old insisted that she hadn't hit a classmate even though I saw it with my own eyes (although she didn't see me see it). And even if we know that these lies are a sign of a normally developing child, we also want to create a culture of honesty.

The best way to to that, of course, is to make sure to point out honesty when you see it and to strive to be truthful yourself because we all know that young children can suss out lies almost as well as adults. But to be honest, lying is a life skill that most of us use every day, even if it is only to tell little "white lies" or lies by omission in the interest of not hurting someone's feelings or to avoid conflict. We might tell our children, "No lying," but what we mean is that we want them to learn the difference between lies meant to hurt others and those we tell to help others. Perhaps both are morally wrong, I'll stipulate to that, but we all do it nevertheless.

When a lie is egregious, I've been known to simply tell a child, for instance, "I don't believe you because I saw you hit her." I strive to not raise my voice, but rather speak calmly as if simply providing the facts. Too often, adults start in with accusatory questions to which they already know the answer, "Did you hit her?" setting the stage for the child to dig in. Much better, I think is to stick with informative statements like, "She said you hit her" or "I saw you hit her," leaving them the space to do their own thinking, and when they do confess to first acknowledge their honesty (even if it comes a little later than we would like) before addressing the hitting.

Lying is annoying and worrisome, but it is a sign of a normally developing child. And while the "theory of mind" is behind their ability to concoct tall tales, we also must understand that it is also what's ultimately behind the ability to empathize with our fellow humans.

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The Old Bangeroo

I use a hand drum as my signal for transitions. I think it was last year, although it might have been the year before, that I started referring to it as "the old bangeroo."

For instance, when it's time to tidy up, I'll say, "I guess it's time for the old bangeroo." Several kids will usually object, joyfully, "It's a drum, Teacher Tom!"

"Well, I call it a bangeroo because I'm going to bang it for clean up time."

Sometimes I say I'm going to bang it so loud that their brains are going to come shooting out of their ears. Sometimes I say I'm going to bang it so loud that their heads are going to pop off of their shoulders, bounce off the ceiling and come down on someone else's body. Sometimes I drop the bangeroo bit and instead pretend it's the "clean up time banjo" or "trumpet" or some other instrument as the children correct me, "It's a drum, Teacher Tom!" Whatever the case, I typically make something of a show of it, one that can go on for several minutes.

I started doing this as just another goofy thing to do, something to make our day a little more fun, but over the years I've come to see that it actually provides a function. Young children are notoriously reluctant about transitions, and I don't blame them, I feel it every Monday morning, but this process, one in which I simply goof around for a few minutes, tends to draw the children together and allows them an opportunity to "prepare" themselves for the impending transition. In fact, as I go on, it's quite common for the children to start demanding that I bang the drum as I go through my schtick, especially as I stretch it out. And for those not drawn in by my show, those who need to finish playing, it lets them know they need to start wrapping things up in a way far more concrete than, say, the classic "five minute warning," which is meaningless to very young kids.

Often, by the time I actually bang the drum, kids are standing over their playthings, poised to go into action, anticipating the starting pistol, so to speak. And they usually make short work of it.

Yesterday, we were playing with our wooden trains. We have a big box of tracks and a big box of trains. I try to discourage the kids from just dumping out the boxes because all those small items quickly get scattered across the entire space, leaving it unusable as a building area, which results in kids mostly just walking on and kicking through the mess. That said, someone almost always has the idea of dumping the boxes. When it happened yesterday, I waited until the dumper had found what he wanted, then uprighted to box and began refilling it, just by way of keeping things tidy.

A girl looked at me with wrinkled eyebrows, "I didn't hear you bang the old bangeroo."

"I didn't."

"Then why are you putting things away?"

"Oh, I'm just getting some of these tracks back in the box so kids don't walk on them. When kids walk on them, they sometimes get broken or people trip and get hurt."

"Oh."

Seconds later, another child, "Teacher Tom, did you bang the old bangeroo?"

"No."

"But you're cleaning up." I repeated my explanation.

Moments later, another, "When did you bang the old bangeroo?"

"I didn't."

Then, without a word, the kids started packing things away, sorting the trains into the train box and the tracks into the track box. I said, "Hey guys, I haven't banged the old bangeroo. It's not clean-up time yet."

And a boy paused long enough to say to me, "Yes it is. You just forgot to bang the old bangeroo."

So I banged it, catching up with them for I am supposed to be their leader.

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Throwing Our List To The Wind

Over the past few weeks we've been reading Frog and Toad stories at the end of each day. Last week we read one called "The List," in which Toad has written a "To Do" list for his day -- Get out of bed, Get dressed, Eat breakfast, and so on. He takes great pleasure in marking off his items as he accomplishes them until the wind blows his list away. When Frog suggests they chase the list, Toad can't because, "Chasing my list not on my list of things to do today." As I read the story, parents were arriving to pick up their kids, so as I came to the end the room, as it always is at the end of the day, was full of adults. More for their benefit than for the kids I said at the close of the story, "And the lesson here is that making lists is a sucker's game. If it's not important enough to remember, it's probably not important enough to bother doing."

On Monday, the class went on its annual field trip to the local fire station. I've been visiting Station #9 twice a year with the kids since we moved to Fremont. It's always a popular excursion, but this year it was extraordinary. The Seattle Fire Department is committed to its community outreach, especially to children, so they've always been a friendly bunch, but this time they pulled out all the stops.

We were warned, as always, that the firefighters were working and that it was possible that they would be called away to a fire at any moment. They sounded the alarm for us (which sounded more like a doorbell) so that we would know what it sounded like and were told where to stand so we wouldn't be in the way or get hurt. Then we got down to the business of clambering on the truck, sitting behind the steering wheel, and checking out the equipment.

Then the alarm sounded. As we adults hustled the kids to the curb, counting heads as we went, a few of the children cried. We positioned ourselves with the intent of waving to the firefighters as they drove off, calmed our fears, and then the alarm stopped. It was a false alarm, an exciting exclamation point right there in the middle of our visit. We poured back into the station where we got to watch one of the firefighters don his full suit, right down to the mask over his face. This is probably the most important part of these visits as far as I'm concerned. Children often hide from firefighters during an emergency, frightened by how they look when fully protected. In fact, one of the kids on this field trip did exactly that in his own home last year. The firefighter knelt and the children were invited to touch him, then to try and knock him over, which they succeeded in doing by working together.

And then, holy cow, we were asked, "Do you want to shoot the fire hose?"

Oh boy, did we! This is only the second time in nearly two decades of fire house field trips that we been permitted to do that. We hooked up to a nearby fire hydrant, then took turns firing the hose at a traffic cone set up as a target. I've never seen children queue up so gladly.

The original "list" for our day was to then head back to school, but it was a nice day and we were so fired up about the fire station that we decided to instead visit the playground adjacent to the BF Day Elementary School where many of the kids will be attending next year. There we met my old friend Henry, a second grader now. As he lead one group of kids in a rowdy chasing/wrestling game, the kind only a bigger kid can manage, the rest of us spun on the merry-go-round, ate snack, and enjoyed the climber. We spotted a kite stuck high in a tree and a group of us tried to find things to throw at it to knock it down.

After awhile, we decided to head back to school, but along our way we found that the Powerhouse was open, the headquarters of the Fremont Arts Council, and home to our community's identifying cultural event -- the Summer Solstice Parade. Once more throwing our list to the wind, we went inside where we found a couple of artists at work, one creating beautiful batik protest banners bearing the words "Water is Life" to be used for various anti-Dakota Access Pipeline protests, which she showed to us, briefly explaining why she thought it is important. A second artist, my friend Maque, the man who made the giant windmill sculpture that sits in the bullseye of our playground, gave us a tour of the colorful parade artwork that is stored along the walls and in the rafters of the building -- giant elephants and dogs, paper mache masks and feathered head dresses, massive lanterns and puppets -- then brought out a small model of our local, beloved Troll sculpture on wheels that the children took turns pulling around the concrete floor.

When we finally arrived back at school, we had just enough time to sit together to read another Frog and Toad story, the end to our exciting, relevant, spot-on adventure we had only because we threw our list to the wind.

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Leaders And Followers

When you find a lone nut doing something great, have the guts to be the first person to stand up and join in.     ~Derek Sivers

Back in our pre-preschool days, years before I ever considered becoming a teacher of any kind, my daughter Josephine and I used to attend a Gymboree class once a week. It was essentially an open gym with lots of mats and climbing apparatuses appropriate for the under 2 set, followed by a robust circle time lead by a woman whose name I've forgotten, but whose energy and enthusiasm lives on in me almost every day.

It was never explicitly stated whether or not the adults were expected to join in the singing and group large motor activities, but after a couple sessions it was clear to me that the parents who sat and watched this circle time tended to have the children who sat and watched, whereas those of us who jumped up and down and wiggled our fannies along with the teacher had children who participated.

Those who know me today may find it hard to believe, but overcoming the sense that I would look like a great big oafish fool was a major challenge for me, one only made possible by what I considered to be the best interests of my child. I was impressed by this Gymboree teacher, an adult woman, no longer young, who threw herself into this activity without any apparent shame or reservation. So while carefully avoiding eye contact with any of the moms in the room (and they were all moms in those days) I threw myself into it, following her lead the way I wanted Josephine to do it. But the Gymboree teacher forced her eye contact on me, just like I was one of the kids, welcoming me with a smile, drawing me into the center of this movement of children and parents, swinging our hips and chanting things like, "Wishy washy, wishy washy, wishy washy, weeeeeee!"

It's just one kid sitting on the giant tube.

The first follower is quickly followed by the second.

And now we have a movement!

Most of us, if pressed, would admit to wishing leadership skills on our child, and we should, I think. The ability to lead with confidence is a relatively rare and vital talent. What we don't say aloud, however, but what is far more important throughout most of our lives is acquiring "followship" skills. It's hard to even write that because, of course, no one wants to raise their child to be a mere follower. The word connotes mindless devotion, giving into peer pressure, being a lamb lead to slaughter. We want strong children who know their own minds, who can say, No!" when it doesn't feel right, who can blaze their own trail, and all of those things are true, but what is also true is that we spend much more of our lives as followers than leaders, if only because it's exhausting to always be at the head of the parade.

There is great power in following, more than is generally credited. The ability to unselfishly look at what someone else is doing and, with an open mind, say to yourself, That looks great. I want to do it too! is really the foundation upon which all meaningful human activity is built.  Below is a video created by Derek Sivers, founder of Muckworks and Now Now Now. I've watched this video many times over the past few years. It always strikes me that as much as we claim to value leadership, we spend most of our time with young children helping them learn to contribute as followers in a proper and meaningful way. In our leadership roles as teachers we are at our best we understand that the children following us are our equals. And if we really watch what's going on in our classrooms, the rest of the kids are, more often than not, following the other children, not us the teachers.

When we fail as teachers, and we all do, I think it's often because what we are doing simply isn't great enough or instructional enough to attract that first follower. But when we succeed, once we've inspired that first follower, watch out!

But just watch the video, it says it much better than I can:

"The first follower transformed the lone nut into a leader. The best way to make a movement is to be the first follower and show others how to follow." As the tipping point is past in this video and all of those people who were once uncomfortably, perhaps mockingly, watching a lone hippie dancer begin to leap to their feet and rush to be part of his movement, it moves me almost to tears. What a powerful thing we become when we are able to move beyond our self-consciousness, our sense of shame, and leap into something new, even if, this time, it's only because we feel hidden in the larger group. Maybe next time, we'll be the first follower.

Indeed, as teachers we do spend most of our time helping our charges learn followship skills. And that's as it should be because they, like all of us, will spend most of our lives not leading, but making judgments about who and what to follow, then following them, not just because others are following, but because they see a lone nut doing something great and have the courage to stand up and join in.

That's why we must, as much as possible, give kids a choice about whether or not, and when, to follow. Compelling children only teaches obedience to leaders, a dangerous thing. But choice in the classroom gives them the opportunity to really practice how to follow, to learn to think for themselves, to not follow blindly, but rather with the idea of expanding the great thing that lone nut is doing.

And when we're the lone nut, we'll know how to treat our followers.

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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Hard, Messy, Emotional Work

We don't have a huge set of big wooden blocks, which is okay because we don't really have enough space for more and besides, if the kids are going to play with them, they generally need to find a way to play with them together, which is what our school is all about.

The dramatic play game of the year so far in our 4-5's class has been "super heroes." It's mostly boys, but they haven't been particularly exclusionary, with several of the girls regularly joining them, often making up their own hero names like "Super Cat" due to the lack of female characters of the type in our popular culture. This has in turn inspired some of the boys to make up their own hero names like "Super Dog" and "Falcon," along with their own super powers. And although there have been a few instances of someone declaring, "We already have enough super heroes," in an attempt to close the door behind them, most of the time, the prerequisite for joining the play is to simply declare yourself a super hero, pick a super hero name, and then hang around with them boasting about your great might, creating hideouts, and bickering over nuance.

Recently, however, a break-away group has been playing, alternatively, Paw Patrol and Pokemon, which looks to me like essentially the same game with new characters. Last week, some boys playing Paw Patrol used all of the big wooden blocks to create their "house," complete with beds and blankets. A girl who is often right in the middle of the super hero play wanted to join them, but when they asked, "Who are you?" she objected to being a Paw Patrol character at all. Indeed, she wanted to play with them and with the blocks they were using, but the rub was that she didn't want to play their game.

After some back and forth during which the Paw Patrol kids tried to find a way for her to be included, they offered her a few of their blocks to play with on her own, then went back to the game.

She arranged her blocks, then sat on them, glaring at the boys. They ignored her. I was sitting nearby watching as her face slowly dissolved from one of anger to tears. An adult tried to console her, but was more or less told to back off. I waited a few minutes, then sat on the floor beside her, saying, "You're crying."

She answered, "I need more blocks." I nodded. She added, "They have all the blocks."

I replied, "They are using most of the blocks and you have a few of the blocks."

"They won't give me any more blocks."

I asked, "Have you asked them for more blocks?"

Wiping at her tears she shook her head, "No."

"They probably don't know you want more blocks."

She called out, "Can I have some more blocks?"

The boys stopped playing briefly, one of them saying, "We're using them!" then another added, "You can have them when we're done," which is our classroom mantra around "sharing."

She went back to crying, looking at me as if to say, See?

I said, "They said you can use them when they're done . . . Earlier I heard them say you could play Paw Patrol with them."

"I don't want to play Paw Patrol. I just want to build."

I sat with her as the boys leapt and laughed and lurched. I pointed out that there was a small building set that wasn't being used in another part of the room, but she rejected that, saying, "I want to build with these blocks."

I nodded, saying, "I guess we'll just have to wait until they're done." That made her cry some more.

This is hard stuff we're working on here in preschool. And, for the most part, that's pretty much all we do at Woodland Park: figuring out how to get along with the other people. Most days aren't so hard, but there are moments in every day when things don't go the way we want or expect them to and then, on top of getting along with the other people, there are our own emotions with which we must deal. Academic types call it something like "social-emotional functioning," but I think of it as the work of creating a community.

It's a tragedy that policymakers are pushing more and more "academics" into the early years because it's getting in the way of this very real, very important work the children need to do if they are going to lead satisfying, successful lives. In our ignorant fearfulness about Johnny "falling behind" we are increasingly neglecting what the research tells us about early learning. From a CNN.com story about a recently published study conducted by researchers from Penn State and Duke Universities:

Teachers evaluated the kids based on factors such as whether they listened to others, shared materials, resolved problems with their peers and were helpful. Each student was then given an overall score to rate their positive skills and behavior, with zero representing the lowest level and four for students who demonstrated the highest level of social skill and behavior . . . Researchers then analyzed what happened to the children in young adulthood, taking a look at whether they completed high school and college and held a full-time job, and whether they had any criminal justice, substance abuse or mental problems . . . For every one-point increase in a child's social competency score in kindergarten, they were twice as likely to obtain a college degree and 46% more likely to have a full-time job by age 25 . . . For every one-point decrease in a child's social skill score in kindergarten, he or she had a 67% higher chance of having been arrested in early adulthood, a 52% higher rate of binge drinking and an 82% higher chance of being in or on a waiting list for public housing.

Here is a link to the actual study. And this is far from the only research that has produced these and similar results, just the most recent one.

If our goal is well-adjusted, "successful" citizens, we know what we need to do. In the early years, it isn't about reading or math. It's not about learning to sit in desks or filling out work sheets or queuing up for this or that. If we are really committed to our children, we will recognize that their futures are not dependent upon any of that stuff, but rather this really hard, messy, emotional work we do every day as we play with our fellow citizens.

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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Without Wrecking The Fun

When our school moved into its current location, it came with a swing set. It was about this time that playgrounds around the country were removing their old sets over safety concerns and there was some talk about whether or not we should keep it, but it didn't take much research on our part to realize that there was little more than "catastrophic thinking" behind the removal trend. Like so many things related to children and education, adults had allowed themselves to envision the worst case scenario, freaked out about it, then sought to "protect" kids from their imaginations.

We've been living with our swing set now for six years. There have been a few minor bumps and bruises, of course. They're children at play after all and most things they do can result in bumps and bruises. Indeed, that's one of the primary functions of childhood play: to give children an opportunity to learn, through experience, how to keep themselves safe, and part of that learning comes in the form of bumps and bruises.

We've never felt a need to create any particular rules around the swing set, even as we were tempted during our early years of living with it. We saw that the children figure out very quickly that they needed to be on their toes when playing around the swings, especially if one of the big kids who has learned to "pump" is on there.

A couple years ago, we added our pallet swing. This is, as you can tell from the pictures, a small, well-built shipping pallet that we've hung from one end of the swing set bar. I'd intended for it to be a temporary installation, one that lived there for a few months, to be replaced later by a tire swing or a rope swing or whatever else we concocted, but it has been so popular that it never came down.

Earlier this year, for the first time, one of the girls in our 3's class was knocked down by the pallet swing. She cried, but was uninjured. It was such a minor incident that it didn't rise to the level of adult discussion, but it apparently made an impact on the kids. They still use the pallet swing every day, but most of the time now, they take turns pushing one another, swinging it back and forth, but without actually letting go of the pallet, keeping it under control at all times and pretty much assuring that no one gets bumped. Interestingly, our older kids, while generally bolder in their play, often adopt this method for using the pallet swing as well, especially when there are more than a couple kids wanting to play there. I've never heard any of the kids discussing it other than to say, "I'll push." They just do it, I guess, because it makes sense.

The children innovated this all on their own, devising a common sense safety measure without any particular fuss or muss. This is how children, when allowed to figure out the world on their own, keep themselves and others safe without also wrecking the fun, which is what adults too often do when they get involved with their catastrophic thinking.

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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