What Is She Learning?

I was recently asked how I go about explaining to skeptical parents what their child is learning as she plays. It's a common enough question, one I don't need to address very often in my day-to-day life as a teacher, largely because the Woodland Park Cooperative School's reputation as a play-based school precedes it, mostly only attracting families who are seeking what we have to offer -- the opportunity for their children to play with other kids in a safe enough, loving, interesting environment, -- so I don't often have to deal with skeptics. The families of the children I teach tend to view play as a pure good, like love, one that needs no other supporting evidence.

When I see children on the floor, say, building with blocks, I know they are learning, because that's what play is: it's children setting about asking and answering their own questions. Can I stack this block atop that one? Can I make it even higher? Add a roof? Create a room? A zoo? Can I persuade this other person to join me in my vision? Can I join them in theirs? They aren't saying these things aloud or even in their heads, but it's quite clear that when humans play, when we freely choose an activity, that is what we are doing, testing the world, performing experiments, seeking answers to questions we ourselves pose. Play is how our instinct to become educated manifests itself, a concept that is supported by more than a century of research and observation performed by the brightest names in education, from Dewey and Piaget to Montessori and Vygotsky.

But as to the question of "what" children are learning at any given moment, the only one who knows that is person who is playing, and the moment we interrupt them to ask, the moment we test them, we forever change it. It's version of what in physics is called the "observer effect." As humans play, they are unconsciously asking and answering questions as they emerge, pursuing trains of thought, playing with variables, theorizing, making connections between one thing and another. The moment another person steps in with his own questions, that pursuit stops, and when the questioner is in a position of authority, like a teacher or parent, those questions become an imperative. The child must end their learning to explain it, to prove it, to translate it, and to invariably narrow it down to a sentence or two that can only, at best, provide a glimpse of a glimpse of what is actually being learned.

Experienced play-based teachers know this, of course. We tend rather to stand back and instead of testing the children we attempt to closely observe, then make educated guesses about what we imagine that child is learning. When they attempt to stack one block atop another, for instance, we might guess they are learning about balance. When the building falls we might surmise they are learning about gravity. When they invite another child to play with them, we say they are learning important social or emotional skills. But at bottom, it's all just guesswork and imagination, and even if we are correct at one level, we are invariably wrong about much of it, both specifically and through omission.

The great truth is that no one can ever know what another person is learning unless they directly tell us of their own accord: "Guess what I learned? . . ." And this is especially true of young children who likely don't even have the vocabulary or experience to put their insights into words capable of communicating the depth and texture of their moments of Eureka!

I rarely attempt to answer the question of what a child is learning at any given moment, even as I spend much of my day wondering about it. I can say, when asked, "I see her building with blocks," "I see her attempting to balance one atop another," "I see her building falling down," those are the things I know to be true; observable facts. But to suggest that I can know with any precision what she is learning is to ask me to read another person's mind. There is no test capable of answering that and our guesses are simply that, guesses, and they can only get at a very narrow sliver of truth.

But I do know my fellow humans are learning when they play and that has to be enough.

I've just published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

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One Foot Forever In Each Place

For the past month or so, I've not slept more than two nights in the same place as I've travelled around the great nation of Australia while speaking with teachers and parents at my stops along the way. I've had some memorable adventures, seen some sights, gotten lost a few times, and had the opportunity to play with some cool people. I've been to five of the six states and one of the two mainland territories, traveled thousands of miles by plane, train, and automobile, been frozen by the cold and made sweaty by the heat. No two days have been alike, with no regular schedule to guide me, and few touchstones of normalcy. There have been moments of great stress, of great joy, of deep connection, and of oppressive loneliness, sometimes all in a single day.

I'm exhausted right now, sitting on yet another hotel room bed writing this morning's blog post as I've done for the past few weeks. I'm looking forward to sleeping in my own bed again, to reuniting with my wife, and to returning to the routines of home and school, but there's a part of me that's sad to see it come to an end. There's something to be said for living out of a backpack, not really knowing what each day will bring. It's been a chance to learn new things about myself, things that would have remained unlearned were I to have just continued along my beloved and familiar track. Likewise, I've also learned new things about the world and the people I've found out here beyond my little bubble back home.

This is why we travel, of course: it's broadening. I write here often about the things I would change about our educational system were I in charge, but if I were given the power over just one thing, it would be to require all of us to travel, not just for a week or two, but extensively, exhaustively, to spend a month or months or even a year or years living abroad. As a child our family spent four years in Athens, Greece and as an adult I lived a similar number of years with my wife in northern Germany. I've spent months here in Australia and have had the opportunity to travel through much of Europe as well as Morocco, China, Canada, Mexico, and New Zealand. Nothing changes a person like travel. Nothing causes your old prejudices to fall away like spending time among people who speak, eat, pray, and generally just live in ways unlike those to which we are accustomed.

Each time I travel, I learn. Each time I travel I see my own life more clearly. Each time I travel I return simultaneously dissatisfied and grateful for the life I live back home. In the past couple years I've waved goodbye to Woodland Park families who have flown off for new lives in Germany, Italy, Japan, and other places around the globe. Those children and their families will never be the same. They are now citizens of both America and the world. When they return they will see their home as both better than they remembered and worse by comparison. It's in the nature of travel to leave the traveler standing forever astride the globe with a foot still planted in the lands she's left behind.

When I finally board the plane that will take me back home, I will, as always, feel a pull in two directions which is the blessing and curse of travel. But I can say that I've confirmed once more that my life in Seattle is the best life for me, although I can now also see that maybe some of my old routines, habits and attitudes, things to which I've clung, are in fact holding me back.

I am not necessarily a happy traveler, but as always, I'm happy I have traveled. And as delighted as I am to be soon winging my way home, I'm delighted to know that I will return again in a year's time, one foot forever in each place.

I've just published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

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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Now He Does Know

Kids were pumping water, creating a stream through the sand. As they played another group decided to build three bridges over it, side-by-side, using a plank, the homemade ladder, and a log.

Later I was sitting in our sandpit boat pretending to row when one of the boys who had been a bridge builder joined me. He wanted a turn rowing so I scooted over. After a few strokes, he stopped and lay the end of the oar atop an old, heavy, wooden balance beam that had wound up, over the course of our play, alongside the boat.

"This could be a bridge."

I thought he meant that we could drag the balance beam up to where the other bridges were. It's been used that way before, but one kid can't manage it all alone. I said, "It's heavy. You'll probably need help."

He leapt from the boat, grabbed the business end of the oar and wrestled it on top of the balance beam. Holding it in place he, said, "See? A bridge. I didn't need help."

"Oh, you meant that the oar could be a bridge."

"Yes."

"I thought you meant you wanted to drag the balance beam up there." He looked at me blankly, so I fell back on an informative statement, "You made a bridge without help."

At the time, I didn't even notice the other boy performing his own experiments with a rope.

When he released his end of the bridge, however, the oar teetered in its oarlock raising it like a drawbridge. This was clearly not what he had in mind. He lowered the oar back into place, but when he let go he got the same result. After several minutes of wrangling the oar, trying to find a way to keep it in place as a bridge connecting the boat to the balance beam, he finally tucked it under the balance beam, which held it in place.

He said, "There," maybe to me, maybe to himself, then clambered back aboard with the apparent intent to now cross his footbridge, although once standing on the precipice, he stopped.

I said, "That's a pretty narrow bridge. You'll have to balance."

He put a foot carefully on the oar, slowly applying weight, testing himself and his construction before committing himself. Good thing too, because his "bridge" was really a lever, which lifted the balance beam in response to his weight. He studied the phenomenon with his foot, then switched to using his hands, raising the balance beam up and down.

I said, "You made a lever," using the vocabulary word, in context, just in case he didn't know it.

He said, "It's a lever."

After raising and lowering the balance beam several times, he jumped from the boat and attempted to lift the balance beam with his hands, unaided by the simple machine he'd created, managing to hoist it a few inches off the ground. "It's heavy."

Back in the boat he used the lever a few more times. "It's not so heavy with the lever."

I said, "That's the cool thing about levers."

He replied, "I know."

And now now he does know. Loose parts, adults loitering with intent, and the time and space to play: that's how it works.

I've just published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

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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Bearing Burdens

As we disembarked from the rear door of our plane in Perth and walked across the tarmac, one of my fellow passengers caught my eye. I'd noticed him prior to boarding as well, an aboriginal man, slender, loose-limbed, probably about my age with a shock of thick white hair. There was something distinguished about him, something beyond mere description, perhaps it was in how he moved, not gracefully exactly, but easily, lightly. And then it hit me: the guy had no hand luggage. The rest of us were bearing at least one burden, most of us two, but here was this man, just walking away from a three hour flight with nothing but the clothes on his back.

I pride myself on traveling light. The last time I was in Australia I managed it with but a single backpack for five full weeks. On this trip, however, I've added not only a computer bag, but also a large hard-sided piece of check-in luggage to transport a stash of my new book in case people want to purchase a signed copy along the way. It's one of the unexpected burdens of being an author. So I'm traveling "heavy" this time around, but I'm not the only one. I watched this fellow with envy as he swung his arms freely, taking long easy strides, pivoting his head from side-to-side to take in his world, rather than bending to the task of carrying as rest of us were.

I followed in his easy-going wake through the terminal and down to baggage claim where I assumed his care-free day was over, but as the rest of us stopped to wait for the carousel to start up, he walked right past without breaking stride, swinging those arms and taking those strides, right out the door and into the world, free as a bird. As free as any animal for that matter other than humans.

I've heard scientists propose that it's our big brains or opposable thumbs or ability to use tools that sets us apart, or even above, the rest of the animal kingdom, but what about this propensity to carry burdens? For the past couple days as I've played tourist in and around Perth, I've looked for others like the man I spied at the airport, people who are not bearing something, and it is indeed quite a rare sight, which is why I suppose he stood out to me: a modern human going about the world with nothing to weigh him down. Indeed, I've spotted a few of my fellow humans striding along with their backs, shoulders, and hands unoccupied, mostly shopkeepers and clerks on lunch breaks, but they are few and far between. The only general category of mankind that seems to share the non-burden bearing lot of the rest of the animal kingdom is young children, whose adults are therefore often then burdened with extra baggage, as if bearing it for them by proxy until the day they must assume it for themselves.

It's impossible to not reflect on this phenomenon as metaphor; to dwell on the mental, emotional and spiritual burdens we all bear; to muse upon the contrast between unwanted or unnecessary burdens and those we take on willingly or out of a noble sense of responsibility; to ponder the tolls and rewards of such burdens and the rightness or wrongness of the toil. I've done that, but mostly I've just wondered about the real, physical burdens that virtually every single one of us carry with us from place to place on our journeys through the world and throughout our lives. We put them down at our destinations, or sometimes just to rest our arms and backs, but we pick them up again, carrying with us the stuff we might need or can't do without or find we must transport from here to there.

And then there is this man from the airport. I've had moments like the one he was having, although I've come to hold him in my head as a sort of special human, an icon, one of those who has figured out how to live his life without bearing burdens from place to place, like a bird or like a child. I want to be more like that more of the time. Yesterday, I limited myself to only those things that fit in my pockets: wallet, keys, and phone. I walked about Perth swinging my arms and taking long easy strides, pivoting my head from side-to-side to take in my world. I did feel free, or at least freer, than I've felt in awhile.

Hey friends! I'm currently in Australia where I'm appearing in venues around the country. I'd love to meet you! A few of the events are sold out, but there is still room in others. If you're interested, click here for details about my "tour."

Also . . .

I've just published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

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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Brave

We live in Seattle, close to some of the best skiing in the world, so when our daughter Josephine was about three we figured we ought to introduce her to our area's favorite winter sport. We started with the cross country brand and had a lot of fun on that first outing on a flat, powdery beginner's track. The next time we went, we figured we'd up our game with something a little more challenging. Right out of the gate Josephine hit a short hill, fell, cried and made it abundantly clear that she would never ski again. No amount of parental persuasion could get her back up on those skies.

Indeed, she never showed a propensity toward being a daredevil, remaining forever cautious about physical risk despite my best (and I now know misguided) attempts to urge her otherwise. There was the time a group of fathers took our daughters to Camp Orkilla with their "giant swing" that hangs kids (and willing adults) some 30 feet up in the air from the branches of Douglas Firs. Sure, several of the girls backed out, usually in tears of shame, but Josephine, knowing herself by now, happily said, "nope," although she stood at the front as she cheered on her friends. She never felt comfortable on her bicycle even if she did once manage a three mile ride before declaring at the end, "Now I've done that, but I'm not doing it again." After one particularly agonizing hour during which she kept bringing herself to the edge of attempting a sled run, summoning up the courage to almost let herself go again and again before finally backing out altogether, she said to me, shaking her head, "I just don't like the feeling of being out of control."

It was sometimes frustrating for me. I'd never been a full-on daredevil, but I'd enjoyed my time on skies and bikes and sleds, and wanted my girl to experience those things as well. Sometimes I let that frustration get to me. During one of those moments, I used the word "brave" in my attempt to be persuasive, to which she replied, "I am brave! I get in front of audiences and sing and act!" That stopped me right then and forever.

Sometimes the respective temperaments of parents and their children don't match up. I had a prejudice in favor a narrow definition of bravery, one I'd learned as a boy, having admired my physical risk-taking peers and attempted to imitate them. I had looked around at my own child's cohort of friends, those who climbed to high places and ran pell-mell down steep hills, and found my own child lacking. Life can be hard for the timid and, like all parents, I didn't want life to be any harder for my girl than it had to be. But in that moment, she made me see my prejudice for what it was.

I had always known her to be outgoing with other children, but now when I watched her make new friends, include others, persuade them, and otherwise show an innate mastery of her social world, I saw not just a precocious child, but a brave one. What I'd not understood, being of a different natural temperament, was that this was her version of climbing to high places or running pell-mell down steep hills. Indeed, in surveys about "fears" Americans typically place "speaking in front of an audience" at the top, often ahead of death itself, but this is the type of risky behavior to which she was drawn. From the time she was in preschool, she took every opportunity to stand before an audience and perform for them, right up to today where she is studying theater at her university.

And I also know that each time she does it she's nervous. Nevertheless, like every daredevil, she puts that fear on her shoulder, trusts in herself, and gives it her best, which is, in the end, the definition of bravery.

Hey friends! I'm currently in Australia where I'm appearing in venues around the country. I'd love to meet you! A few of the events are sold out, but there is still room in others. If you're interested, click here for details about my "tour."

Also . . .

I've just published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

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 Bit Of Space And Time For Her To Do It Her Way

One of the special features of our outdoor classroom is what we call the concrete slide, a slab poured on a steep slope as part of erosion control efforts that also includes several large lilacs. I've written about it before, telling the story of how we started our lives here some three years ago actually banning the children from playing there, such were our fears that they would kill themselves on it.

It took us a month or so to pull ourselves together, and after quite a bit of consultation, came up with a solution that we felt mitigated the most extreme hazards without robbing the concrete slide of its challenge and thrill. Today, kids run up and down it all day, treating it, in combination with the lilacs, as a sort of fort or climber or just a place apart. Whereas I once habitually positioned a parent-teacher nearby to warn of danger, I now find I need only instruct adults on one thing: Don't help children get to the top of the concrete slide.

This, of course, should be the adult role anywhere children play. If a child is incapable of getting places on her own, then she simply should not be up there. And while children still occasionally pick up raspberries and bruises on the concrete slide, our simple mitigations along with this lack of adult assistance has rendered it no more risky than any other square inch of our space. Indeed, I would reckon that children are a bit safer playing there given the level of concentration it takes to gain and maintain your place. Some of the four and five year olds basically live up there, interacting with the slope and the lilac branches like the seasoned experts they are. 

By the same token, we rarely find two-year-olds up there. It's not that they don't sometimes try, but the grade is quite steep, even for the most competent of them, and the alternative of climbing around from the side, while less steep, is a tangle of roots and rocks that require a bit of strategy. No, most of our youngest children challenge themselves at their own pace, perhaps struggling up a few feet before giving it up for another day. That's our greatest safety mitigation, getting out of the way and letting the children explore this unique feature at their own pace, using their own judgement.

That's not to say that our youngest children don't sometimes make their way up there. In fact, not long ago two of them did.

I was sitting at the bottom chatting with a crowd of fairly rowdy boys who had tied ropes to the top and were using them to climb up and down. They were swinging and jumping and running and climbing, demonstrating not only physical competency, but also a growing mastery of the fine art of playing on the concrete slide, with others, in a way that acknowledges that no one wants to fall, that we're all in this together. This is the kind of thing kids simply can't learn with adults forever cautioning them.

Through that tangle-town of legs, I noticed a very little girl carefully making her way along the back of the lilacs, using hands and feet to pick her way to the top. I wondered as I watched her how she would feel when she got up there, looking down that hard, steep slope, amidst all those larger, faster moving,  louder, more capable bodies. She inched her way along the top ridge, gripping the rope we installed up there for that purpose, her other hand clutching the chain link fence behind her. I half expected she would need me to rescue her.

When she got to a relatively clear spot she stood looking at the slope beneath her, then, apparently making up her mind, she cautiously fell into a squat, then settled onto her bottom. She sat there for quite some time, then, in the midst of a mini-maelstrom, studied that slope before rolling over onto her belly, feet downward. 

The older children didn't exactly acknowledge her, but they also didn't jostle or impede her either as she lay there right in the middle of their games. I swear we could all see a sort of protective bubble around her, an unspoken acknowledgement that this little girl was trying something for the first time, a moment we all wanted to honor, not with the typical warnings or rah-rah encouragements, but rather with a bit of space and time for her to do it her way.

Slowly she inched her way down. We call it a slide, but it isn't particularly slippery. I saw her shirt ball up, exposing her belly to the bare concrete. I imagine it hurt, but she didn't stop. When she finally got to the bottom she stood up, wiped her belly, pulled down her shirt and without a sound, moved on to other things.

Moments later, another young child, a boy, made his way to the top. This time, his older brother saw him as he sat there contemplating the challenge below. Sitting beside him and taking his hand, the siblings went together, going faster than the younger boy anticipated. Right at the bottom he lost control and spun around, landing on his face in the sand. I expected him to come up in tears, and he did show a face screwed up for a moment in pain. He looked at me, then held up his hands, which were covered in sand.

I said, "You can wipe them off on your pants."

"I can't do that."

"You can wipe them off on my pants."

He started to say, "I can't . . ." then smiled and came over to me, where he gently brushed the sand away. Then he too moved on to other things.

Hey friends! I'm currently in Australia where I'm appearing in venues around the country. I'd love to meet you! A few of the events are sold out, but there is still room in others. If you're interested, click here for details about my "tour."

Also . . .

I've just published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

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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"Hey, I'm Using That"

I knelt at the sensory table amongst the children and began fiddling with a small toy that I'd found there. It was an old broken thing, nothing of value, something the kids had spent the morning ignoring. I said something innocuous like, "I have this thing," or "I've been looking for this," and within seconds a four-year-old reached out to snatch it from my hand for her own particular use. I said, "Hey, I'm using that. If you want it, you can ask me for it or wait until I'm finished."

With my, "Hey," her hand snapped back almost as if it had touched a flame, followed by the words, "Can I have it?" I monkeyed around with it for a moment longer, then said, "Sure, here you go. I almost always give people things when they ask me."

It was an exchange I would not have had when I first began teaching. In fact, I'd have likely just let the child take the item without comment because, after all, that's what adults do in a child's place like a play-based classroom. And that's likely what I would still do in a classroom of two-year-olds, at least at the beginning of the school year. After all, the give-and-take game is one of the earliest ones babies learn, a first step into cooperative play, a way of communicating, interacting, turn-taking, and yes, one could even call it sharing. It's developmental and normal and every parent plays it with their young child. Babies sometimes even do it with one another, and when adults can avoid riding to the rescue bearing their banner "grown-up justice," it rarely leads to tears, because those most liable to snatch an item from the hand of another are also the ones most likely to then give it back as they explore the cycle of give-and-take that characterizes most human interactions.

But sometime during the two-year-old year, the snatching, rather than leading to a cooperative game, begins to increasingly tend toward conflict, which also characterizes human interactions, and that's when I begin to role model an appropriate response, which I interpret as, "Hey, I'm using that." At least that's the way I've generally heard children skilled at play say it, so I'm just echoing them, using the natural words of the playground, albeit perhaps stripped of the emotional energy. Indeed, I strive to convey my words in a matter-of-fact manner, following on with a clear description of the conditions under which that child can have the desired object: either by asking me for it or by waiting until I'm finished.

"No taking things" is generally among the first agreements our three-year-olds make as they begin the process of developing their own classroom rules. It's up for them, it's happened to them, and they don't like it. Past a certain age, no one does. By the same token, the moment something is in the hands of another it becomes more attractive and our natural instinct is to want to hold it in our own. Balancing those competing urges is one of the things we all must learn if we are to get along with our fellow humans.

Hey friends! I'm currently in Australia where I'm appearing in venues around the country. I'd love to meet you! A few of the events are sold out, but there is still room in others. If you're interested, click here for details about my "tour."

Also . . .

I've just published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

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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