We are Plural

Cry contagion, or contagious crying, amongst human infants is a well documented phenomenon, one that anyone who has worked with groups of young people has learned about first hand. One infant's crying triggers nearby infants, especially during their first year of life.

This response tends to be much weaker when babies hear recordings of their own crying or other loud sounds. It seems to be specific to the cries of other human babies. Researchers don't think this response is mere imitation, but rather a display of emotional resonance, a manifestation of the fact that our nervous systems are inherently interconnected at a level beyond any previous relationship or even awareness of the other individuals. As humans mature, this connection transforms into the empathy and compassion that drives us to help one another, which is how our species has always moved forward.

In other words, we are born aware at a basic level that we're part of something greater than what is typically thought of as our individual selves. 

At the same time, it's estimated that only about half the cells in our body actually contain human DNA. The rest "our" body is made up of the bacteria and other microbes that are essential to digestion, immune health, and other functions. As Rebecca Solnit puts it, this means we aren't "singular, each of us, but plural, a cooperative community."

Of course, we have been taught to perceive ourselves as individuals, but in everything we do, there is an entire civilization, both within our "selves" and without, with which we are inextricably intertwined

We are born enmeshed in our world, yet it seems we go out of our way to deny this. Our schools, for instance, tend to be set up as competitive arenas in which children are ranked, divided, and scolded to keep their eyes on their own work. Even "cooperative" activities result in individual grades.

The "genius" of play-based learning is that it's part and parcel of a cooperative community, one in which "success" isn't judged by an authoritative adult, but rather by how well the play sustains itself. In other words, the reward is that the game continues, moving from one thing to another as individuals adjust, adapt, compromise and negotiate. Too often adults show up in the context of play as the killjoys, as the ones who scuttle the ebb and flow the games, often intervening just when it was "getting good." 

When we allow ourselves to step back, to observe, and to intervene only when necessary, we find ourselves in a natural world in which cooperation and connection, not competition, stands at the center. A place where "we" is greater than "me"; where we are plural. That is, and always has been, the glory of our species.

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Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in ways that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

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!

Playing at the End of Summer

For a time, the children gathered together around the workbench where they made things with junk using glue guns. Others chose to create using construction paper, tape, and staplers. They talked quietly amongst themselves as they worked, sharing tools and ideas as they went.

After a while, in ones and twos, they declared their projects complete and began to move away into the rest of the playground. Someone began to work the handle on the cast iron pump and the flow of water attracted the children, who took up shovels to direct the flow of the water. There was talk of creating a lake that was deep enough to float the old row boat that has rested in the sandpit for over a decade. They organized themselves.

It was a warm, breezy end of summer day. I tried not to think of all those poor children who were already back school. It's impossible not to think of it as an outright robbery. For me, summer belongs to children. Only a self-important killjoy would take that away. I was grateful to live in a place that at least respects childhood enough to give them a proper summer. 

I was sitting with a mother whose oldest daughter just completed her first year of public school kindergarten. As we watched the children from afar she sighed. Her children had been part of Woodland Park for the past five years, a place where the seasons change, but the spirit of summer feeds the entire year. She said, "Kindergarten was great, but it made me doubt myself. When we're here I know my kids are doing the right thing." 

No one ever needs "desk time" more than they need this. 

Earlier in the week, I performed a little slight-of-hand for the kids. Some of them figured out how I did it, which lead to a conversation about magic that has stretched out over hours and days. Some of them believe in magic, others think it's all slight-of-hand. We've wondered about unicorns and tooth fairies. We had a long conversation about dragons. We discussed the fire-breathing kind, but also the metaphorical ones that exist in Chinese mythology: the creative dragon that flows through our minds as we make art, or the water dragon that exists in the flow of water coming from the pump, or the fire dragon that makes the sun so hot. One group of siblings told us they were taking a weekend drive up onto the mountain dragon's back where there would still be snow even in the summer. And then there was the heavenly dragon, who is so large and powerful that its entire body is made of pearls of wisdom and other dragons.

Some of us danced together. Some of us danced while hanging upside down by our knees.

Summer, childhood, where there is no such thing as falling behind. The dragon myths are uplifting, but the one about falling behind is crushing our children and crushing our families. Indeed, it's not even a myth, but rather one of those dark fairytales designed to frighten us into "proper" behavior. I've heard of teachers being celebrated for giving children short breaks to dance at their desks, a crowd control technique that empties dance of its joy and freedom. Indeed, it's not even dance.

I recently had lunch with a friend who teaches in the public schools. She's always been a ball-of-fire, aware of the flaws in our educational system, but convinced that she, at least for the children in her life, could overcome them. This time she told me, "I no longer think I can change the world. I'm not even sure I can change the world for a single child." She had hoped that the pandemic would have opened people's eyes to what we are doing to children in the name of "desk time" and the fear of falling behind, but, as she said, "Everyone is just rushed to get right back to the crap." 

Against this background, I watched these children play in their natural habitat. I took several deep breaths, allowing myself to join them in this genuine moment of summer, of childhood, without adults breathing down their necks, without having to get career and college ready, without worry over the myth of falling behind. This is what young children should be doing: creating, digging, splashing, talking about dragons, and dancing, not in a rush, but in the warmth of a lazy mid-summer day.

******

Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in ways that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

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!

"In This Light and Shadow, Monsters Arise

The old world is dying. The new one is slow in appearing. In this light and shadow, monsters arise. ~Fiamma Montezemolo

May you live in interesting times. It's an Ancient Chinese curse. Likewise it's a blessing, in the same sense that "May all your dreams come true" can go either way. As adults, we look around and see monsters: bigotry, technology, billionaires, corruption, war, alienation, mental illness. If you're inclined to see monsters, there has never been more light and shadow from which they can arise.

The fact that they are the same monsters, albeit in different clothing, that humans throughout history have always perceived is cold comfort, although it does provide perspective.

I've often bemoaned the loss of my own childhood, not for myself, of course. I already have a good on under my belt, one anchored by lots of unsupervised play, outdoors, with other children, full of wonder, conflict, risk, and triumph. No, I find myself worried that it's the "kids these days" who are really getting ripped off. Recently, however, my own daughter, a child of the 90's, expressed her concern for the younger people she's encountering, largely because they didn't have the childhood opportunities she did . . . and it shows. 

And so it goes.

The old world is always dying and the new one is always struggling to be born. As adults we have the perspective to see it happening even if we don't fully understand it. We know of the "before times", when we were . . . happier? 

Aristotle argued that "happiness" is an emotion that we can really only fully experience upon reflection, when we cast our minds back over the past and see that, yes, then I was happy. He pointed out that the moment we name our happiness in the present it tends to disappear. I'm sure my own mother worried about the world in which I was growing up, a world that was dying while the new one was struggling to be born. Yet, I was happy.

It's tempting, in our dark moments, to give in to the monsters, to convince ourselves that we are, this time, really in the end times. But this, I think, is the only real monster: despair.  

Yesterday, I watched a documentary about the rise of funk music -- James Brown, Sly and the Family Stone, George Clinton. The world in which these Black artists produced this joyful music was chaotic, politically, socially, and culturally. Monsters were everywhere. MLK was assassinated, the Civil Rights Movement was in full voice, the Vietnam War and the specter of nuclear war hung over everything. This was the time of my own childhood as well. The old world was dying and a new one was slow in appearing. The filmmaker interviewed old men (and it was mostly old men) who clearly remembered those times has happy, like I do, despite growing up in that time when monsters lurked.

From the perspective of childhood, there is only the world of now. The children in our classrooms will one day, as we all do, see their moment, this moment, as an old world that is dying while they glimpse monsters in the light and shadow. But for today, there is only today, the only world they have.

The gift of working with young children is that they, if we allow them, can share their perspective with us. It's a place in which the old world isn't dying: it simply doesn't exist. They are living in a place of happiness, even if it won't be fully recognized for decades. Of course, there is pain, grief, and failure, but a life without these monsters is no life at all. Perhaps wishing someone a life without pain, grief, and failure is another curse disguised as a blessing.

And one day, as adults, these children will worry about the monsters in the light and shadow, monsters that you and I will never perceive. And I am motivated to ensure that they will at least recall their time with me as happy.

The old world is dying. The new one is struggling to be born. When we drop to our knees amongst young children, humbly, entering their world, we find ourselves amidst the midwives charged with bringing the new world to life.

******

Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in ways that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

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!

What is This System Trying to Do?

When I went to bed on Wednesday night, I hoped I'd done enough to deal with an ant invasion into our home. I'd anticipated it. We live within the jurisdiction of a home owners association and periodically, when ant populations begin to surge, they lay down insecticide. Whenever they do this, within 30 minutes, the ants come inside.

Of course, they're escaping the tragedy and my home, being relatively poison free, is a sanctuary. Usually, they just mill around on the floor, but this time, one the scout ants, the ones whose role in ant society is to randomly search for sustenance, discovered the panty, and specifically the dog treats and a package of shelled pistachios that had not been fully resealed. 

I'm not a fan of swarms of ants inside my home, and especially in the pantry. Over my adult life, I've had to deal with ant invasions at least once a year and, to be honest, I've come to relish the challenge. It's always an opportunity to learn something new.

I've tried all kinds of things over the decades, but my current approach is to start with Windex. I emptied the pantry shelves, tossed the fully infested food, then took the rest outdoors where I would later wipe off any remaining ants. I then gave the swam, their trails, and their entry points a good dose of Windex. I wiped the slowed ants up with paper towels. This does a few things: the liquid slows them down, the surfactants in the product interferes with their respiration, and the cleaning product dissolves the all important pheromone trail.

Ants are what biologists call "superorganisms" in that they are both individual animals and parts of a larger organism. The "queen" is comparable to the reproductive organs, the workers function like the body's cells or tissue, and their pheromone communication system operates like a nervous system.

When I awoke yesterday, there were still a few lingering ants, but they seemed to be aimless -- just a few scouts randomly hunting. Often, if I'm diligent for an hour or so, I can finish the project one ant at a time until they've "forgotten" about the inside of my house entirely. But first I fed the dog, who then came over to see what I was doing and coughed up a "little something." I saw it, but I was busy with other things for about 30 minutes. When I returned, the ant swarm had also returned to this meaty mucus on the floor.

What had happened was that one of those scout ants had stumbled upon our dog's wee gift, found it interesting, tasted it, then returned to the rest of the ant-body all the while leaving a pheromone trail by way of remaining connected to this delicious morsel. Back in the colony, it regurgitated its bite so the others could confirm for themselves that, indeed, this just what they needed. Then it was "C'mon everybody!"

I often feel like the preschoolers I work with operate very much like a superorgansim. A child will come across something on the playground, like an ant trail. They'll stop to study it, to wonder about it, to experiment with it. Then they tell someone else about it. Before long you have a swarm of children. I've often referred to the "hive mind" of preschoolers who have been together for a while. 

Some ant species focus on sugars, some on protein/grease, and some on both depending on what the colony needs at the moment. I've often had good luck with maple syrup and borax traps (the workers carry sticky sweet grains of borax -- an ant toxin -- back to the colony), but I knew that wasn't going to do the trick this time, at least not all on its own. I'd already destroyed the pheromone connection to my pantry, but the ants were clearly trapped between the outdoor insecticides and me. And they needed another find a source of protein. I would need to consider other measures.

My approach to ant invasions is to observe, try to understand, then adjust the environment in order to make it possible to live as much as I can in harmony with them. In fact, I usually don't even use borax in my "traps." Often I just put a pool of syrup on a piece of aluminum foil and place it along their trail between the entry point and the food they're after. When the ants are seeking sugar, they very quickly abandon the more distant food for the more readily available syrup. I then, day-by-day, sometimes even hour-by-hour, shift the foil in order to redirect the flow of ants until I get them outdoors. I will then move them away from the house and leave the foil in the middle of the lawn for them to gorge upon. I can then clean up the pheromone trail and that's that.

I gave this new swarm the Windex treatment, but knew that I needed to get them going somewhere else. Among the foodstuffs I'd tossed out was an almost empty box of Milk Bones.  I dug it out of the trash. They were still swarming it, even though I know that these individual ants, despite plenty of food, were destined to die. Ants cannot survive for long without a connection to their colony, any more that a human cell can exist once disconnected from the whole. They can't start new colonies anymore than we can regenerate our arms and legs. They cannot join a different colony because their chemistry identifies them as part of a rival and marks them for death. They may have survived on those Milk Bones and other garbage for while, but left where they were, they were doomed.

I put the box of Milk Bones against a wall outside my home, closest to their main entry point. The ideas was to lure them to a new, perfectly acceptable food source outside my home. I dusted the crevices with a food-grade "soil" comprised of fossilized algae (diatomaceous earth, available at my local Ace Hardware). This isn't a poison, but rather a naturally occurring product that can remove the waxy protective coating on the exoskeletons of ants. It can kill them if it remains on their bodies for a few days, but they are actually amazing at cleaning it off themselves and one another (grooming). The main function of the soil is to make things uncomfortable which discourages all but the most determined scout ants.

This morning, knock on wood, I see no ants indoors. Surprisingly, a check of the outdoor Milk Bones that had once been swarming with ants, was today completely ant free, so much so that I'm going to let the dog decide if they're still edible . . . I think I know the answer to that one! But I don't know the answer to my most pressing question: Where did the ants go?

I mean, they must have found a better/closer food source that does not involve my pantry and avoids the poison.

I regret that my process killed some ants. I am more upset, however, with the HOA and its insecticide program. Ants are not my enemy. They were simply escaping a habitat that was rendered suddenly, and ham-fistedly, inhospitable. That said, I didn't want them in my food or my house. 

This week I've written a couple of posts about earth systems (here and here) and how we're part of those systems. What I see when I slow down and study these ants, is a system, or a part of a system, revealing itself. I tried to approach this "problem" the way I approach my work with young children, which is to say, when things aren't going as expected, it's my opportunity to learn. These ants have given me a live demonstration of emergence, adaptation, and collective intelligence, which is what happens whenever we slow down and consider that we exist as systems within systems. The whole of evolution is systems adapting to one another as part of greater systems.

When we see the world this way, we learn to approach challenges with the question: What is this system trying to do? We can only answer this question through close observation, experiment, and patience. Then once we understand, our interventions can become specific, smaller, more elegant, and usually far more effective than if we, you know, just lay down a bunch of poison.

******

Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in ways that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

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!

Is Play the Creative Process of Our Universe?

"Love isn't a state of perfect caring," wrote Mister Rogers. "It is an active noun like struggle."

I hate to quibble with the great man, but love and struggle are also verbs. The English language is already largely comprised of nouns, which is, as Robin Wall-Kimmerer commented in her book Braiding Sweetgrass, "appropriate to a culture so obsessed with things."

Physicist Carlo Rovelli tells us that the theory of quantum mechanics, the core theory of modern physics, "does not describe things as they 'are': it describes how things 'occur,' and how they 'interact with each other'." In other words, our entire physical universe is not comprised of things at all, but rather interactions, processes, and systems, which is to say verbs. We don't live in a world of objects, but rather "a world of events."

The language of the Potawatomi people of what is today the Great Lakes region of North America, is a language of verbs. It's estimated that 70 percent of their words are action words. "When bay is a noun," writes Wall-Kimmerer, "it is defined by humans, trapped between its shores and contained by the word. But the verb wiikwegadmaa -- to be a bay -- releases the water from bondage and lets it live."

The people who brought English to the Americas didn't just colonize land. The Potawatomi weren't the only Indigenous people whose language and traditions reveal an understanding of the universe that Western science is only now coming around to embracing. Western culture still has a long way to go. Around the world, we find Indigenous cultures understand that humans cannot be separated from the rest of nature, that nothing exists without relationship and connection, that nothing can be thrown away because there is no such place as "away."

Our young children, if we avoid colonizing them with our thing-based way of viewing the world, seek to understand their world through relationships. Most conventional schooling expects children to categorize things like letters, numbers, colors, shapes, and facts that can be tested. Play-based learning is much more about verbs than nouns: exploring, negotiating, building, pretending, wondering, arguing, balancing, inventing, and connecting. Learning in this context isn't something they acquire, but rather something they do. 

This is purely anecdotal, but I've noticed lately that many of my former preschool students have chosen educational and career paths that study the earth itself, like environmental science, climate science, Earth systems science, sustainability, and interdisciplinary environmental programs. These are all disciplines that ask about relationships: how to the atmosphere, oceans, soil, plants, animals, microbes, and humans interact? I like to think that their play-based foundation played a part in this. 

Play is how we learn about how the world works, how the different parts, the loose parts, play with one another, and we too are a part of it. 

In her new book The Beginning Comes After the End, she writes of a "world as made up of processes rather than objects, as phenomena forever flowing and changing and thereby exchanging with each other and changing each other. It proposes that it is more useful and accurate to think of ourselves and most of what we call things as events." 

It strikes me that this would make for a good definition of play.

She points out that Indigenous creation myths tend to be about "trickster creators" who argue and improvise a world that is "never perfect, never finished," and, most telling, "never fell from grace." This is how I view the young children with whom I work, these natural humans, these creators, who evoke the entire universe as they play. 

Maybe what we see is that play is the creative process of our universe. I don't think it's a stretch to at least wonder about it.

******

Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in ways that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

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!

If We Want Children to Think, We Must Let Them Move

As you step onto a preschool playground or a play-based classroom, the first thing visitors are struck by is the never-ending swirl of bodies in motion. Adult visitors to Woodland Park have always stopped at the gate or doorway seemingly afraid to get in the way as children move from one thing to the next, leaping, skipping, swinging, crawling, jumping, jiggling, bending, and reaching. Even when children stop to greet the newcomers, they are in motion: kicking a leg for no apparent reason, clapping their hands, bouncing up and down. Sure, some of the children might remain relatively still for a few minutes at a time, but even the ones curled up with a book are bouncing a foot. Even the ones pretending to be a baby under a blanket are wiggling.

"Sit as little as possible," wrote the influential philosopher and notorious nature trail hiker Friedrich Nietzsche, "do not believe any idea that was not born in the open air and of free movement."

A mountain of studies back up Nietzsche's assertion. When we move our bodies our visual sense is sharpened, our ability to concentrate is enhanced, comprehension is boosted, information retention is increased, and self-regulation improves. Cognitive scientist Sain Beilock even asserts that "(m)oving the body can alter the mind by unconsciously putting ideas in our heads before we are able to consciously contemplate them on our own time." (Italics are mine.) In other words, our bodies can know stuff through movement for which our brains aren't yet ready. And it doesn't necessarily have to be robust movement either: one study found that when people doodle while listening to a lecture they retain nearly 30 percent more of the information. By now, most of us know that our brains alone don't do our thinking, but rather our whole bodies, other people, and even things are involved, not just intellectually, but emotionally as well. 

Another great 20th century philosopher and psychologist, William James once observed that one of the best ways to overcome mild depression or ennui is to stand up straight, pull our shoulders back, hold our head high, and move confidently. More contemporarily, Katherine Isbister, a professor and researcher at the University of California Santa Cruz, talks of what she calls embodied self-regulation. "Changing what the body does," she writes, "can change our feelings, perceptions, and thoughts. 

One of the foundational myths of schooling is that we must somehow get the kids to stop moving around in order to focus, but the exact opposite is true. Some schools have even gone so far as to cut back on recess in elementary school in favor of more "seat time." The evidence, however, tells us that the more children move, the more clearly they think. This evidence is so clear and so compelling (and by now, so widely known) that the fact that our schools persist in forcing even preschoolers to spend large chunks of their days sitting quietly is outright malpractice.

What visitors see as they stand in the doorway of standard classrooms are humans whose minds are torn between obeying the adults by sitting still and their natural urge to actually think and learn through movement. 

What visitors to a play-based classroom are witnessing are humans in motion, thinking, and learning at full capacity. 

******

Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in ways that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

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!

We are Systems, Not Categories

I recently learned a new word: holobiont. A holobiant is an animal or plant and all the symbiotic microorganisms living on or inside it, including bacteria, fungi, and viruses. I'm one, you're one. 

"We ourselves are not singular," writes Rebecca Solnit in her new book The Beginning Comes After the End, "each of us, but plural, a cooperative community. About half the cells in our body do not have human DNA, and your gut, skin, mouth, and many other parts of you are populated places. These are the strains of bacteria and other microbes crucial to your digestion, immune health, and other functions, and they make you a plural being, a lurching collective of mutual beneficial entities."

In other words, we are no the individual, independent entities our culture tells us we are, but rather a system of cooperation and agreement, that is likewise a part of wider systems. Even our minds, this seemingly central thing that we often identify as our self, is created by this interconnected system of mutual benefit, a cooperative community. It would be more accurate to say, "We're hungry" than "I'm hungry." "We're tired." "We're stressed." "We're happy."

We've been taught by our culture to bifurcate ourselves from the rest of nature, to somehow see ourselves as separate, not just from the rest of nature, but from one another. It's a philosophy in which everything is categorized. "Categories," writes Solnit, "are the antithesis of systems, at least when the categories are deployed in service of an anti systemic worldview and of containment by conceptual and literal boundaries. A system is by definition in motion, connecting and circulating, made up of the flow of interactions and exchanges; it is a process of change."

And change is learning. 

I can't help but see a play-based preschool classroom in this description, the ebb and flow of children moving, connecting, circulating, weaving a web of interactions and exchanges. There are conflicts, of course, but there are also agreements. There are times when the system seems to become chaotic, but also times when it settles into the perfection of a bee hive, a place where we understand the true nature of nature, and that we, not me, is the central, ever evolving, unit of life.

******

Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in ways that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

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!