Our North Star

The profit motive is good, I suppose, for some things, like televisions. If the demand for TVs goes up, then the big manufacturers can make more by doing business things like expanding capacity or becoming more productive through creating efficiencies. If demand falls, they can protect their profits by cutting back or lowering prices. The bottom line is that at the end of the day no one really needs a TV and there is still enough competition in the consumer electronics market that the promise of capitalism's supply-and-demand dynamics actually serves consumers who are always, at least theoretically, looking for the "best quality" at the "lowest price."

Some of you may have heard about the collapse of the Guidepost Montessori chain of preschools. The founder had raised $335 million from venture capitalists and private equity firms with the promise of doing "what ride-sharing apps or Airbnb have achieved." At its peak, Guidepost had opened 150 preschools serving tens of thousands of families, only to have the whole thing come tumbling down after accumulating $440 million in losses. But only after degrading their "product" (i.e., caring for young children) to the point that they were, from the sound of it, essentially warehousing kids under the care of unqualified teachers working for, you guessed it, low wages. It's been called a "Ponzi scheme" by some former employees.

Some things, and early childhood education is one of them, cannot practically or ethically, be provided as the kind of fast-growth, high-profit "product" that most investors are looking for. I know something about this because I've watched, from the inside, as smart, well-funded people tried to thread that needle.

Several years ago, I got involved with an effort to do something similar to what Guidepost Montessori was trying to do. We even compared ourselves to Uber. I was recruited, the CEO told me, to protect the company's "North Star," which was to provide affordable, high-quality preschool in every neighborhood in the US, and, we dared to dream, ultimately the world. We had seed money from a well-regarded venture capital firm and I was well-compensated, but it didn't take long for me to realize that they really didn't want my input. I was there to provide credibility. The company had other problems, but it quickly became clear to me that the kind of business approach favored by Silicon Valley would never work for our sector. The Guidepost collapse just further confirms my decision to run like the wind.

On the surface our model sounded ingenious. Instead of building expensive centers, we would unlock the underused capacity of educators' homes, the way Uber does with their drivers' own cars, to create a network of in-home care. Instead of employing all teachers at a central location, we would create a platform to connect families directly with educators in their neighborhoods. We would create efficiency by centralizing marketing and admin, while letting individual educators provide the actual service. 

But there's a fundamental difference: Uber can scale without producing more drivers. It recruits people who already possess cars and driving skills, and each additional driver expands capacity. A preschool platform, however, has to somehow produce and sustain high-quality educators, and that quality resides overwhelmingly in those human beings and their relationships with children. That's a much bigger challenge than simply providing a relatively clean vehicle with a full gas tank.

I would say it's an impossible challenge.

I'm not saying that business is bad for childcare. Indeed, our profession is full of scrappy, creative entrepreneurs, people who are providing outstanding education and care that is both affordable and at least modestly profitable. These people aren't likely to get rich. They might open a second, third, or even fourth location, but at some point they stop themselves because they know that anything more would mean losing sight of their North Star: the high-quality that made them successful in the first place.

No, the conflict isn't between business and education, but rather between the economics of high-quality care and an investment model that requires rapid, scalable growth and attractive financial returns. You can't have both.

From the perspective of economics, our profession is a mess, which is why so many business people are trying to fix it. Families are stretching themselves thin to afford child care and preschool. Early childhood education is among the lowest paid professions with many of us leaving because of it. Yet, as we discovered during the pandemic, the service we provide is an essential aspect of the overall economy. In the world that capitalism envisions, this should mean that we all get a substantial pay raise, but that ain't in the offing. The economics of what we do is broken.

At the same time, I've long said that I would love to see us make more money, but not so much more that we start attracting people only for the money. Money is important, but it's an inadequate organizing principle when it comes to caring for children.

Money is what motivates a television manufacturer to respond to growing demand through productivity improvements: automation, cheaper components, improved manufacturing, larger factories, global supply chains. Each worker can, as a result, effectively produce vastly more TVs to satisfy demand.

An early childhood educator can't become vastly more "productive" in that sense without degrading the "product" itself. If one excellent teacher caring for eight children becomes one excellent teacher caring for 16, we haven't discovered an efficiency -- we've simply changed (degraded) what we're "selling." 

This is an aspect of what economists call Baumol's Cost Disease. Labor-intensive activities like education, childcare, and live performance can't achieve the same productivity gains as manufacturing, but their workers still exist in an economy where wages and costs are influenced by sectors that can. That's one reason these services become increasingly expensive relative to manufactured goods.

Capitalism knows what to do when we want more televisions. Why doesn't it know what to do when we want more preschool teachers? Maybe that's because the "productivity" of an early childhood educator isn't measured in the number of children she can process. The relationship is the product. And that's why so many of us know that we are rich even when our paychecks are modest.

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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!

Without Emotion Reasonable Decisions are Impossible

There is more reason in your body than in your best wisdom. ~Friedrich Nietzsche  

The stereotypical argument used to exclude women from business, science, politics, the military, or indeed just about any category of public life is that they are "too emotional." Emotions, the theory goes, renders them incapable of making rational decisions. Most of us, of course, instinctively recognize this as a baseless patriarchal assertion, one that is disproven every day as we find women succeeding in every area of society.

Chihuly glass

As a preschool teacher, I've learned that emotions have no gender. Every child cries. Every child has tantrums. Every child experiences fear, frustration, envy, joy, disappointment, and melancholy, and gender has nothing to do with how and how often. As children grow older, however, society tends to be somewhat more accepting of girls' expressions of a fuller range of emotions, but there is still a lot of pressure to hide "bad" feelings, especially anger, behind a smile. 

Boys, in turn, quickly learn to hide their "negative" feelings behind stoicism and anger, the only public emotion "allowed" to them. A boy who cries or is afraid is often mocked. A boy who smiles too much is often considered flighty or unserious. 

We are all emotional, but that begs the question: is it possible to be too emotional? I suppose the answer is yes, to the degree that our emotions become incapacitating or destructive. We all have those moments when we flip our lids, curl up in a ball of anxiety, or trudge through days as if under a dark cloud. When it becomes chronic we call it mental illness. So yes, I suppose it is possible to be too emotional, but it is equally possible, and perhaps even common, to not be emotional enough. It's only through our emotions, not our intellects, that we fully connect with one another, understand, empathize, and communicate. Without emotion, we are but automatons, doomed to stand outside of humanity either as outcast or villain. We all have our times when we become emotionally exhausted, when we detach for a time. When our emotional detachment becomes chronic we call it sociopathy.

It's tempting to conclude that it's all about finding a balance, but there's no fulcrum here upon which to rest an easy center. Our emotions are too important for that. They are to be felt fully and honestly, not balanced out with cool rationalism. Indeed, rationality cannot exist without emotion.

For much of the 20th century scientists were convinced that emotions played no role, and were perhaps even an impediment to rational thought, which provided much of the "scientific" underpinning for denying women (and children for that matter) rights and opportunities. But more recent research has found that emotions play a critical role in our ability to make decisions. 

Rather than clouding our judgement, the neural systems that underlie emotions are essential to high-level cognition, which is to say decision-making. 

One of the pioneers in this research is prominent neuroscientist Antonio Damasio. Much of his work has been done on patients whose brains have been injured and who, as a result, are missing the connection between their sensory input and emotions. The rapid beating of their heart at the prospect of crossing a narrow bridge, for instance, doesn't provoke fear. Based on traditional views, one would conclude that this fearless person would be more clear-headed and, therefore, be more inclined to making rational decisions. But Damasio has found the opposite to be true: his emotionless patients proved incapable of making reasonable decisions. This is a conclusion that has now been replicated numerous times by other scientists.

We need our emotions in order to make sound judgements and our greater doubt should be saved for those who do not credit their emotions because they are more likely, according to science, to be the irrational ones. But like much of what scientists are "learning" about humans, this is actually ancient knowledge, long understood by artists and mystics alike. As Lao Tzu wrote in the 6th century BC, "Let your feelings flourish and get on with you life of doing." That is, and always will be, the path of wisdom.

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It's hard sometimes to stay-the-course these days, but every child thrives in a self-directed environment because every child deserves the right to pursue their own special genius in the company of others who likewise are pursuing their special genius. It's not just a foundation for life, but a way of life. If you want to provide this kind of playful childhood for the children in your life, then join us for a 2-week pop-up version of Teacher Tom's Play-Based Learning starting September 24. It's designed for early childhood educators, childcare providers, parents, and grandparents who know that there is so much more than mere academics. This is a great way to make sure the whole team is on the same page to begin to coming school year. To learn more and to register, click here. But hurry, we start today!

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!

The Story of Your Life

In his novella The Story of Your Life, Ted Chiang imagines a woman who learns to comprehend the language of an alien species that perceives the universe through a teleological lens, meaning that instead of seeing cause-and-effect as we do, they live their entire lives always knowing the past, present, and future. Physicists like Stephen Hawking have pointed out that the fundamental laws of physics don't distinguish past from future in the way our experience does. The fact that we perceive time's passage, that there is a past and future, these scientists tell us, may largely be a function of our perspective.

Of course, knowing something is true does not mean it's necessarily useful. We would be fools to attempt to live as if time does not pass.

But it's something to wonder about.

The book's protagonist learns the alien language, and as she does, her own mind is rewired to see things as the aliens do. She comes to know the fullness of her life: that she will marry, have a daughter, suffer through a painful divorce, and lose her child to an early death. Yet, despite all this inevitable heartbreak, she chooses to embrace the journey of her life.

And isn't that what we all do anyway? As the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote:

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;

Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;

Thy fate is the common fate of all,

Into each life some rain must fall,

Some days must be dark and dreary. 

We know the rain and dark are coming even if we don't know the specific nature of them. We always try, and always fail, to shelter our children from this knowledge -- or at least try to soften it. We also know, in our good moments, that the sun is still shining.

As a mental experiment, it's fascinating to consider how one would live without either the fear of or hope for what is to come. Since the future is fully known in all its details, there is no place for either anxiety or its flip-side, anticipation. Would we still lie awake at night? Would our hearts still flutter? Would we better appreciate the emerging moment in which we find ourselves?

Or, perhaps, what we learn is that we aren't so different from those aliens and their alien language.

In his notes for the novella, Chiang writes, "Stephen Hawking . . . found it tantalizing that we could not remember the future. But remembering the future is child's play for me now. I know what will become of my helpless, trusting babies because they are grown-ups now. I know how my closest friends will end up because so many of them are retired or dead now." He then quotes Kurt Vonnegut, "Be patient. Your future will come to you and lie down at your feet like a dog who knows and likes you no matter what you are."

When I think of that first moment alone with our newborn daughter, just the two of us face-to-face as the midwives tended to my wife, the story of our life together unfolded before me. There was joy, pain, learning. 

I saw it all and embraced it.

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It's hard sometimes to stay-the-course these days, but every child thrives in a self-directed environment because every child deserves the right to pursue their own special genius in the company of others who likewise are pursuing their special genius. It's not just a foundation for life, but a way of life. If you want to provide this kind of playful childhood for the children in your life, then join us for a 2-week pop-up version of Teacher Tom's Play-Based Learning starting September 24. It's designed for early childhood educators, childcare providers, parents, and grandparents who know that there is so much more than mere academics. This is a great way to make sure the whole team is on the same page to begin to coming school year. To learn more and to register, click here. But hurry, we start tomorrow!

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!

Use It Or Lose It

I've come to realize that many people I know can barely tell one plant from another. Yes, they may know a tree from a weed, or maybe a shrub from a cactus. 

According to science journalist Zöe Schlanger, "'plant blindness' is the tendency to view plant life as an indistinguishable mass, a green smudge, rather than as thousands of genetically separate and fragile individuals, as distinct from one another as a lion is from a trout."

To one degree or another, most of us suffer from plant blindness, at least compared to our ancestors. For much of human history, knowing the subtle differences between plants was much more a matter of life and death than it is today. When we lived closer to nature, it was important to know, say, which red berries were delicious and which might kill you; which leaves could alleviate your headache and which could cause seizures; which you could wear and which could cause a rash. 

But today, we tend to come across "plants" as products in the form of berry baskets, medicines, and clothing. The necessity to know the properties of this plant or that plant isn't as vital as it once was, so our ability to do so has atrophied. In our fantasies, we often imagine that if a caveman was transported through time to our modern world, they would be in awe. And I'm sure they would be, although much of that awe would be over how stupid and oblivious we've become. 

As the saying goes, "use it or lose it." We've outsourced plant knowledge to farmers, chemists, and the entire supply chain that manufactures and brings things to market, specialists who supposedly free us up to specialize in our own right. 

Today's children spend significantly less time outdoors than previous generations, part of a decades-long shift of childhood from outdoor environments to indoor ones. Indeed, Americans of all ages now spend about 90 percent of their lives indoors. So, of course, this ability is atrophying.

The modern world is built on specialization, on individuals picking what they will use and what they will lose. Unfortunately, that also means we lose our connection to things that may well be important to us. I mean, the smartphone or AI may represent grand, perhaps misguided, definitely uncontrolled "experiments" that may wind up killing us all, but this experiment in disconnecting from nature is, from where I sit, a far more dangerous experiment.

This is part of the reason I feel so strongly that every preschool playground should include plants. A garden is a good place to start, but also trees, grasses, vines, shrubbery, and whatever else will grow in and around the place. Even better, of course, is an adjacent forest or pond or beach or bush or vacant lot where the weeds run wild. Sadly, most playgrounds are soft fall zones and out-of-the-box equipment, with, perhaps a patch of well-mown grass. We think that represents "safety" when, in fact, it represents the adult's ignorance of nature, the full needs of children, and the only real safety that has ever existed: the experience to keep oneself safe. Use it or lose it.

We'll never be as plant savvy as our hunter-forager ancestors, nor do we need to be, but what else do we miss in our near complete inability to recognize these living things that were here for millennia before us and will likely be here for millennia after we Homo sapiens have either died off or evolved into whatever is next? 

What else are we blind to? The evidence is that we, as individuals, are blind to most of reality, even if we, as a species, have specialists who know a lot about a lot.

I often see our youngest children as the last of the generalists, which is why I want them to play. If nothing else, when we let them choose what to explore, what to think about, what to experiment with, we allow them to discover connections with the world to which the rest of us have become ignorant through disuse. We often talk about the early years as a time for building foundations, but maybe a better metaphor is to think of it as discovering how to connect with the world in all its wonder.

In our species' "progress," we've lost at least as much as we've gained as we've leaned into our capacity for specialization. But of all the things we've lost, I wonder if the one indispensable thing is the capacity to connect directly to the rest of the world, freely, without the perpetual guiding hand of for-their-own-good specialists. And that capacity is built through play.

Use it or lose it.

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It's hard sometimes to stay-the-course these days, but every child thrives in a self-directed environment because every child deserves the right to pursue their own special genius in the company of others who likewise are pursuing their special genius. It's not just a foundation for life, but a way of life. If you want to provide this kind of playful childhood for the children in your life, then join us for a 2-week pop-up version of Teacher Tom's Play-Based Learning starting September 24. It's designed for early childhood educators, childcare providers, parents, and grandparents who know that there is so much more than mere academics. This is a great way to make sure the whole team is on the same page to begin to coming school year. To learn more and to register, click here. But hurry, we start on Thursday!

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!

How Much Evidence Do They Need?

Swedish cognitive neuroscientist and researcher John Axelsson says that our brain seeks to become expert in the environment in which it finds itself. 

The brain is, in effect, a "simulation machine," according to Axelsson, designed to learn about the world, then automate the relevant survival behaviors. 

The example he gives is learning to drive. At first we must be conscious of every aspect of operating our vehicle (i.e., learning), but with practice the relevant behaviors become more and more automatic until we can free our brains up to do more "important" things, like simulating what we are going to say to our boss about being late yet again.

The brain learns and automates: learning takes a lot of energy, automation less. This means that we are in a continual process of converting behaviors that take more energy into behaviors that take less energy. This can also be called the process of becoming expert which is, to close the circle, what our brains are designed to do. 

We see this process in action, quite clearly, when we observe children at play. Each is drawn toward becoming expert in their environment, starting with what is most "important," which is to say that thing about which they have the most curiosity. I recently watched an 18 month old with a stick. His learning took the form of poking various things in his environment with it, trying the dirt, then the pavement, then a manhole cover, then a wall, then a tree trunk. I can certainly speculate about what he was learning, although I can never know for sure. What I do know is that he was seeking to become expert in the environment  in which he found himself because that's what humans do. Not far away, another child, in more or less the same environment, was sitting with her family at a lunch table repeatedly scraping a fork across a plate, then putting it into her mouth. She was also in the process of becoming expert in her environment.

Standard schools are based upon hubris and habit, rather than the science of how learning happens. When committees of adults pre-determine what is important in a child's environment, when they likewise predetermine how and on what schedule they are going to learn it, we cheat the children. Instead of creating environments of autonomy, we create ones of reliance upon others (i.e., adults). What children learn in these environments is that they must strive to ignore their curiosity and become expert instead at compliance, placing their learning in the hands of "teachers" who will then attempt to measure it. This is an artificially stressful environment and, as Axelsson told us, stress is one of the conditions under which learning slows down, or even ceases altogether in extreme cases.

In contrast, we learn best in relatively stress free environments. Axelsson points out that children escaping extremely stressful environments like war zones will stop playing until they find themselves in environments that are relatively stress free, like refugee camps. Indeed, they need to play in order to start becoming expert in the new environment in which they find themselves. Our schools are not, of course, war zones, but by seeking to control the bodies and minds of children, we are asking them to replace their curiosity with obedience. And that is unnecessarily stressful.

Some children learn those lessons in compliance quite well. We call them good students. Many more learn to hide or squelch their curiosity, doing their real learning by pursuing passions outside of school. Those we call "indifferent students" even if some of them learn to pass all the tests. Still others are driven to rebel, which is how their brains seek to become expert in an environment that tries to control them, a perfectly valid, even commendable response. These children know that, for them, escape is the only relevant behavior.

If we were to rely on science instead of habit and hubris, our school environments would look much different than they do right now. Instead of being places of top down curricula and compliance, they would be environments full of stuff and ideas. They would be environments in which children were free to pursue their curiosity, to become expert in the aspects of the environment that they deem most important, to do it in the manner they choose, and according to the timetable they set for themselves. Schools would be environments in which the adults themselves are part of the stuff and ideas, there not to instruct or control, but rather to answer questions, provide materials, and support each individual child to the degree and in the way the child determines. 

Those who support standard schools are never asked to defend their methods, whereas those of us who advocate for play-based or self-directed learning are forever being challenged to defend our approach. Again and again, the science, the evidence, tells us that if a generation of critical, creative thinkers is our goal, an environment of play is how our brains work best. Yet again and again we are called on to provide more evidence. How much evidence do they need?

It seems the only conclusion is that those who support standard school methods have different ideas of education than I do. And, of course, if compliance is the goal, carry on. You'll just be doing it without me.

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It's hard sometimes to stay-the-course these days, but every child thrives in a self-directed environment because every child deserves the right to pursue their own special genius in the company of others who likewise are pursuing their special genius. It's not just a foundation for life, but a way of life. If you want to provide this kind of playful childhood for the children in your life, then join us for a 2-week pop-up version of Teacher Tom's Play-Based Learning starting September 24. It's designed for early childhood educators, childcare providers, parents, and grandparents who know that there is so much more than mere academics. This is a great way to make sure the whole team is on the same page to begin to coming school year. To learn more and to register, click here. But hurry, we start on Thursday!

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 the Gossiping Animal

What other people say about me is none of my business.

It's a rationale that pops up for me when I feel judged by others, when I suspect or know that someone is talking about me behind my back, or, and this is probably the most frequent circumstance, when I feel insecure about the opinions of others.

The truth is that for those of us who are not Taylor Swift, our fellow humans probably spend insultingly little time thinking about us, let alone judging or gossiping about us. Still, try as we might, it's almost impossible to not, at least at times, fret or wonder about the things being said about us when we're not present. And I suspect that's because, we ourselves, judge others, and at least sometimes, we express those judgments to others.

Judging and gossiping are part of being human. In his book Sapiens, historian Yuval Noah Harari relies on anthropological research to assert that not only is gossiping part of human nature, but that it is one of the key traits that allowed Homo sapiens to evolve from a middle-of-the-food-chain mammal to an apex predator. Gossip, it seems, is at least in part how we create social bonds, friendships, and community. 

"Social cooperation is our key for survival and reproduction," writes Harari. "It's not enough for individual men and women to know the whereabouts of lions and bison. It's much more important for them to know who in their band hates whom, who is sleeping with whom, who is honest and who is a cheat."

Given the centrality of gossip to our evolution, it might be surprising to consider that most of us, most of the time, are vehement in our disapproval of gossip. Indeed, one of the worst reputations one can have is of being an inveterate gossip. So most of us strive to keep our harshest judgements to ourselves or only express them in the strictest confidence to our best friends, managing our own behavior lest we become, in turn, the subject of judgmental gossip.

My mother used to scold us, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all," a worthy aspiration, but hardly possible when gossip is such a central part of what our species is all about. 

In a study out of Japan, researchers found that even children as young as four will adjust their behaviors when presented with the possibility that an observer, even someone they don't know, might gossip about them. Children in the study shared their treats with peers, not just when others were watching, but even when they thought their behavior would be conveyed to a stranger who was not even in the room. However, when the children were assured that there would be no gossiping, they were less likely to share their treats. "These findings," the researchers write, "suggest that 4- and 8-year-old children attempt to manage their reputation when they could be a target of gossip."

Of course, what we mostly despise is malicious gossip. We tend to not object to gossip about, say, the anonymous charitable giving of a neighbor or the romantic birthday gifts exchanged between spouses. Indeed, we might not even label those things as gossip because we tend to narrow our definition of gossip to the spreading of negative or harmful stories, true or not, about others. The habitual spreading this kind of gossip, if left unchecked, has historically lead individuals to be ostracized or worse.

Gossip stands as one of the most powerful mechanisms by which human communities manage themselves. We may bridle at the idea of being controlled in this way. Likewise, most of us are likely uncomfortable with the notion that we control others, not necessarily because we gossip, but because of the possibility that we will gossip. Even very young children seem to understand this: it is part of what makes us human.

I wonder, however, if this social function of gossip is starting to wane in this era of pervasive social media (which in many ways is just a gossip column on steroids) and political leaders who seem to be immune to the feelings of shame that gossip relies upon. In fact, it seems that malicious gossip is too often rewarded. It seems that there are some who have found that gossip benefits them no matter how heinous their behavior; who thrive, indeed, on infamy. I don't know if this is a modern thing or not. I suppose there have always been those who rise to positions of power and prestige due to their reputations for cruelty and debauchery. At the same time, I wonder how much evil we've managed to avert because of the power of gossip.

When our daughter was born, I was instantly aware that I cared deeply about how she would see me. I wanted her to know me as loving, reliable, competent, and kind, even though I often hadn't behaved in those ways. This is what I mean when I say that our children make us better people. At least in my case, I managed my reputation to the point that I am, today, a much more loving, reliable, competent and kind person than I was on the day our daughter was born.  I did it for her, but also for myself.

The American culture is one in which individualism is set on a pedestal. We respect the people who don't seem to give a damn what other people think . . . At least until they do or say things that make us wish they would be ore considerate of others. We admire those who blaze their own trails . . . At least until their blaze begins to scorch the earth for others. 

We want our children to grow up to be compassionate, to care for others, and a big part of that is caring about what others think and say about us. By the same token, we don't want our children to be driven by shame or to sacrifice good and unique aspects of who they are in the name of fitting in or getting along. 

This, I think, is the great dance of being human amongst humans. We are the gossiping animal. What others say about me may still be none of my business and that is often exactly the stance to take in the name of mental health, but that doesn't mean it doesn't matter. 

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It's hard sometimes to stay-the-course these days, but every child thrives in a self-directed environment because every child deserves the right to pursue their own special genius in the company of others who likewise are pursuing their special genius. It's not just a foundation for life, but a way of life. If you want to provide this kind of playful childhood for the children in your life, then join us for a 2-week pop-up version of Teacher Tom's Play-Based Learning starting September 24. It's designed for early childhood educators, childcare providers, parents, and grandparents who know that there is so much more than mere academics. This is a great way to make sure the whole team is on the same page to begin to coming school year. To learn more and to register, click here. But hurry, we start next week!

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!

A Stone Like All the Others

I picked up a small stone and performed some sleight of hand for the children. I then handed the stone to a girl, saying, "I'm giving this to you." Our playground is bestrewn with stones and pebbles. Any one of them would have served my purposes, but I'd selected this one. Now this girl had it. The other children gathered around her, requesting a turn with this "special" stone.

"It's funny how the nature of an object . . . is so changed by the way it has come into your hands, as a gift or a commodity," writes Robin Wall Kimmerer in her book Braiding Sweetgrass. This stone was just a stone until I picked it up, then gave it to someone else. Now it's a treasure.

After trying to make it "disappear" several times, in imitation of me, she passed it along to a playmate, who squealed. The first girl had not squealed when I gave it to her. It had become even more valuable as children jockeyed to be next. 

"The more something is shared, the greater its value becomes," writes Kimmerer.

The stone passed from hand-to-hand over the course of the next half hour or so. Some held it for a few seconds before passing it along. Others took time to cherish it. But they all paid it forward. There was no adult coaxing them or praising them. They knew exactly what to do.

"Many of our ancient teachings counsel that whatever we have been given is supposed to be given away again."

Eventually, the last child took his turn with the stone. He had waited a long time. Only he could say if it was worth it, but he seemed as pleased as the others. 

"From the viewpoint of a private property economy, the "gift" is deemed to be "free" because we obtain it free of charge, at no cost. But in the gift economy, gifts are not free. The essence of the gift is that it creates a set of relationships." And the obligation to give it away again.

I figured the game was now done, but I was wrong. After several minutes the boy began to look around until he spied me. It had started as a stone like all the others, but as it passed from person-to-person as a gift, it had become a talisman, a symbol, and a ceremony. He completed the circle by handing the stone to me. And I returned it to the Earth, who had given it to me.

******

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.

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