Transforming How We Speak With Children

"No climbing to the top!"

When our daughter was in kindergarten, her school installed an amazing rope-and-steel climbing structure. The kindergartners were forbidden from climbing to the very top, which meant that adults were always hovering around the thing, "reminding" the children when they got too high. 

One day, I asked her if she was loving the new climber. She replied, "It's kind of in the way. No one plays on it." When I asked her why, she just shrugged, "It's just not fun."

Awhile back, I posted some thoughts on The Theory of Loose Parts. Appropriately, it is an idea that has emerged from the field of architecture about how the best learning environments are those in which we have permission to shape and manipulate our surroundings, and the things found within our surroundings, to suit our needs, ideas and curiosity.

It's a theory that's generally thought of in terms of the physical environment, but no matter how loose the parts, no matter how flexible the space, if the environment does not grant permission to engage freely, then the children, as loose parts theorist Simon Nicholson puts it, will still be cheated.

That's what happened at our daughter's school. The adults, in their concern about safety (or perhaps liability), had sucked the joy out of it. They would have been better off not installing the thing at all. Or installing a shorter one. Or, the way we did it at Woodland Park, not have a climbing structure at all, but rather provide the materials -- scraps of wood, shipping pallets, car tires, ropes -- from which the children could build their own "climbers."

And at our preschool, that's what the children did. None so high as the one on our daughter's kindergarten playground, of course, but always just the right height for the children creating it. Not only that, these impromptu structures were never in the way because the moment the kids were done with it, the parts were on the move, being put to other uses. 

But this didn't happen just because we provided the parts. It wasn't even just because they were "loose." This kind of self-motivated play can only happen when children know they have permission to follow their curiosity.

At our daughter's school, the adults specifically forbid a certain type of exploration, but much of the time we let children know they don't have permission in more subtle ways. 

For instance, if you listen to the things adults are saying to children at play -- "Come here!" "Slow down!" "Be careful!" -- we hear mostly commands. Research finds that 80 percent of the sentences adults speak to young children are commands. And an environment full of commands is not an environment of permission.

We also hear a lot of school-ish questions, "What color is that?" "How many marbles do I have in my hand?" "Do you know what letter that is?" Implied in these types of questions is the idea that the adults know better than the children what to think about. But even more open-ended questions like, "What do you think will happen if you put one more block on your tower?" tend to steer children into adult approved "places" in which the parts are no longer loose. When we ask questions, we compel children to divert from their own course and onto the one we've chosen for them.

There are times for commands and questions, but if our goal is to create the kind of loose parts environments that allow children to learn at full-capacity, then we are well served to consider even our words as loose parts. When we strive to replace our commands and questions with informational statements -- "That color is red," "I have marbles in my hand," "This is the letter R" -- we are offering children information, facts, that they, like with any loose part, can use or not use.

Instead of the command "Get in the car," we might state the fact, "It's time to go" and let them do their own thinking. Instead of the command "Be careful!" we might say, "The ground below you is concrete and it will hurt if you fall on it." Instead of school-ish questions to which we already know the answers we might instead simply speculate aloud, "I wonder why the sky is blue," leaving it there for the children to consider . . . or not. 

Of course, we might also choose to just not say anything at all which is when our "third teacher," the environment, often does her best work.

We will be discussing this and much more around the virtual campfire at our upcoming one week summer camp (see below). It will be a deep dive for educators, parents, and other caregivers who want to transform their relationship with young children by transforming how we speak with them . . . Or sometimes by not speaking at all! 

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If you want to learn how to transform your own words into the kind of loose parts that allow children to think for themselves, the this summer camp is the place for you! The Technology of Speaking With Children So They Can Think is a one-week exploration of how the language we use with children creates reality . . . for better or worse! We will explore how the way we speak with children creates an environment in which cooperation and peacefulness are the norm, where children take the initiative, solve their own problems, and, most importantly, think for themselves. Group discounts are available, but hurry because registration closes soon. Click here for more information and to register.

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 Endless Dialog With An Interconnected World

Yoan Capote (detail from Isla, oil, nails, fish hooks, artist's blood)

I often talk about my blogging habit as the core of my reflective practice as an educator. I generally don't sit down and write because I have answers, but rather because something has happened that intrigues me, or challenges me, and I want to understand it better.

Maybe it's a child doing something. Maybe it's something I've read. Maybe it's something someone has said. Maybe it's the state of the world. It starts with an anecdote or quote or phenomenon and this part, the writing, is my best effort at making sense of it. I like writing for publication because knowing that someone might read it, gives me an imagined thinking partner or interlocutor. I write a sentence and wonder how someone might respond. Will they, with reason, scoff, will they doubt, will they be confused, will they be angry or depressed or inspired. They say we shouldn't worry what the other people think, and sometimes that's probably good advice, but I find that if I'm not considering how others will respond, then it's often difficult to think of anything at all.

One of the things I think I've learned from working with young children is that they seem to think best while engaged in play. As developmental psychologist Lev Vygotsky put it, "In play a child is always above their average age, above his daily behavior; in play it is as though he were a head taller than themself."

In this way, my blogging, I think, is a form of play, a way to sustain a thread of thought, not with a specific goal in mind, but rather because I've learned if I'm not rushing toward a conclusion, I'm much more likely to discover connections I could not have otherwise anticipated.

In their book, The Dawn of Everything, David Greaber and David Wengrow, write:

“When we are capable of self-awareness, it’s usually for very brief periods of time: the ‘window of consciousness’, during which we can hold a thought or work out a problem, tends to be open on average for roughly seven seconds . . . the great exception to this is when we’re talking to someone else. In conversation, we can hold thoughts and reflect on problems sometimes for hours on tend. This is of course why so often, even if we’re trying to figure something out by ourselves, we imagine arguing with or explaining it to someone else. Human thought is inherently dialogic. Ancient philosophers tended to be keenly aware of all this: that’s why, whether they were in China, India or Greece, they tended to write their books in the form of dialogues. Humans were only fully self-conscious when arguing with one another, trying to sway each other’s views, or working out a common problem.”

Play is likewise a kind of sustaining dialog, a thread that keeps children engaged without forcing a predetermined destination. This is why it stands in such sharp contrast to normal schooling, which is all about predetermined destinations in the form of "correct answers." Play, like dialogue, is inherently about taking the time to explore questions without the pressure of being judged right or wrong.

In his book Sapiens, historian Yuval Noah Harari argues that Neanderthals, our species' chief hominoid rivals, were individually much more intelligent than individual Homo sapiens. If Neandrathals were like mainframe computers, we are much more like PCs, individually less powerful, but far better connected. This is what our species has evolved to do: to think through, with, and alongside people, places, and things. Our minds are not confined to our brains, but rather come into being through the connections we make.

In other words, thinking is at least as much a social activity as it is a cognitive process. Together we're a genius.

We've evolved in conversation, in argument, storytelling, joking, teaching, debating, writing, and playing. And it seems to me that play is the seed from which it all grows. Play is how we evolved to sustain inquiry. It's how we come to stand a head taller than ourselves. Children do it with blocks, mud, and pretending. Adults do it with ideas, stories, and conversations. In both cases, the activity provides enough structure to keep the thread from dissolving, to keep our minds from distraction, while remaining open enough to be surprised and delighted by what we find; not because it's the right answer, but rather, as Eleanor Duckworth puts it, because it's a "wonderful idea."

When we are free to play, this is what we're doing, moving from one wonderful idea to the next, in endless dialog with an interconnected world.

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Who do you want to be when the children arrive? If you want to learn more about how the language we use with children impacts not just our relationships with them, but also their entire learning environment, join us for summer camp. This is my popular 6-week course, The Technology of Speaking With Children So The Can Think, condensed into a single week. Join colleges from around the world as we examine how the language we use with children creates reality. We will explore how the way we speak with children becomes an environment in which cooperation and peacefulness are the norm, where children take the initiative, solve their own problems, and, most importantly, think for themselves. This is great summer PD for the whole team. There is nothing like getting everyone on the same page to start the new school year! Clink here for more information and to register.

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!

Stupid Questions

They say there are no stupid questions, but I beg to differ. We hear stupid questions almost every time adults and young children are together. 

For instance, a child is painting at an easel, exploring color, shape, and motion, experimenting with brushes, paper, and paint. There is an adult watching over her shoulder who points and asks, "What color is that?"

This is a stupid question. 

Here's another example: a child is playing with marbles, exploring gravity, motion and momentum. An adult picks up a handful of marbles and asks, "How many marbles do I have?"

The adult already knows the answer. The child probably does as well, in which case, the adult is distracting her from her deep and meaningful studies in order to reply to a banality. Or she doesn't know the answer, in which case the adult is distracting her from her deep and meaningful studies to play a guessing game.

In a moment, these stupid questions take a child who is engaged in testing her world, which is her proper role, and turns her into a test taker, forced to answer other people's questions rather than pursue the answers to her own.

If it's important that the child know these specific colors and numbers at this specific moment, and it probably isn't, then we should do the reasonable thing and simply tell her,"That's red," or "I have three marbles." If it's not new information, and it probably isn't, she's free to ignore you as she goes about her business of learning. If she didn't know, now she does, in context, as she goes about her business of learning.

This is one of the greatest offenses we commit against children in our current educational climate of testing, testing, and more testing. We yank children away from their proper role as self-motivated scientists, testing their world by asking and answering their own questions, and instead force them to become test takers, occupying their brains with our stupid questions.

In my rapidly approaching summer camp for early childhood educators, we will explore alternatives to our stupid questions as well as the other ways that well-intended adults, through the words we habitually choose, create a reality for young children in which they are discouraged from, and sometimes even "punished" for, thinking for themselves. In so many ways, both overt and subtle, adults unwittingly shut down critical thinking, replacing it with a reality in which mere reaction and obedience is rewarded. The good news is that when we learn this "technology" we can, through our language, create a reality for young children (and anyone else for that matter!) into one of self-motivation, cooperation, respect, and peacefulness.

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Who do you want to be when the children arrive? If you want to learn more about how the language we use with children impacts not just our relationships with them, but also their entire learning environment, join us for summer camp. This is my popular 6-week course, The Technology of Speaking With Children So The Can Think, condensed into a single week. Join colleges from around the world as we examine how the language we use with children creates reality. We will explore how the way we speak with children becomes an environment in which cooperation and peacefulness are the norm, where children take the initiative, solve their own problems, and, most importantly, think for themselves. This is great summer PD for the whole team. There is nothing like getting everyone on the same page to start the new school year! Clink here for more information and to register.

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 Language We Use Creates Reality

We start speaking with our babies from the moment they're born. We know they don't understand what we're saying, of course, but that's beside the point. If we ask them questions, we don't expect answers. If we give them instructions, we don't expect them to follow them. If we tell them the name of something, we know there is no way it means anything to them.

We speak with them because human language is more than just communication: it's one of the primary ways we connect with one another. As a new parent in 1996, I'd not spent time with babies since my own sister was one, but my instinct was to babble and sing whenever I was with her. I knew it didn't matter what I said (or sang), only that I did. 

I couldn't wait until she could talk back. I wanted to know what she had to say even though her eyes, her hands, her feet, her wiggles and kicks and stretches, and especially her cries, told me everything she needed me to know.

She was an early talker. At three months she began regularly saying, "Papa" to me, probably because I'd developed the habit of saying "Papapapapapapapa . . ." whenever I entered to room. By five months, she was starting to form sentences. 

Back then, like most new parents, I was focused on every word that passed between us. It was like a miracle, almost as if the world was being created anew with each sentence that passed between and around us. And in a very real sense it was. The language we use creates reality.

I don't mean this as a metaphor, but as a fact. We speak the world into existence, for ourselves and those around us. A thing said one way, creates one reality; said another, it creates something altogether different. Our sentences, our questions, our tone, and our mindfulness (or lack thereof) shape the world for both ourselves and the young children with whom we spend our days.

It's too easy in the rush and crush of life to go into a kind of remote control, speaking with our fellow humans as if on automatic pilot, and, all too often, this results in creating realities we would rather not, if we were aware, be creating.

In our upcoming "summer camp" this is what we'll be talking about. It's amazing how many of our challenges as educators can be minimized and even eliminated when we turn our focus to the words we use, the sentences we say, and the questions we ask. So many of our adult habits tend to shut children down rather than open up a space in which they can think for themselves.

Language is a miracle: it is the miracle of creation. And sometimes it's the smallest of shifts in how we speak with children that make the biggest difference. 

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Who do you want to be when the children arrive? The countdown for Teacher Tom's Summer Camp is on. In this course you will learn how even seemingly small changes in how you speak with children can transform even the most challenging behaviors without the need for rewards and punishments. This is especially effective when the whole team is on board. And there's nothing like coming together with like-minded educators to get you ready for when the children arrive. To learn more and to register, click here. I hope to see you around the campfire!

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!

"Look What We Did"

As a play-based preschool teacher, I make sure, every day, to have at least two opportunities for making art available to the kids, one indoors and one outdoors. Typically, the outdoor provocation offers the opportunity to get good and messy, although it can get messy indoors as well. Sometimes I go to great effort in preparing things, such as when we do pendulum painting or are melting crayons to pour into play dough molds, but most of the time, I keep it simple.

For instance, I'll roll out a sheet of butcher paper on a table and provide something with which to apply pigment -- crayons, tempera, pastels, water color, makers, pencils, bingo dotters, powdered paint, and so on. And, when appropriate, tools for applying and manipulating the pigment -- brushes of various types and sizes, kitchen tools, stampers, sponges, pipettes, stencils, brayers, cutlery, and so on. 

These are group projects, something to gather around and discuss as you work in creative collaboration. When the paper is full, we take a moment to admire it, then shift it out of the way to make room for another sheet of butcher paper, or cardboard, or a bed sheet, or other communal canvas. These finished products are not signed by any individual. They are not taken home to display on the refrigerator door. No one says, "I made that," but they often say, "Look what we did."

I've recently been revisiting the theories and predictions of philosopher Marshall McLuhan, he of "The medium is the message" fame. In his book The Gutenberg Galaxy, McLuhan points out that the concept of copyright, the idea that an individual could "own" the work they had produced, emerged alongside the transformative technology of the printing press. Looking at the arc of history from the perspective of 1962, the year of my birth, he felt that our emerging electronic media (radio and television specifically) marked the beginning of the end of the reign of print media. 

Print media had made ours into a predominately visual culture, one that both read, and therefore tended to think, in a linear manner. Electronic media was to return us to a kind of "global village" in which oral storytelling came to dominate once more, freeing us of the linearity and shaping us into a people with more in common with pre-printing press cultures and their oral traditions.

And with the death of print culture would come the death of the concept of copyright, which is to say individual ownership of a creative work. 

Up through medieval times, great works of "literature" were certainly created. The Odyssey is showing in theaters right now. Someone named Homer is credited with it, but it's far more likely that "Homer" is a name given to a collective effort over generations. Perhaps it originated with an individual bard who was particularly gifted in retelling these evergreen tales, but the stories themselves are the product of an oral tradition going back over centuries, making it a collective work. 

"Look what we did."

Our concept of copyright, or individual ownership of stories, has extended well into our electronic age. Until the internet arrived, this concept continued to be tenable, but now in the era of AI, it's becoming increasingly clear that the age of copyright, along with the age of print, is coming to an end. It won't happen all at once, there will be plenty of death throes, but pride of authorship is already dissolving. Much of the music we listen to is cobbled together from samples of other people's music. Social media is fueled by re-mixes of memes and clips and reimaginings. And our movies and programs are increasingly erasing the lines between what it proprietary and what is available for common usage. 

I have no doubt that we'll create a leaky dyke of laws to protect copyright for a time, but the writing is on the wall, pun intended. Anonymous graffiti, I believe, has more of a future -- in the long run -- than, say, the collected works of Marshall McLuhan.

And what will we be left with? Something like these children crowding around a table, shoulder-to-shoulder, creating collective works of culture, rather than proprietary works of individual genius.

As Albert Einstein, one of the most iconic individual geniuses of modern times, once complained, "(T)he cult of individual personalities is always, in my view, unjustified . . . It strikes me as unfair, and even in bad taste, to select a few individuals for boundless admiration and to attribute superhuman powers of mind and character to them. This has been my fate."

As historian Darrin McMahon wonders in his book on the history of genius, The Divine Fury, in a world in which Supermen are not needed, in which genius is becoming a group activity, "are we returning to the era in which we are closer to god?"

As I watch these young children crowd around, shoulder-to-shoulder, creating together, I see a through-line hearkening back to pre-printing press times when community meant creating together and remembering together; when a rambling troubadour might come through to sing songs and spin yarns, leaving them behind, not as works of proprietary genius, but as commonly held material to be used by the people, just as the children use crayons and paper to make their own stories.

"Look what we did." Our culture may be generations away from McLuhan's predicted transformation, but preschool classrooms, as pre-literate cultures, are already there. Just look at that crowd around the art table practicing the literacy of the future.

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Who do you want to be when the children arrive? The countdown for Teacher Tom's Summer Camp has begun. In this course you will learn how even seemingly small changes in how you speak with children can transform even the most challenging behaviors without the need for rewards and punishments. This is especially effective when the whole team is on board. And there's nothing like coming together with like-minded educators to get you ready for when the children arrive. To learn more and to register, click here. I hope to see you around the campfire!

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 Practical Wisdom of Living Virtuously

I recently ran outside in the middle of the night with a baseball bat to chase away an intruder who was obviously trying to do mischief.

My neighbors are torn over whether I was courageous or foolhardy.

Several have expressed the feeling that I was "lucky." The man might have been armed. He might have overwhelmed me with superior quickness and strength. I might have actually hit him with the bat, then faced legal liability for using "excessive force." 

On the other hand, one older neighbor insisted that if anything like that happened again, I was to call him and he'd join me with a "steel bar." He insisted that he would be "fierce." A woman, inspired, immediately ordered her own baseball bat. Many have thanked me for protecting "our community."

As I grow older, I find myself thinking more and more about the Ancient Greek concept of "virtue," and specifically about Aristotle's idea that all virtues exist on a continuum, one that is different for each individual.

Courage, for instance, lies on a continuum between cowardice and rashness (or foolhardiness). Generosity lies between stinginess and being a spendthrift. Truthfulness between self-deprecation and boastfulness. Friendliness between servility and sycophancy. We live in a psychological age, one in which we tend to view our behaviors, as a default, through the lens of our emotions. But I find a great deal of value in the continued practice of philosophy. Even as I wielded my bat, I was fully aware of my emotion (fear), but I was equally aware that hiding safely behind my locked door waiting for the police to arrive was, for me, the coward's option.

You can call it foolhardy machismo, and people have. I don't expect anyone else to behave the way I did. Indeed, I've talked the woman who ordered the bat into returning it. But there is always a price to pay for safety, or the perception of safety. 

Yesterday, I discussed bell hooks talking about our culture of fear and what it does to us both as individuals and as a culture. She writes, "Learning to face our fears is one way we embrace love. Our fear may not go away, but it will not stand in the way." To love in the face of fear takes courage. Being free takes courage. The courage comes first. As Doris Lessing asks, "What else is there for any of us but courage?" 

I worry that our obsession with safety is crippling us, and particularly this generation of young people. These children in our care are going to live their entire childhoods under adult supervision, forever being told to "be careful" lest they do something foolhardy. But courage, like every virtue, resides in each individual and the only way to learn what it means, for you, is through practice. And yes, this means, sometimes, perhaps often, erring on the side of rashness. Without courage, without knowing what it takes to be courageous in this world, one is left at the mercy of fear. And fear is the great destroyer of life.

Aristotle's assertion is that each of us must find, for ourselves, the mean between extremes. Living virtuously, he says, is an act of what he called "practical wisdom," the kind of thing that can't be taught, only acquired through the day-to-day practice of living. A life under constant adult supervisions, a life behind locked doors waiting for the police to arrive, never allows us to acquire this practical wisdom and to discover ourselves virtuous.

As Lessing goes on to wonder, "And perhaps (courage) is only a world for being prepared to go on living at all."

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Who do you want to be when the children arrive? The countdown for Teacher Tom's Summer Camp has begun. In this course you will learn how even seemingly small changes in how you speak with children can transform even the most challenging behaviors without the need for rewards and punishments. This is especially effective when the whole team is on board. And there's nothing like coming together with like-minded educators to get you ready for when the children arrive. To learn more and to register, click here. I hope to see you around the campfire!

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 Choice to Love

We were all afraid of Mr. Turner. He was the principal at Meadowfield Elementary in Columbia, SC, and, it was rumored, he had a wooden paddle in his office with "holes drilled in it" so he could swing it faster. Even as an eight-year-old, I thought the physics of that sounded off, but I sure didn't want to test it. The most sure-fire way for a teacher to shut down disruptive behavior was to threaten to send the offender to the principal's office.

"Cultures of domination," writes bell hooks, "rely on the cultivation of fear as a way to ensure obedience."

As a boy, I valued my reputation as a "good boy." I valued the good opinion of my teachers and strived to shine in their eyes. I didn't always like or even understand what I was being taught, but I knew that learning was largely immaterial. The important thing was to convince the adults that the lessons were learned, which meant doing well on the quizzes and tests, yes, but more vital was to cheerfully abide by the rules. So that's where I focused my efforts, even as I risked being labeled a "teacher's pet."

I never came close to being sent to the principal's office. Avoiding sticks was easy for me. I was after those carrots. In other words, I fully accepted the notion that those with power could tell me what to do because, after all, they could mete out punishments. I wanted nothing to do with those, so I set my sights on the reward side of the equation. 

As a child, I struggled to understand kids who flirted with the punishment side, even as a part of me admired their courage, but I now know that my choice to be a "good boy" wasn't one that every child was capable of making. 

In all honesty, I doubt that paddle ever existed. I remember Mr. Turner as a large, chuckling, slightly fuddley man in the mold of Mr. Whetherbee from the Archie comic books. There were never any credible sightings of his paddle, let alone, actual evidence of its use. I suspect that the paddle rumor wasn't intentionally planted, but rather was the product of children who were regularly spanked sharing their fears with the rest of us: they knew that even loved ones had the potential to hit them. So even if the paddle was a fiction, the fear was real. I was a "good boy," but that doesn't mean that the threat of Mr. Turner's paddle wasn't a baseline consideration in every choice I made while at school.

Advocates for punishments value them as "motivation." And they are, I suppose, in that children learn to be motivated by fear. And fear is a powerful, yet deadly, motivator.

"In our society," writes hooks, "we make much of love and say little about fear. Yet we are all terribly afraid most of the time. As a culture we are obsessed with the notion of safety. Yet we do not question why we live in states of extreme anxiety and dread. Fear is the primary force upholding structures of domination. It promotes the desire for separation, the desire not to be known . . . Isolation and loneliness are central causes of depression and despair."

This is the real challenge of our age: isolation, loneliness, and disconnection, the natural consequence of a culture of fear. And that fear is used to "motivate" us. There doesn't even have to be a paddle. The rumors are enough.

Today, most children go to elementary schools where corporal punishment is off the table. You would think that this would contribute to lowered anxiety, but according to the American Psychological Association, rates of anxiety in children have been on the rise since well before Covid. 

Our obsession with safety is a product of our culture of fear. This has led us to greatly limit, in the name of safety, our children's access to independent play, which in turn contributes greatly to increased mental health challenges, and specifically anxiety and depression. According to researcher Peter Gray, rates of mental health issues among children, even very young ones, have been rising dramatically over the past many decades and are now at the highest rates ever recorded. 

"We would like to think of history as progress," Gray writes, "but if progress is measured in the mental health and happiness of young people, then we have been going backward at least since the early 1950's."

"When we choose to love," writes hooks, "we choose to move against fear -- against alienation and separation. The choice to love is a choice to connect -- to find ourselves in the other."

If being educated is defined as being equipped to deal with the world in which we find ourselves, it seems that this, the choice to love, is the most necessary thing in the world, more important that literacy, more important than math. And love is impossible as long as the paddle remains in the backs of our minds.

I like that hooks refers to love as a choice -- "The choice to love." As an early childhood educator, this is a choice that I strive to make every day. Fear is a powerful motivator, but connection is infinitely more powerful. Only when a child feels connected, can they be truly motivated from within. An obedient child is motivated by fear and sycophancy. A connected child is one who seeks even deeper connection through cooperation, agreement, and kindness. And that, ultimately, is what is most needed if our children, and our world, are to thrive.

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Who do you want to be when the children arrive? The countdown for Teacher Tom's Summer Camp has begun. In this course you will learn how even seemingly small changes in how you speak with children can transform even the most challenging behaviors without the need for rewards and punishments. This is especially effective when the whole team is on board. And there's nothing like coming together with like-minded educators to get you ready for when the children arrive. To learn more and to register, click here. I hope to see you around the campfire!

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!