All Artists are Scientists

I was chatting with an artist, a painter, at her studio and gallery, discussing her process. I always ask artists about their process because I'm forever trying to steal their ideas and figure out how to convert them into preschool art explorations.

When I told her I'm a preschool teacher, I added, "All our art is process art. It's really just science." And she replied, 'That's how every artist approaches their work. We're all scientists."

Whether an educator, parent, or just, you know, a human being, it pays to be curious about process.

For instance, some time ago, I came across this video:



My initial thoughts were, "Way cool" and "There is no way to make this into a manageable, affordable class room project." It was at about this time, however, that I received some shelving I'd ordered that came with far too much packaging. In fact I wound up with something like 60 pieces of perfectly good corrugated cardboard cut into nice 12" X 10" pieces that had been stuffed into the boxes to fill up the empty space. That's when it began to occur to me that if the "tall" part were short enough, the paint thick enough, and the pouring containers small enough, it just might work.

So I got to work with our "third teacher," the environment, in this case the storage room and the junk we'd been collecting.

I had several pieces of scrap 2"x2" cedar that a parent had dropped off after a home improvement project, which I cut into 2" to 3" lengths. I then hot glued them to the center of the cardboard. I wanted to thicken up the tempera paint so it wouldn't run all over the place, plus reduce the cost, and white glue seemed like the perfect answer, so I pre-mixed roughly 3 parts glue to 1 part paint. And finally, to increase the odds that the "paint" wouldn't just run right off the cardboard and onto the floor as it dried, we used small specimen cups (also donated) to control the quantity the children had for each pour. 

Then, "Go!"

The kids didn't always stick to pouring on top of the wood and, naturally, there was other kinds of experimenting, like mixing our own custom colors (primarily "preschool gray," which is what you get when you try to mix a "rainbow").

I'd removed all the chairs, thinking the kids would have better "aim" on their feet, but several chose to work sitting anyway. 

We were so engaged that we took the project outdoors and kept going.

I'd call this a success, even though the dried pieces, which we scattered around the classroom on every available horizontal surface, adhered themselves to the table tops in such a way there were only a few left to take home on the following day. But that's hardly the point. The kids were entranced by watching how their paint flowed, oozed, and mixed, and that's the point. They got to tinker with the idea which is where the learning takes place.

******

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 Had Built a School and We Were Our Own Teachers

When I was a college sophomore, I had four roommates. We'd all been randomly assigned to the same dormitory floor as freshmen and liked each other enough to give it a go in a large two-bedroom house just off campus.

Many of our other friends from the dorms had joined fraternities, but none of us saw ourselves as the frat boy type. Our house was located to the west of the majority of the frat houses, so we mockingly called ourselves Frat West. Our joke caught on. One evening, while I was there alone, an entire sorority stopped by to serenade me: just me alone hanging out a window with 30 young women singing to me. 

My roommates and I made an agreement to start the year: we would create a schedule that required one of us to be responsible for a dinner for all five of us each evening, Monday-Thursday. That left us with a schedule that meant we each got an occasional week off kitchen duty. Our other rule was that you were allowed one "cheat meal" per quarter. A cheat meal was anything that we collectively agreed was not "real cooking" (like frozen pizza), but even then it had to be balanced according to government guidelines (e.g., dairy, meat, vegetable, fruit, grains). None of us were seasoned cooks, although my mother had taught me a few of her recipes, which gave me the reputation as the "gourmet" of the bunch.

Our friends predicted the schedule would fall apart within weeks. Even my own mother later told me that she doubted we'd be able to stick with it. And I don't blame them. Here we were, five young men, responsible for preparing our own food for the first time in our lives. No one expected young men to manage a household. Certainly studying and social life would come first. 

That doubt unified us. By the end of the school year, we could tell the story of each of our collective meals together. 

There was the night that Mike made "rhino burgers": burnt on the outside and raw on the inside. 

Kevin tried his hand at Chicago style pizza. It's still the standard by which I judge deep dish.

Dan disliked salad dressing, so one night I served him an unaltered head of iceberg lettuce in his salad bowl, which he gamely consumed in its entirety.

Brian got us to agree that he could be replaced one evening by guest chef Father Patrick from the Catholic House. Father P complained about our dull knives. 

Friends often asked to join us as a sixth or seventh, which we typically accommodated.

Between defying doubt and our friendly competitiveness, we stuck with the program from September through June. And even when one of us failed, we praised or panned accordingly, but we always ate the food. 

Looking back, I can see that the year was the product of accidental genius. We placed constraints on ourselves through agreement -- dinner for five, balanced, Monday through Thursday, only one cheat per quarter -- but within those constraints we'd given ourselves enormous freedom. And we had the most useful, and brutally honest, feedback mechanism imaginable: people who knew us well actually eating the entire meal. 

I didn't see it at the time, but I now recognize that we had created a functioning anarchistic community, in the original sense of the word. Or in less controversial language, we created a pretty sophisticated cooperative labor system.

Those balanced dinners became more than mere healthy eating. They were community meetings. They were events in the shared history of five people. Remember the turkey-extra-crappy? The meals became landmarks.

Nobody taught a course called Cooking 101. Together, we constructed an environment with real responsibility, meaningful constraints, repeated opportunities, natural consequences, and a community that depended on us. We all learned because learning was a necessary part of living together. In fact, I know that I learned at least as much from this experiment in community as I did in any of my classes.

This is where I first really learned to cook, but it was much more than that. We had a communal need. Rather than each of us solving it individually, we created a cooperative system into which everyone contributed, and from which everyone benefited. Responsibility rotated. 

This isn't far off the kind of cooperative preschool community in which I spent my teaching career. It's where I got first-hand experience with rules designed not to enforce obedience, but as agreements that allowed our community to function. We didn't do any of it to avoid punishment or earn praise, but rather because the other four guys were counting on us. The original goal might have been to eat decently and save money, but the real outcome was learning about one another, developing traditions and stories, and creating community.

Every Sunday at midnight we would do our grocery shopping. We chose that exact time because we agreed that none of us would have other plans. There was a big, no-frills grocery store called Waremart, known for its low prices. We each contributed $20.

We took a single cart through that virtually empty store and together shopped for the ingredients we needed for our meals, but also what we individually wanted to have around for breakfasts, lunches, and weekends, not to mention household necessities like toilet paper. We were in a constant state of negotiation as we jockeyed to stay within our collective $100 budget. One thing we all agreed upon was that we each got our own loaf of sliced bread, white or wheat, for the week. Another was that the common budget could not be spent on dessert . . . Unless it was ingredients for chocolate chip cookies, which would be made, and consumed on an evening when we were all at home.

I'll never forget the cashier, a middle-aged woman, checking us out after our first group shopping expedition. When the final bill came due, we were within pennies of $100. She said, "You boys made good choices." 

The best part is that even at the time, we all approached it as a kind of lark, a challenge, an adventure in which failure was always a possibility. Even our midnight shopping felt like a night on the town with friends. 

In other words, we were playing.

It was just a bunch of young men experimenting with life, creating it together to suit ourselves and one another. It's kind of stunning to think about how much learning was embedded in our play: budgeting, meal planning, nutrition, compromise, division of labor, accountability, generosity, cooking, economics, shopping, conflict. We needed no other curriculum because we had something to accomplish together. That's what we play-based educators call project-based learning.

In Frat West we had built a school and we were our own teachers.

But most importantly, I think, is that we were learning that autonomy isn't the opposite of community. Indeed, we were learning that a healthy community is what makes autonomy possible.

******

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!

Learning a New Game

Among the first games we play with our babies is some version of give-and-take. 

We show an object to them and they take it from us wth their little fingers. As they get a little older, they often enjoy a more advanced version of the game in which they hand the item back to us, then take it again, then give, then take, delighting in the pattern, the cooperation, the interaction. 

Over time, we stop recognizing it as a game, it's just part of how we interact as we play with our kids. If they snatch a block from our hand as we're building them a tower together, we hardly notice it. If they commandeer the book we are reading to them to turn their own pages, we find it cute. If we're rocking a doll in our arms and our child wants to imitate us, no words are spoken as they take that doll as their own.

This is all as it should be at home, but as any parent with older children will attest, it's not a game that always goes over well with other kids. As adults we don't attach any particular value to playthings, indeed we tend to think of them as rightfully belonging to the children, but other kids, be they older siblings or preschool classmates, tend to be far from sanguine about having valued things snatched from their grasp. At any given moment in a preschool classroom, especially at this time in the school year, there is likely to be a child who is upset about it and a child who is equally confused about the fuss. After all, this is how they've learned the world of play works: I want something, I take it.

As a preschool teacher, I don't allow children to snatch things from my hands. Whenever I see a tiny fist reaching for the object I'm holding I tighten my grip and say, matter-of-factly, "I'm using this." I then follow that up with something like, "If you want it, you can ask me for it," or "You can play with it when I'm done." If the child is very young, I then relinquish it almost instantly. With older children, I might play with it for a few seconds, or even minutes, before saying, "I'm done with it. Now it's your turn." My objective is to simply role model a pattern of interaction that I hope becomes, so to speak, a new "game" for the children to play.

One day, we were playing with our Fisher-Price toys, a significant collection amassed over the decades as families have donated their old toys to the school. The big plastic tub contains dozens, if not hundreds of those squat figurines representing both people and animals. A group of children were struggling with snatching and emotions were on edge, so I sat beside the tub, picked out a polar bear, saying as I held it up, "I found a polar bear." As I expected, one of the children immediately reached out to make a grab. I pulled it back, "Hey, I'm using this!" She looked stunned. I then said, "If you want it, you can ask me." She said, "Please?" and I handed it to her, saying, "Sure, I'm done with it now."

I then proceeded to remove other animals from the tub, "I have a tiger," "I have a parrot," "I have a bear," and so on. Children gathered around. At first many hands grabbed for the toys and I went through the process again and again. Soon, as you would expect, the children began to catch on, many of them clearly delighted with the game we were playing. Occasionally, I would answer them with, "In a minute, I'm still using it," or "I'll give it to you when I'm finished," an addition that the children accepted with apparent patience. Before long they were playing it with one another, practicing both sides of the equation.

I'm under no illusion that this alone will make for a snatch-free classroom going forward. Old habits die hard, and there are levels of empathy, fairness, perspective, and simple courtesy to be learned, but we have weeks, months, and years to learn new ones.

******

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!

"Not Just Allies, But Accomplices"

Fin whales, the second largest animals on earth after blue whales, can communicate across entire oceans. They are capable of producing extremely low-pitched calls that travel up to 13,000 miles under water. They are also capable of hearing those sounds which means that a fin whale off the shores of Bermuda can "talk" to whales hanging out near Ireland. 

Mice and other rodents carry on like birds, twittering, chirping, and singing, yet they do so at such high-pitched frequencies that they're undetectable to the human ear.

Many fish interact with the world through electrical fields, turning their bodies into batteries, essentially extending their sense of touch beyond their physical bodies. Migratory birds, sharks, and a host of other animals orient according to the earth's magnetic fields. We know they do these things even though, as humans, we have no way to imagine what it might be like to "see" through electricity or "hear" through magnetism. Indeed, we are even limited to the metaphors of sight and sound which probably have little in common with the actual experience.

There is so much going on in the world about which we are totally unaware. This is true of all species. We are trapped in the bubble of our senses, or what scientists call our umwelt. The entire umwelt of some spiders is the vibrations of their webs. The umwelt of bats consists largely of echoes. Even the umwelt of the dogs who sleep in our beds is largely incomprehensible to us.

We struggle to understand what it might be like to experience the world as another species, just as we often struggle to understand the different experiences and perspectives of our fellow humans. A while back, I was talking with Nick Terrones, who was then the director of the all-tribes Daybreak Star preschool in Seattle. He told me that many Indigenous people conceive of other species, including plants, as relatives, an idea that might be alien to someone, say, from a European background which has long viewed Mother Nature as a collection of resources to exploit.

While it may be impossible to fully understand the experience of other species, all we have to do to better understand other humans, including children, is to be curious and to listen with the intention of understanding. When we do this we come to see the world through their eyes, through their traditions and cultures, through their respective umwelts. They are showing us truths about which we were totally unaware, helping us overcome the hubris and arrogance of believing that our own perspective is all there is. When we do this, we expand our understanding of who we are.

They have also, just as importantly, shown us where our umwelts overlap, creating connection and relationship, showing us that we are all relatives, and making it possible for us to go through the world, as Nick says, "Not just as allies, but as accomplices."

This is how we expand beyond our bubbles to become the curious and connected adult accomplices our children need us to be.

******

Books, like Sand Talk, 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!

Our Worst Days Become Our Best Stories

A couple months back, within the span of a few weeks, two bad things happened to me: I rode my bike into a nearly invisible, taut, kite string that lay across my path, lacerating both of my forearms. Not long after, I was awakened in the middle of the night by a nefarious knucklehead trying to steal things from my patio who I chased off by wielding a baseball bat.

I had just read Charan Ranganath's book Why We Remember, and it inspired me to be as conscious as possible about how I stored those traumatic memories. And specifically, I tried to store them as stories that made me feel good about myself, while also entertaining others.

Comedian Jimmy Carr asserts that our worst days become our best stories. My goal was to be aware of how these stories lived within me.

I live in a very tight-knit neighborhood, and both stories have spread amongst my neighbors, told second and third hand at this point, circling back to me in fascinating and inaccurate ways. 

The way I tell my kite string story, it's as the purest of accidents. I'm proud of the fact that although I yelled at the guy whose downed kite caused my pain, I forgave him on the spot. Every time I notice my rather ghastly scars, I'm reminded of that man, Tony, who I pity more than myself. Even as I was still bleeding, I urged him to not stop flying his kites, although the last I communicated with him, he'd taken a break from his wholesome hobby.

When the story comes back to me through the grapevine, however, it appears there are some who aren't ready to forgive him on my behalf. If it had happened to them, I'm told, they would have sued, or at least threatened to sue. They find my story incomplete. When I correct their version with my own, they shake their heads in disagreement. They want, by proxy, their pound of flesh.

But the stories that have round-robined back to me about the baseball bat incident are even more fascinating. In some versions I'm portrayed as a kind of everyman hero. One of my neighbors even immediately purchased her own baseball bat. Another close neighbor demanded, almost gleefully, that if it happens again, I should phone him before confronting the "baddie." He promised to arrive with a "steel bar" and that he would be "fierce."

My wife Jennifer likes to take the lead in telling the baseball bat story. In her version, I "leapt" onto the patio, indeed, she says I cleared it entirely, landing with both feet on the lawn. She says I shouted ferociously, like a character in a Tarantino movie. She never fails to mention that I was shirtless. As you can imagine, I love that this is the way she's stored the memory/story, even if it's not quite how I remember it. It makes me sound like a superhero.

On the other hand, many versions of the story have come back with me as a chest-thumping idiot who could have been badly hurt or even killed. 

As a friend said to me, "Both things can be true." Although, to be honest, I really can't embrace the second version. I never really felt endangered, even in hindsight.

Looking back, I've had quite a bit of experience with people who others view as nefarious. I've rousted unhoused sleepers from the school playground on more than one occasion. I've even had to coax them from inside the building. 

A man who I know to struggle with addiction and mental illness was lurking about in the darkened room across the hall. When I confronted him, he insisted that no one could see him. When I said that I could see him, he replied, "Except you."

Another time, I chased down a guy who had tried to steal my bike in order to say, "You tried to steal my bike. Come on, man, get with the times!"

I've also spent weeks hunting in the various local encampments for one of these fellows whose family (we sometimes forget they have families) said he had a public episode shortly after I hustled him off, then disappeared. I knew that the man I'd caught in the shadows had a family who sent him his medications every month in care of our landlord Pastor Gay; the same pastor who considered it part of her job to care for the people sleeping rough in our neighborhood, who we all knew engaged in petty crimes and other anti-social activities to get by.

I knew they weren't so much dangerous villains as they were knuckleheads. Forgive me the name calling, but it's a label that allows me to understand them best; to pity them. I've been a knucklehead more often than I care to admit. 

In other words, maybe I wasn't brave when I confronted our intruder, despite my wife's story, so much as experienced. Experience has taught me that the scruffy man in the shadows is not necessarily the villain my frightened imagination can so easily create. He might be dangerous. I can't know. But he is also a human being. And, quite possibly, a knucklehead.

I've not yet succeeded in storing the bat story in the way I'd hoped, at least not entirely. While I love hearing Jennifer's version and I like knowing that I am still capable of protecting myself if necessary, I'm far more proud of the times that I disarmed myself and faced the person in front of me as another human being — fallible and, quite possibly, a knucklehead.

******

Books, like Sand Talk, 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 We Lose When We Can't Get Lost

There are a couple of inventions that have made my lived experience less pleasant, and I'm not talking about smartphones or AI.

The first is the telephone answering machine. Prior to the answering machine, if you wanted to talk to me, you had to keep calling until I answered. The moment I got my first answering machine, people started asking, "Why didn't you return my call?" Suddenly, the onus of making contact could be placed on me by anyone at anytime, even by people I had no desire to speak with. The answering machine is long gone, but its legacy -- email, text messages, direct messages -- just put the whole thing on steroids. Now, I even receive email from advertisers that scold, "I've written to you several times about this"

I don't want to be rude, but the modern world has become one big answering machine of flashing lights telling me that someone, everyone, is attempting to place the obligation of communication on me. Well, I left you a message . . .

The second invention is GPS. I know, it's an amazing thing to not get lost in the world. As long as we have service, it's almost impossible to get lost, even in strange or foreign places. 

People my age know what it's like to be lost, to have to rely on your wits and the kindness of strangers to get back on track. Some of my favorite travel memories involve times when I didn't know where I was. I was once lost in Paris, having gone out on a ramble, only to find that I'd taken too many turns to recall the way back to my hotel. I stopped at a street cafe to collect myself over a cup of coffee. I looked up to find a most magnificent cathedral across the way. It turned out it was Notre Dame. I felt almost as if I'd discovered this famed tourist attraction because I'd not sought it, I'd not planned for it, but rather came across it in my travels.

Another time, while lost, I found myself in light industrial area. I stepped into an open garage door to find it was an artist's studio. Specifically, he was blowing glass, a process I'd never seen so close-up. He sent me on my way with a bespoke piece of glass that he blew for me on the spot.

In her book Wanderlust, Rebecca Solnit writes, "Exploring the world is one of the best ways of exploring the mind."

And implied in the act of exploration, at least for me, is this idea of not really knowing where you are or where you are going. Exploring the world or the mind suggests that we are fully alert, using all of our senses, taking in the strangeness and foreignness as an outsider, an innocent, curious, wondering.

Solnit refers to "the mind at three miles per hour," a pace of body and thought that allows for exploration rather than mere sightseeing.

I share Solnit's fondness for long walks. When I travel as Teacher Tom, I'm generally hired for a specific purpose, but there are always hours during which I'm free to roam. I rarely consult the "What's Happening" or "Must See" listings, and instead simply wander. In this way, I got to watch dog sled races through the streets of Fairbanks, Alaska. I once found myself in Sydney's magnificent botanical gardens. I've re-discovered one of my childhood homes in the suburbs of Athens, Greece. 

I've also found myself walking along motorways without sidewalks, trapped in a maze of dead ends, and chased by aggressive (seeming) off-leash dogs. That's the other side of exploring, of course. It's not all Notre Dame.

Just as the answering machine became its own kind of slippery slope, the advent of GPS has virtually eliminated the necessity of surrendering to being lost, and reduced the opportunity to experience the unexpected. We get from point A to point B as efficiently as possible. We plan our itineraries, take our photos, then get back on track. I recently spoke with a 17-year-old who told me of his panic over finding himself in a rural part of Oregon where there was "no connectivity." That was my entire life until relatively recently, but today connectivity is part of our baseline reality. Being lost today isn't a normal aspect of freedom, but rather an emergency.

And I miss it.

I still go out on those long walks. And yes, I do carry my phone. I turn it off because I crave being "out of touch" for a few hours, but it's impossible to forget that should I "get lost" I can be immediately found, complete with step by step directions to food, water, and transportation. No need to stick my head into an artist's studio. No way to find myself amidst huskies pulling sleds. No exploration of either the world or my mind.

The mind at three miles per hour, however, seems like the perfect thing. It seems like how we are meant to think, while moving, outdoors, communing with unfamiliarity, exploring, learning about the world and ourselves.

Today's children may well go their entire lives without the experience of being lost. They may never know what it means to temporarily disappear from the known world. And that, I think, is a loss.

******

Books, like Sand Talk, 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!

Childhood is the Time for Falling in Love

I'm currently planning an exciting DIY project. 

The wicker armrests and backs of our patio furniture are coming apart. It's nice, well-made furniture, and the sides are still looking nice, so I've had the idea to add teak planks to cover the broken wicker. In my mind, it looks good. In my mind, I can envision exactly how I'm going to do it. I even think I already have all the tools I'm going to need, other than perhaps a little sandpaper. I calculate that it will cost around $200 to do the job, which is a lot less expensive than new furniture.

I actually think it will make the furniture look even better than it did when it was new; more solid, more substantial, and I like the way teak tends to weather into a soft grey. My friends have different opinions. My wife Jennifer, despite knowing that I have a history of successful home improvement projects (one of the main reasons, I joke, that we've remained married for 40 years), is doubtful so I've just ordered the minimal amount of material to finish one chair as a proof of concept.

I don't fault anyone for doubting me. After all, I'm an amateur. 

An amateur, by definition, is someone who does something for pleasure or as a hobby instead of for money, but the word also often connotes someone who simply isn't very good at something. We often dismiss things as "amateurish." But then there are, say, amateur athletes or amateur artists who we admire, in part, because they are amateurs. They are doing something for the love of doing it. Indeed the word amateur comes from the Latin amator, "lover," from amare, "to love."

In his iconic book The Medium is the Massage, philosopher Marshall McLuhan writes: "Professionalism is environmental. Amateurism is anti-environmental. Professionalism merges the individual into patterns of total environment. Amateurism seeks the development of the total awareness of the individual and the critical awareness of the ground rules of society. The amateur can afford to lose. The professional tends to classify and specialize, to accept uncritically the ground rules of the environment . . . the “expert” is the man who stays put."

Part of becoming a professional is that we must learn to function successfully within an existing "professional" environment. The professional must master its assumptions, conventions, categories, standards, vocabulary, and measures of success. When McLuhan uses the word "environmental" he's talking about the "ground rules" that become so habitual that they cease to even be noticed.

A professional is a person who has become adapted. They have learned what it means to be, say, a "good" lawyer, a "good" teacher, or a "good" carpenter. The professional knows what is "legitimate," "acceptable," and, perhaps most importantly, what success is meant to look like.

In contrast, the amateur hasn't internalized those rules. Indeed, the amateur may not even know they exist and therefore has the freedom to ask questions the professional would not even think to ask, such as "Why must it be done in this way?"

"There are children playing in the street who could solve some of my top problems in physics," wrote J. Robert Oppenheimer, "because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago." That loss is one of the risks of becoming a professional.

I'm not saying that professionalism is necessarily a bad thing, but rather to suggest that perhaps it's best not to rush ourselves towards professionalism, especially since it can tend to turn something one loves into a mere "job."

I'm an amateur bread baker -- sour dough baguettes are my speciality. When I deliver fresh bread to my neighbors, they often say something like, "You should sell these at the farmer's market" or "You should start a bakery!" It's a nice compliment, but I know that the moment I start doing it for anything other than pleasure, it will become, well, less pleasurable and that's something I don't want to lose.

The professional has something at stake: reputation, status, livelihood, credentials, measurable outcomes. The professional therefore has reasons to stay inside the established rules.

The amateur—at least McLuhan's ideal amateur—can screw around.

They can try something that probably won't work. They can abandon it halfway through. They can pursue something merely because it's interesting. They can combine things that aren't “supposed” to go together. They can ask questions whose answers have no practical value. They can fail without having failed at being an amateur.

In other words, amateurs can play.

A four-year-old building a block tower isn't a junior architect. She's an amateur builder in the deepest sense. She doesn't need the tower to stand. She doesn't need to optimize materials. She doesn't have a client or deadline. She doesn't need to demonstrate mastery against a rubric. She can build it badly, knock it over, turn the blocks into sandwiches, discover something about balance, forget about balance entirely, and wander off to dig a hole.

And importantly, the freedom to lose, or to fail, is what makes discovery possible.

Play-based education protects amateurism. Standard schooling prematurely professionalizes childhood.

Consider how much of conventional schooling resembles professionalization: specialized subjects, schedules, externally defined objectives, standards, performance measurement, comparison with peers, deadlines, evaluation by experts, and increasingly narrow definitions of competence.

We say, in effect: Here are the ground rules. Learn to succeed within them.

Whereas play, amateurism, permits children to discover the ground rules themselves and, crucially, to discover that the ground rules can be changed. And that's why children playing in the street may have an advantage over a professional.

This rush to professionalize childhood is a misguided effort to dismiss a necessary and beautiful mode of learning: amateurism. We want children to get good at things, to master the ground rules, to produce measurable outcomes, often before they've had enough time to screw around with the world.

The amateur, remember, is the lover. Children at play are amateurs in this oldest and best sense of the word. They pursue things because they are interesting. They do things badly. They fail without being failures. They change the rules. They abandon one thing for another. They follow questions that lead nowhere, then suddenly somewhere.

There will be plenty of time for professionalism. Childhood is the time for falling in love.

******

Books, like Sand Talk, 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!

Extending Themselves Into the World

Karntakuringu Jakurrpa

I've been driving cars for 45 years. It's been decades since I spent time and energy thinking about driving. I just do it. When I was first behind the wheel, when I was learning about driving, I had to think about every aspect of what I was doing, but today it is second nature.

As Tyson Yunkaporta explains it in his book Sand Talk: "At the simplest level, when we hold a tool, our brain recognizes it as an extension of our arm. It isn't really part of our body, but it becomes an embodied extension of our neural processes."

This ability to make and use tools, like hammers or cars, is one of the things that makes Homo sapiens the species we are. Of course, other species, like apes, otters, and crows, use tools, but none to the extent that we do.

I recently observed a toddler stop to consider a stick on the ground. On wobbly legs, she stood over that stick for a moment, before carefully, awkwardly, bending at the waist and knees to get closer to it. Again, she paused to catch her balance before reaching out her hand, fingers splayed. It took her a couple attempts to grasp hold of it. She fell on her bottom in the effort to stand upright again, but then, without dropping the stick, she pushed herself back onto her feet. She then began testing the world with that stick, tapping it on the ground, poking tree trunks, sticking it into holes. It had become "an embodied extension of (her) neural processes."

We've all observed young humans doing these kinds of things. This urge to extend our bodies and minds out into our environment is, in many ways, what learning is all about. Reggio Emilia educators consider "the environment" to be a teacher, equal in significance to human teachers. Indigenous wisdom, no matter where we find it in the world, has more often than not acknowledged the interconnectedness between us humans and the rest of creation.

"At more complex levels," Yunkaporta writes, "the meaning we make with places, people, and objects and the way we organize interactions between these things become an extension of our thinking. Through meaning-making, we effectively store information outside our brains, in objects, places, and relationships with others." (Italics are mine)

A while back, I went golfing for the first time in 30 years. I was concerned I would make a fool of myself, and I did, but not nearly to the degree I'd feared. Indeed, the moment I picked up a club, I was reconnected to the golf clubs of my youth. I thought of my father's persimmon wood drivers, then my father, then of taking those clubs to our local municipal course and the pride of having the pro there enthuse over their rarity and beauty. I thought I'd forgotten everything about golf, but the moment I took my first swing, my body and mind embodied much of the knowledge I had stored away in those clubs from long ago. As I went around the course, I was in the past as much as the present, as the course itself -- the grass, the sand traps, the greens, the balls, the tees -- taught and re-taught knowledge, even wisdom, that I'd left stored there long ago.

Many of us will gather with our extended families over the upcoming holidays where we will reconnect with knowledge that we keep stored in our relationships with others. Perhaps we will spend time in our childhood homes or engaging in rituals and traditions that reconnect us to things we thought we'd forgotten. If the lessons we learned were of kindness and love, those will surround us. If they were harsh or sad, we will resist or avoid the people, places, or things that store our pain, which is probably why so many of us find the holidays challenging.

Young children are just beginning this process of extending themselves into the world, of connecting their neural processes with their environment. They are just beginning to store their knowledge and wisdom outside of their brains. They will learn things in school, although most of it will remain in school, stored there in the classrooms, teachers, and classmates. Their important connections will be made with the people, places, and things from life itself.

"If you use a familiar object to help you encode new knowledge that you are learning," write Yunkaporta, "then when you pick up that object or even just visualize it, you instantly remember what you learned. It has become a tangible metaphor, an overlap between the two worlds." This goes for people and places as well as things. Writes Yunkaporta, "This is how spirit works."

******

Books, like Sand Talk, 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!