Gossiping

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 or Brad Pitt, 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, empowers us to 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 is 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 love 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 consider the opinions 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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Even the most thriving play-based environments can grow stale at times. I've created this collection of my favorite free (or nearly free) resources for educators, parents, and others who work with young children. It's my gift to you! Click here to download your own copy and never run out of ideas again!

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Creating a Learning Environment for Creative Thinking and New Ideas

Jean Piaget in his office

The conventional wisdom is that an uncluttered classroom is best for young learners. I regularly see photos labeled as "classroom don'ts" with scads of posters and other art on the walls, things dangling from the ceilings, and materials stuffed willy-nilly on shelves. These busy, messy spaces, we're told, are full of distractions, making it difficult to concentrate. They are visually over-stimulating, whereas a cleaner, tidier space, with it's bare walls and organized shelves, calms children, which is, according to this theory, the proper mindset for learning. Indeed, research indicates that a tidy space may promote such desirable traits as healthy eating and generosity. People in tidy spaces are, likewise, more likely to follow rules, adhere to expectations, and to make "conventional" choices, which would, I presume, make them better at, say, passing a test.

"If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?" ~Albert Einstein

Research also indicates that a messy space promotes creative thinking and stimulates new ideas. "Disorderly environments seem to inspire breaking free of tradition, which can produce fresh insights," according Kathleen Vohs, the University of Minnesota psychological researcher who studies these things. "Orderly environments, in contrast, encourage convention and playing it safe."

So I can understand why educators concerned with such things as "classroom management" and marching children through a curriculum would value a spit-spot classroom.

Steve Jobs' home office

I can also understand why educators might want the visual of a tidy space as a way to appeal to parents considering where to send their children to school: order is very appealing in the abstract.

But it seems that what we lose is creativity and independent thought. And, indeed, as we will be exploring in my 3-week, pre-holiday course -- Controlled Chaos: Teacher Tom's Guide to Play-Based Classroom Management -- that's a lot to lose in the name of arbitrary adult control.

I'm certain that some people are reading this with arguments in their heads one way or another, because, naturally, we all have our personal preferences. My own home tends to be very tidy ( . . . as far as you know, because I tidy up for company!) I suppose I consider my natural state, as far as space goes, as right on the edge. What I do with the next hour will often determine whether it's neat as a pin or a pig pen. I've seen a kind of ebb and flow. It almost feels like I need to occasionally clear the canvas, so to speak, before I can launch into my "real work." And then for weeks, the laundry situation is a mess, my counters are bestrewn, and my table tops are home to disorderly stacks.

Albert Einstein's desk. Ralph Morse/Time

The notion of space is a fascinating thing to consider. For most of human existence, we spent the bulk of our waking ours in unconfined space, with the sky as our ceiling, but we've always also created interior spaces in which to secure ourselves. Today, most of us spend most of our lives indoors and this goes for children as well. Indoor space is fundamentally different than outdoor space: one is finite, the other infinite. We feel we can control our indoor spaces, whereas, beyond the confines of our gardens, the outdoors is a place where we have no choice but to give up control: the sun rises on the evil and on the good; the rains fall on the just and the unjust. There is a feeling of freedom that one can attain outdoors that is more elusive when we're confined. We breath easier, we set aside our urge to control. We can't organize the trees or tidy the clouds. Being outdoors allows us to more easily just let go, which, is the best mental state for creativity.

Interior order is a more attainable thing, or so we think. We seek to control as much as we seek to be free. Both urges live within us. When someone sets themselves free indoors the way one might outdoors, we often talk about it as "giving up," a phrase that can be uttered in joy or in despair, and I suppose messiness can mean either of those things. Our interior spaces are like that. They often reveal our mental state. And changing the nature of our interior spaces can, quite often, trigger changes in our mental state and vice versa.

Is this really a good learning environment?

But these considerations are about spaces we can control. Piaget made his own office messy. I clutter up my own home. Classrooms, however, are shared spaces, much in the way that Mother Nature is a shared space. We release control outdoors, at least in part, because it's simply too vast to consider controlling, there are too many variables, too many agendas, so we "let go" which is a nicer way of saying "give up." When I see a tidy classroom, I see a single hand of a control and it doesn't belong to the children. I worry because I see space designed for and by "management." Not only that, but I know that the children who spend their days in that space are not free to manipulate the environment toward their own ends.

My goal is always creative thinking and new ideas. That is what learning is in my book. And toward that end, I've always preferred classrooms that are creations of all of us, not just "management." This means, "letting go" and embracing the notion of "tidy enough." This is the natural state of a world in which children have agency. It is the environment of creative thinking and new ideas.

It's tempting to fall back on the common wisdom of "finding a balance," but I think that's bunk. Balance is too often just a version of "both sider-ism," a dull compromise that leaves everyone dissatisfied. No, I think of my classroom space more in terms of ebb and flow in which the canvas is periodically cleaned. 

Our spaces shape us and we shape them in a back and forth between our urge to control and our need to be free.

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In this 3-week course, you will learn how to break the cycle of control, command, punishments, and rewards that have characterized the childhoods of so many of us. If you're ready to transform your classroom management skills so that you are truly supporting every child to get their needs met, and in turn transform challenging behaviors, then please consider joining this pre-holiday cohort for Controlled Chaos: Teacher Tom's Guide to Play-Based Classroom Management. To learn more and to register, click here. Registration closes soon!

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!

Classroom Management that Accommodates Our Natural Need to Move

Neuroscientist Patrick House asserts that "the entire purpose of the brain is to make efficient movement from experience."

Another prominent neuroscientist, Antonio Damasio claims that the thing we call consciousness (or mind) emerged from the so-called universal emotions like fear, anger, sadness, happiness, disgust, and surprise which are the triggers for action, or movement, related to survival.

"Movement is so fundamental to life that its absence defines death," writes psychotherapist Christine Caldwell.

Young children move -- a lot. They run when adults feel that walking should suffice. They squirm when adults expect stillness. They jump and shout and swing and balance and shake their heads and giggle even when we threaten them with punishment. Indeed, the term "classroom management" is all about preventing or at least controlling the movement of children. Yet if the scientists are correct, movement is the fundamental principle behind everything that makes us human. 

Plants are intelligent. We can tell by their behavior, which is to say their movement: they know to sprout, to turn toward the light, to find water and minerals with their roots, to release noxious chemicals when attacked by pests. The reason we tend to dismiss their intelligence as inferior to human intelligence, however, is that we believe, perhaps rightly so, that plants do not share our capacity to know that they are intelligent. That is the blessing and curse of being human. We possess minds that allow us to at least approach the question of why we are doing the things we do. Our minds, which evolved from our emotions, which in turn evolved from the necessity to move in order to survive, are capable of knowing that what we are doing is intelligent . . . Or stupid, stupid, stupid as the case may be.

In school, we likewise judge the intelligence of children by their actions. Specifically, we judge them by their ability to provide pre-approved answers to our questions or to demonstrate proficiency in some pre-approved activity like reading or ciphering or recalling the dates of this or that historical event. In preschool we might judge their intelligence by how they grip a crayon or help themselves to a glass of water without spilling. And all of this judgement is undertaken within the confines of what we have arbitrarily determined to be the proper behavior, action, movement in our artificially created environments. And we correct, criticize, and punish when a child's behavior, actions, or movements do not fit our definition of proper.

In my brand 3-week, pre-holiday course -- Controlled Chaos: Teacher Tom's Guide to Classroom Management -- we will be examining what school could be like if "classroom management" actually followed the science and accommodated our natural need to move.

At the end of the day, it's hard not to look at what we do to and with children in the name of education as adults attempting to manipulate and compel children to move or not move according to programs we've pre-set for them. If the scientists are correct, our minds have evolved as a way of determining how we should move or act according to experience. When a child has a tantrum or runs around the classroom or can't sit for circle time or hits a classmate, we are seeing evidence of their intelligence. And as intelligent adults perhaps our first instinct should not be to control their behavior, but rather to take their intelligence seriously. When we do, we ask ourselves: What is it about this place that causes this intelligent child to move in this way? And if we are to value that child's intelligence we will take action to change the environment or our expectations or our ideas about classroom management.

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In this 3-week, pre-holiday course, you will learn how to break the cycle of control, command, punishments, and rewards that have characterized the childhoods of so many of us. If you're ready to transform your classroom management skills so that you are truly supporting every child to get their needs met, and in turn transform challenging behaviors, then please consider joining the inaugural cohort for Controlled Chaos: Teacher Tom's Guide to Play-Based Classroom Management. To learn more and to register, click here. Registration closes soon!

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!

There is Never a Reason to Arrest a Child

Six-year-old Kaia was arrested because she got in a power struggle with a teacher over wearing sunglasses inside.

Eight-year-old Evelyn was arrested because she wanted to wear a cow hoodie in class.

Seven-year-old Malachi was arrested after a shoving match with another child who had teased him about one of his drawings.

The low-end estimate is that we arrest 130 children between 5 and 9 every year, although the number is probably much higher. Black children make up 43 percent of those arrested even though they only comprise 15 percent of kids in that age range. I don't have data on this, but I expect that autistic children, or children who are otherwise neuro-atypical, are also over-represented in those arrests.

There is never a reason to arrest a child. Ever. Even if they bring a gun to school. Even if they make threats. The criminal justice system will do nothing but harm. 

Kaia's grandmother says that since the arrest she has been watching her granddaughter die "bit by bit, day after day." All of these children have suffered from post-traumatic syndrome, been in therapy, and are fearful of both school and the police. 

I don't blame the teachers. I don't blame the police officers. I blame all of us, you and me included.

We live in a society that enshrines words like "freedom" and "liberty," but our institutions, like schools and the police, are focused, like lasers, on compliance, especially when it comes to children, especially when it comes to Black children. Especially when it comes to children who perceive the world differently. 

Who cares if a child wears sunglasses or a cow hoodie? But of course it wasn't about those things. It's about children who stood their ground, who opted for freedom or liberty over obedience. In other words, they behaved as our myths about ourselves as a nation would have them behave. And for that, the adults in their lives felt they must crush them. 

And I blame myself. I don't work in those schools. Indeed, I've spent more than a decade here as a critic. I'm not a cop. I have never called the cops, even when I arrived to find transients sleeping inside the school or on the playground. Even when one of them threatened me with a stick studded with rusty nails. I didn't call the cops because I feared what they would do in the name of compliance. I have marched in the streets against the excesses of the police. Yet I still blame myself because I live in a society that explicitly values obedience over freedom. 

We are so sick with this that we arrest five-year-old because they feel more comfortable wearing sunglasses indoors.

We are so sick that Kaia's teacher insists that she would never have a child arrested, yet her own student was arrested. We are so sick that the officer who handcuffed Kaia objected that she was a "baby," yet this baby was arrested.

French philosopher Voltaire once said, "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

Arresting young children, handcuffing them, forcing them into squad cars, booking them, taking mugshots -- all of it -- is an atrocity. And our culture of obedience, of compliance at all costs, even when it's just about sunglasses, cow hoodies, or even a shoving match, is the absurdity that we believe.

I'm certain that some people reading here have already manufactured, in their minds, a way to blame these children or their parents for the arrests. I'm sure that some have thought, "maybe they had it coming" or that sometimes the only thing that works is the companion absurdity of "tough love."

Most of us, I hope, are outraged by the idea of arresting "babies." It's an easy, extreme thing over which to be outraged, but we should be equally outraged over children being required to ask permission to use the toilet or compelled to walk in straight lines through the hallways or to sit quietly in their seats while a teacher drones on about irrelevant things. We should be equally outraged by the assembly line mechanisms by which we process our children, standardizing them through tests and ranking them by grades. We should be equally outraged by a culture that cuts down all the tall poppies, hammers down the nails that stick up, and values classroom management over anything else.

In my course Controlled Chaos: Teacher Tom's Guide to Classroom Management (see below) we will dive deeply into what we can do in our own classrooms to focus more on freedom and less on knee-jerk compliance.

But how will we ever teach the children if they don't first learn to obey? That is the absurd question that leads to atrocity. Arresting children is the fruit that grows from the soil of obedience.

Freedom, liberty, autonomy: that is what must come first. It must be the highest value if we are to ever become self-governing people. This is what history, science, and experience have to teach us. It will only be when we, as a society, can learn see children as free people that we will finally understand what it means to be free ourselves. Until then, I'm afraid, we will be doomed to commit atrocities in the name of absurdities.

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In this brand new 3-week, pre-holiday course, you will learn how to break the cycle of control, command, punishments, and rewards that have characterized the childhoods of so many of us. If you're ready to transform your classroom management skills so that you are truly supporting every child to get their needs met, and in turn transform challenging behaviors, then please consider joining this accelerated cohort for Controlled Chaos: Teacher Tom's Guide to Play-Based Classroom Management. To learn more and to register, click here. It will set you up for a truly empowering New Year.

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!

Play-Based Classroom Management is Based on Love, Not Power

"You need power only when you want to do something harmful, otherwise love is enough to get everything done." ~Charlie Chaplin

As a younger teacher, I spent a lot of time reading about the education of young children. That's how I came to learn about such child-centered models as Reggio Emilia, Montessori, Waldorf (Steiner), and democratic free schools. It's how I came to know the foundational ideas of Dewey, Piaget, and Vygotsky, and more contemporary thinkers like like Bev Bos, John Holt, and Mister Rogers. But to get to those ideas I had to reject most of what of passes in our profession as "best practices."

"The opposite of Love is not hate, but power." ~C.S. Lewis

What I've come to reject is the idea of adult-centered learning. What I've rejected is the idea that adults must somehow control children in order for them to learn. What I've rejected are approaches that place adult power over children at the center instead of love for children. 

"They fear love because it creates a world they can't control." ~George Orwell

Any model that starts with a curriculum devised by adults "for their own good" is about power over children, not love.

Any model that values tidiness and order under the rubric of "classroom management" is about power instead of love.

Any model that assumes that children will learn little of importance without "teaching" is about power.

"In order to get power and retain it, it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness, but with qualities which are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning, and cruelty." ~Leo Tolstoy

You know you are reading about power when the sentences begin with "Have the children (do this or that) . . ." or "Get the children to . . ." or "Tell the children . . ." These are statements of command, the hallmark of every method that relies upon power.

"When love rules power disappears. When power rules love disappears." ~Paulo Coelho

Methods based upon power can be identified by their rigid schedules, both daily and developmental, in which everyone must constantly worry about "falling behind."

Power predominates in places where adults seek to prepare children for some future life rather than allowing them to live the life they are living.

"Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other." ~Carl Jung

Love does not dictate; love does not manage; love does not need tricks and tips for manipulating children. Love is about connection. It is about relationships. It is about listening. It is about acceptance. It is about this unique and beautiful person. As Mister Rogers wrote, "To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now." That is where child-centered learning begins. Love does not prepare children for life because to love someone is to know that they are already, right here and now, living.

"Love is the opposite of power. That's why we fear it so much." ~Gregory David Roberts

In my 3-week course -- Controlled Chaos: Teacher Tom's Guide to Play-Based Classroom Management -- we will explore what happens when we place children at the center of their own learning, listening to them, understanding them, and loving them. When we do this, when classroom management is based on love, we are creating a bulwark against power. Through a curriculum based upon love we set children free to think, which is, in the end, the only place real learning happens and where, frankly, the spark of revolution is possible. In a world that values power over love, that can be a frightening thing.

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace." ~Jimi Hendrix

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In this accelerated 3-week course, we will explore how to break the cycle of control, command, punishments, and rewards that have characterized the childhoods of so many of us. If you're ready to transform your classroom management skills so that you are truly supporting every child to get their needs met, and in turn transform challenging behaviors, then please consider joining the inaugural cohort for Controlled Chaos: Teacher Tom's Guide to Play-Based Classroom Management. To learn more and to register, 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!

Play is a Lily We are Too Ready to Gild

In his classic book A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold, the man sometimes credited as the father of modern wildlife ecology, wrote, "It is the part of wisdom never to revisit a wilderness, for the more golden the lily, the more certain that someone has gilded it."

He was writing specifically about natural places, but he could have been talking about just about any perfect thing with which we humans come into contract. In our efforts to improve upon Mother Nature, Leopold bemoaned our urge to build roads into perfect places in order to make them more accessible; to manage the plants and animals in order to create a more desirable "balance"; to construct facilities to make the experience of wilderness more convenient. We gild natural places with fences and signs and bear-proof trash cans only to find that our love is suffocating. We can't seem to resist the urge, as Shakespeare put it, "(t)o gild refined gold, to paint the lily, to throw a perfume on the violet, to smooth the rice, or add another hue unto the rainbow . . ."

Even the lilies we purchase to decorate our homes have been gilded in their way, cultivated to produce over-sized blooms that come in a gaudy rainbow of colors never seen in nature. Not long ago, I found myself among wild growing lilies, pure white with yellow-tipped stamen and instantly felt the difference. These were the flowers that have inspired culture, art, and literature before they were made tawdry in our efforts to one-up Mother Nature.

We've done the same with children's play, which is to say the natural urge to educate ourselves. For some 300,000 years or so, our species, Homo sapiens, has evolved an extraordinary intelligence through the processes of curiosity-driven exploration, discovery, experiment, cooperation, and invention. Play stands among the perfect things, yet alongside that has emerged this human urge to gild the lily.

We see this gilding in the advent of modern playgrounds and the proliferation of manufactured toys. We see it whenever someone touts an innovation by labelling it "play with a purpose" (which renders it not-play) or by asserting, "They won't even know they are learning" (as if children must be tricked into it). We see it in our classroom management methods which seek to replace the sacred urge to play with rules and curricula that require the application of external motivations like grades, punishments, and rewards. In my course Controlled Chaos: Teacher Tom's Guide to Classroom Management, we will explore alternatives that avoid the temptation to gild. (See below.)

Play is enough, especially in the early years. Everyone knows that this is when we are at our most capable as learners, when our brains and bodies are as facile as they will ever be. "They are like sponges" we enthuse and we are right, but it only works properly when self-motivation is the engine, which is to say, when we are playing. Play has evolved as a perfect mechanism for learning, yet sadly, too many of us cannot leave it alone: it's a lily we are too ready to gild.

When we build roads into a wilderness, we begin the process of rendering it less wild and therefore less perfect. Our intentions may be good, but a gilded lily will never live up to the ones that grow in natural places. Play is another perfection that is not improved by gilding.

When we resist the urge to gild and instead stand aside as our children play, we see a perfection in our imperfect world, and if we would keep it, we must resist the urge to gild it.

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In this accelerated 3-week course, we will explore how to break the cycle of control, command, punishments, and rewards that have characterized the childhoods of so many of us. If you're ready to transform your classroom management skills so that you are truly supporting every child to get their needs met, and in turn transform challenging behaviors, then please consider joining this year-end cohort for Controlled Chaos: Teacher Tom's Guide to Play-Based Classroom Management. To learn more and to register, 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!

This, Of All Days, Is One to Be Human

Starlings are sometimes called "the mynah birds of the north" for their ability to mimic not just other bird songs, but other animals, including humans. They have even been known to re-create the sounds of telephones, squeaky hinges, sirens, doorbells, and other common sounds they pick up from their environment. No one really knows why they've developed this penchant, although it's been speculated that it allows them to deceive potential predators. I can imagine that a hawk, for instance, might have second thoughts when its intended lunch barks like a junkyard dog. 

Whatever the case, starlings and other birds that tend toward mimicry, are constantly adding to their repertoire from their environment as well as learning from other starlings, passing down certain sounds from generation to generation, often continuing to reproduce sounds from bygone eras long after that sound has disappeared from their habitat. This means that a population of starlings that has existed in a single place for generations has become a sort of data storage system for elements of sound, perhaps even entire soundscapes, from earlier centuries.

I'm thinking about this as we prepare to sit down with family and friends for our Thanksgiving feast. 

We tend to think of human language as simply a means of communication, but just as starlings can keep the past alive through their songs, we too, in a way, do the same, even when we are completely unaware of it. For instance, nearly every word we use, can be traced back to a metaphor. Today, someone sit at the "head" of the table. It isn't, of course, an actual head, but a metaphorical one that derives from a time when there was no other way to describe that seat of honor. It's "like" a head, we thought, and so it entered the language, subtly shaping generations of humans as we gather together for a repast. Likewise, the chair I'll sit in has "arms" and "legs." We gather together to be "in touch" with one another. Some of us will have to "handle" a difficult relative or conversation. 

But it's not just when we refer to physical objects that we reveal our linguistic DNA. Our verb "to be" comes from the ancient Sanskrit word blu, which means "to grow" while the English forms of "am" and "is" have evolved from the same root as the Sanskrit asme, which means "to breathe." Even our fundamental word to describe existence hearkens back to when we had no other word for it so we resorted to a metaphor that reminds us to grow and breathe.

Our language derives from our collective experience as a species and has evolved as more than mere birdsong, functioning as a kind of organ of perception, a creator of reality, and a record of our evolution as conscious animals.

As adults, most of us, however, use our language unconsciously and because of this, I think, we often have a tendency to re-create a familiar reality, especially at traditional gatherings like Thanksgiving. We do it without thinking. We do it because this is the way it's always been done. And even when we strive to break away from the old patterns the ancient metaphors steer us back to the familiar.

Our children, however, do not yet know the metaphors we know. They are still closer to the creative potential of language which is why, if we can remember to stop talking and listen, we find ourselves so delighted, often profoundly so, by the things they express as they seek to wrap language around experience and vice versa. 

In our current rush to make our children literate, however, we teach them at younger and younger ages that language is a dead thing, mere communication confined by immutable rules of grammar, punctuation, and spelling. We rob them of something essential when we compel them to, essentially, be seen and not heard. It's a robbery that impoverishes all of us. Children are there to make the familiar once more unfamiliar, but the only way this happens is if language precedes literacy. Literacy is a mere workman's plow that bends our backs toward utilitarian ends, while language is a growing, breathing thing, a restless sea of metaphor, a cacophony of birdsong, that is central to what it means to be human. 

And this, of all days, is one to be human. Happy Thanksgiving!

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In this accelerated 3-week course, we will explore how to break the cycle of control, command, punishments, and rewards that have characterized the childhoods of so many of us. If you're ready to transform your classroom management skills so that you are truly supporting every child to get their needs met, and in turn transform challenging behaviors, then please consider joining the inaugural cohort for Controlled Chaos: Teacher Tom's Guide to Play-Based Classroom Management. To learn more and to register, click here.

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