Our Raccoon Teacher

We were in the midst of circle time when a raccoon began climbing a tree behind me. I didn't see it, of course, but I knew it was there, or rather that something was there, because the eyes of every child were following it.

Maybe I knew that raccoons climbed trees before this moment, but wether I previously knew or not, I did now. We all did. It made its way up the trunk, apparently oblivious to the two dozen humans watching from below.

I wonder what we had been talking about or singing or reading before the raccoon began its assent. Whatever it was it was far less important, far less significant, far less educational than this. The evidence was in all those eyes, wide, curious, unable to look away.

I didn't try to recall them to our previous project, whatever it was. For one thing, I knew it would have been futile. Have you ever tried to get children, or pretty much anyone for that matter, to pay attention to anything else when there is a bee in the room? A giant house spider crawling up the wall? The rumbling approach of a thunder storm? 

Of course, we dropped whatever we were doing to attend, fully, to that raccoon, an emissary of Mother Nature, our first and best teacher. The evidence was right there before us. Nothing, and I mean nothing, was more important to any one of us than that raccoon who began to inch along a branch toward . . . We saw it together, almost at once -- a bird's nest. 

"It's going to eat a bird!"

"No, eggs!"

"No!"

"Yes!"

"The branch is going to break!"

"Oh no!"

The branch began to bend, we all saw it, we all feared for the raccoon, for the baby birds or the eggs. It was a drama as real and as old as creation, full of danger, suspense, life. Life itself was taking place above our heads and we were unable to pull ourselves away, not for a lesson or a lyric or a look at the pages of a picture book. 

The raccoon was moving more cautiously now as the branch bent under its weight. There came a point when it stopped entirely, raising it's pointy nose to the air.

"It's sniffing!"

"It's smelling the eggs!"

"It's going to fall!"

"Why isn't the mommy bird saving its babies?"

We were all, including the raccoon, one, tied together in concern, desire, and life itself. We live in the city of Seattle, named in honor of a Duwamish chief who said, "Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect." Ancient wisdom that modern scientists have only just begun to learn through their precious, childlike method of taking everything apart to see how it works only to destroy the very thing they are studying.

The raccoon slowly turned itself around, having assessed the risk to be greater than the potential reward. It made its way back along the branch and down the trunk. And we, all of us, did as well.

******

Indigenous educators Brenda Souter (Maori), Jackie Bennet (Australian Aboriginal), and Hopi Martin (Ojibwe) share their views of Mother Nature as our first teacher. Teacher Tom's Play Summit is nothing less than an attempt to bring the full web of the early childhood world together with the singular mission of transforming the lives of young children and their families. It's a chance to listen and learn about best practices and new ideas from around the world from a wide variety of perspectives. As I've interviewed our presenters, this idea of play within the context of community is a strong recurring theme, especially from indigenous educators. Please join us for this important free event. To learn more and to get on the waitlist, click here. If not us, who? Together we can turn this world around.

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!

"Gamification" is Just Another Exercise in Institutional Power

As we're trying to get back to something approaching "normal," I'm seeing a number of articles and discussion threads about the latest and greatest ways to motivate students. This is not something play-based educators need to think about, of course, because the children we teach are always self-motivated.

Perhaps the trendiest of these external "motivators" is what folks are calling "gamification," which is essentially the idea that teachers who have boring things they must teach, which is to say, things most children have no interest in learning, are to figure out a way to make a game of it and, Ta-da! the children are tricked into learning it. What an alien concept for those of us who spend our days watching the children themselves create their own games, infusing them with the ideas and concepts they themselves want to explore.

Indeed, children have been gamifiying their learning for as long as there have been children. The hubristic notion that adults can devise better "educational" games that children is absurd, even if they are "video games." This is exactly what I'm writing about when I warn about those who try to disguise their distrust of children with phrases like "play with a purpose," attempting to steal play away from the experts, children, in order to exert their power over of what, when, and how these young humans learn.

Gamification is just the latest, sweetest carrot in the control-freak game of carrot and stick. Carrots and sticks are for motivating stubborn mules to pull heavy loads. The fact that we've managed to turn learning, something that we do joyfully from the moment we are born, into a heavy load should tell us all we need to know.

Children are born to eager learn and they do that naturally, instinctively through their play. If you find you must "motivate" children to learn then you are simply doing it the hard way, the wrong way, the way that will ultimately burn them out and leave many, if not most, completely de-motivated by the time they hit middle school. "Education" that is not about freeing children to follow their curiosity, their interests, to ask and answer their own questions, isn't education at all, but rather an exercise in institutional power, one designed not to educate children, but simply to make them "normal," a misguided (even cruel) attempt to fill all of their heads with the same pre-approved "knowledge."

I have been teaching young children for a long time, no two alike, each of them uniquely curious about their world, each of them motivated to satisfy that curiosity, and each of them fully capable of discovering their own truth without being tricked by a carrot or beaten by a stick.

******

Self-motivated children is everyone's goal: educators and parents. As preschool educators, we don't just educate children, but their families as well. For the past 20 years, I've been working in a place that puts the tri-cornered relationship of child-parent-educator at the center, and over that time I've learned a great deal about how to work with families to create the kind of village every child needs and deserves. I'm proud to announce that I've assembled what I've learned into a 6-part e-course called Partnering With Parents in which I share my best thinking on how educators can and should make allies of the parents of the children we teach. (Click this link to register and to learn more.) Discounts are available for groups.

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 is for Each Child a Unique and Personal Experience (and why not acknowledging that is so stressful)

I've been married to my wife Jennifer since 1986, that's 35 years, and during that time we've shared a lot of experiences, side-by-side, the difference in our relative perspectives only a matter of degrees, yet we still regularly find ourself disagreeing about what we saw, heard, touched, tasted, or smelled. Often, it's a simple matter of whether someone was wearing a red or green shirt, but other times our memories differ about matters of great moment. Indeed, there are some things that I remember with clarity, moments in which something significant happened, that she hardly remembers at all, and vice versa.

The older I've gotten, the less certain I've become about the objective accuracy of my memories. Or rather, I find myself questioning the concept of object accuracy altogether. Yes, something in the past happened, but it only exists for me as the form it imprints upon my brain. But not even that. Researchers have discovered that we are constantly making and re-making our memories. Each time we recall something, they tell us, it becomes altered in some way. The more we recall something, the more we tend to change it until our memories very often only have a passing resemblance to what actually, objectively, happened.

This is a recognized phenomenon in law, for instance, as eye witnesses can credibly report seeing the same thing in different ways. It's why contemporaneous comments or writing about an event is often accepted as stronger evidence than oral testimony, under the assumption that one was created closer in time to the actual, objective events.

We tend to think of memories as a kind of recording of what happened, but in reality, what we "remember" is actually something our brains have constructed, and continue to construct even long after the arrow of time has swept us off into the future. As educator Eleanor Duckworth writes, "(W)e cannot assume that an experience whose meaning seems clear to us will have the same meaning for someone else."

This is why we don't all think, for instance, that The Catcher in the Rye is a great novel. For many, it's work of genius, perhaps the great American novel, while for others it's a real yawner. Our brains do not record events, but rather shape and interpret them from the very start. For instance, if an English teacher has forced me to read Salinger's novel (which happened thrice during my years of formal education) my brain will store the experience completely differently than when I choose to read it of my own accord. 

This is the big challenge for most teachers, those charged with the task of somehow working through a standardized curriculum. The expectation is that if we expose all the children to the same experience they will learn the same thing. We cannot assume this, not about children, not about anyone. Perhaps some will have the experience we expect, but most won't. They can, however, learn to create the illusion that they have had the "right" experience by getting the "right" answers on a test, which is the real lesson of school for most children. Oh, they are all learning something, but what that is specifically is different for each child and is most certainly not the lesson intended by the teacher or the curriculum.

Even before the pandemic, polling found that teaching is one of the most stressful occupations in the U.S., tied only with nursing. (You can find the 2013 poll here, although you will have to download it to read it.) And it has only, of course, gotten worse during the past year. In my decades in the classroom, I had my moments, but by and large I didn't find it particularly stressful, and I attribute that in large measure to the fact that I was never charged with implementing a standardized curriculum. Our play-based program is based on the concept of allowing the curriculum to emerge from the children themselves rather than imposing it on them. The result is that I don't have to pretend the children are learning what I'm teaching. I don't have to spend my energies on such nonsense as "classroom management," which is the equivalent of trying to push water uphill or herd cats. Add to that the fact that teachers are expected to also keep children perfectly safe, serve as therapists, mitigate the impact of a pandemic, and heal the wounds of bigotry and poverty, and it's easy to see why we, as a profession, are so stressed out.

It's all an impossible task, at least the way we now have it set up. And if teachers are unduly stressed, the same must be true of our children. I'm blessed to have worked my entire career in places that don't expect me to do the impossible. When the random benchmarks of standardized curriculum are removed, when we acknowledge that learning is for each child a unique and personal experience, when we stop trying to herd the cats, we find our natural role as important adults in children's lives, which is to care for them, keep them safe enough, and to support them emotionally and intellectually when they need it. That's why most of us, especially in the early years, got into this profession in the first place. 

*****

A "new normal" requires that we take a good, hard look at what "normal" means, to ask ourselves tough questions, and consider that maybe we've been doing it wrong all along. Teacher Tom's Play Summit is nothing less than an attempt to bring the early childhood world together with the singular mission of transforming the lives of young children and their families. It's a chance to listen and learn about best practices and new ideas from around the world from a wide variety of perspectives. As I've interviewed our presenters, this idea of play within the context of community is a strong recurring theme, especially from indigenous educators. Please join us for this important free event. To learn more and to get on the waitlist, click here. If not us, who? Together we can turn this world around.

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!

Unfortunate Yet Transient Immaturity

Last week, the United States Supreme Court in a split decision made it easier to sentence children to prison without the possibility of parole. Every year, children as young as 13 are locked away for the rest of their lives in our country. There are currently over 2500 people, mostly black, mostly poor, and mostly from backgrounds of abuse, who are living their entire adult lives behind bars. There is only one country on earth where this is legal: the United States.

Despite a global consensus that children cannot be held to the same standards of responsibility as adults, a worldwide recognition that children are entitled to special protection and treatment, not to mention numerous international laws banning the inhuman practice, the court has in my eyes lost any claim to morality, decency, or legitimacy it may have once had. 

I'm not proud of the USA.

What kind of monster can possibly believe that any human, let alone a child, is beyond salvation? Indeed, it is monstrous to make that kind of determination about a 15-year-old, the age Brett Jones was when he stabbed his grandfather to death after a life as a victim of abuse by multiple people in is life, including his grandfather. Defying the "judgement" of incorrigibility, Jones has while in prison completed his GED, has conducted himself as a model prisoner, and his grandmother, the wife of the man he murdered, is steadfast in her belief that he should at least have the opportunity to be released. As Jones himself says, he has done everything he can to reform himself, yet with this heartless, headless decision, all hope for him has been erased. I have no illusion that Jones is a saint, how could he be? But to condemn anyone for life for something they did when they were a child, defies science and decency.

As Justice Sotomayor writes in her dissent, citing precedent (which I've removed here for ease of reading, but which can be found here):

"First, "as any parent knows," and as scientific and sociological studies have confirmed, juveniles are less mature and responsible than adults, which "often result(s) in impetuous and ill-considered actions and decisions . . . Second, juveniles are "more vulnerable or susceptible to negative influences and outside pressures" and "have less control . . . over their own environment . . . Finally, "the character of a juvenile" is "more transitory" than that of an adult. (A)s individuals mature, the impetuousness and recklessness that may dominate in younger years can subside . . . Weighed against these "signature qualities of youth," the penological justifications . . . collapse.

And:

"To justify life without parole on the assumption that the juvenile offender forever will be a danger to society require the sentencer to make a judgement that the juvenile is incorrigible . . . But "incorrigibility is inconsistent with youth." . . . Rather, "(m)maturity can lead to that considered reflection which is the foundation for remorse, renewal, and rehabilitation."

I'm not a lawyer, of course, but I am an expert on children. I know that it is in the nature of youth to awake each morning a new person. I believe this is true of all humans, even as I know that some are so broken that it is best they not be left to their own devices, but both science and basic human decency tells us that all children are capable of reform.

No, the idea that any child is incorrigible is one based in ignorance and hatred. It is based on the feeble and craven justification that engaging in cruel and unusual punishment can somehow right a wrong or persuade future potential offenders from committing similar acts. The arguments in favor of throwing children in prison for the rest of their lives are flimsy veils for the real underlying motive, which is clearly pure, seething vengeance, which has nothing to do with justice, nothing to do with humanity, and leads me to conclude it is those heartless people who support life without parole for juveniles to be the true danger to society. I'm old enough to remember that the man who wrote the court's majority opinion, Justice Kavanaugh, was crying and yelling about how he should not be judged for his own youthful indiscretions during his confirmation hearing.

The Supreme Court, with this decision, proves to me that it has become a sociopathic institution, one that is incapable as currently constructed to make judgements on citizens.

Tell me, who are the monsters here? Here is Jones' full story as told by Justice Sotomayor using the evidence in the case:

Jones killed his grandfather just 23 days after Jones’ 15th birthday. In his short life before the murder, Jones was the victim of violence and neglect that he was too young to escape. Jones’ biological father was an alcoholic who physically abused Jones’ mother, knocking out her teeth and breaking her nose on several occasions. The two separated when Jones was two years old. Jones’ mother then married Jones’ stepfather, who was also abusive, especially toward Jones. He beat Jones with belts, switches, and a paddle labeled “The Punisher.” He rarely called Jones or his brother by their names, preferring cruel epithets. (“[H]is favorite thing to call them was little moth- erf***ers”). According to Jones’ mother, Jones’ stepfather “hated Brett more because Brett reminded him of [Jones’ biological father].” According to Jones’ grandmother, he was simply “easier to hurt and beat.”

In 2004, after Jones came home late one day, Jones’ stepfather flew into a rage and grabbed Jones by the neck, preparing to beat him with a belt. This time, however, Jones fought back and told his stepfather, “No, you’re not going to hit me ever again.” Jones took a swing at his stepfather and split open his ear. The police were called, and Jones was arrested. Jones’ stepfather then threatened to kick out Jones’ mother and brother if Jones did not move out. As a re- sult, Jones’ grandparents picked him up less than two months before the murder and brought him to Mississippi. 

When he moved, Jones lost access to medications that he had been taking for mental health issues.  When he was 11 or 12 years old, Jones began cutting himself so that he “would not feel the panic and the hurt that was inside of [his] head.” He later experienced hallucinations and was prescribed antidepressant medications. These medications were supposed to be tapered off gradually. When Jones left for Mississippi, however, they were abruptly cut off.

The murder was precipitated by a dispute over Jones’ girlfriend. After Jones moved, his girlfriend ran away from her home in Florida to stay at Jones’ grandparents’ home in secret. On the day of the murder, Jones’ grandfather, Bertis Jones, discovered that Jones’ girlfriend had been staying in their home. 

He ordered her out.  Later that day, Jones was making a sandwich in the kitchen using a steak knife.  Jones said something disrespectful to his grandfather, who started yelling. The two began pushing each other, and Jones’ grandfather tried to hit him. Jones stabbed his grandfather with the steak knife. Jones’ grandfather came at Jones again, and the fight continued. Jones ultimately stabbed his grandfather eight times, grabbing a second knife when the first one broke. 

No one disputes that this was a terrible crime. Miller, however, held that “the distinctive attributes of youth diminish the penological justifications for imposing the harshest sentences on juvenile offenders, even when they commit terrible crimes.” Jones’ crime reflects these distinctive attributes: “That a teenager in trouble for having been caught concealing his girlfriend at his grandparents’ home would attempt to solve the problem by resorting to violence dramatically epitomizes immaturity, impetuosity, and failure to appreciate risks or consequences.” 

Jones then attempted to save his grandfather by administering CPR. When that failed, he clumsily tried to hide what he had done. He was spotted walking around in plain sight, covered in blood, trembling and muttering to himself. When a neighbor questioned him, Jones told a feeble lie, claiming that his grand- father had left and that the blood on his clothes was “‘a joke.’ ” Jones then met up with his girlfriend and attempted to hitchhike, but not to make a getaway. Instead, he was trying to go see his grandmother to tell her what had happened. The police stopped Jones, found that he was carrying a pocket knife, and asked if it was the knife he “‘did it with.’”  Jones replied, “‘No, I already got rid of it.’” He then agreed to be interviewed by three police detectives, “without invoking his right to silence or his right to counsel and without a parent or guardian present.” Thus, “Jones’s behavior in the immediate aftermath of his tragic actions also demonstrated his fundamental immaturity.” 

At his resentencing hearing, Jones provided evidence that not only is he capable of rehabilitation, but he had in fact already matured significantly since his crime. In more than five years in prison, Jones committed only two disciplinary infractions. While incarcerated, Jones earned his GED and sought out work, becoming a “very good employee.” Jones and his prison unit manager often discussed the Bible, and in time, his unit manager came to think of Jones “almost like [a] son.” Jones confided in him that Jones “regretted” what he had done. 

Jones’ grandmother (Bertis Jones’ widow) testified at Jones’ resentencing hearing and submitted an amicus brief to this Court. She remains “steadfast in her belief that Brett is not and never was irreparably corrupt.” She speaks with Jones weekly, encouraging him as he takes college courses and serves in the prison ministry. Jones’ younger brother, Marty, and his other family members have also stayed by his side.

This significant body of evidence does not excuse Jones’ crime. It does mean, however, that under Miller and Montgomery, there is a strong likelihood that Jones is constitutionally ineligible for LWOP. His crime, while terrible, appears to have been the product of “unfortunate yet transient immaturity.”

Clearly, there is plenty of evidence that this man who was sentence to life in prison as a child is not incorrigible. Some time ago, I asked the question, Does America Hate Its Children? I'm afraid of the what the answer might be.

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Educators and parents have similar goals for children, but it often doesn't seem like it. There are few things that can improve your life as an early childhood educator than improved relations with the parents of the children you teach. As preschool educators, we don't just educate children, but their families as well. For the past 20 years, I've been working in a place that puts the tri-cornered relationship of child-parent-educator at the center, and over that time I've learned a great deal about how to work with families to create the kind of village every child needs and deserves. I'm proud to announce that I've assembled what I've learned into a 6-part e-course called Partnering With Parents in which I share my best thinking on how educators can and should make allies of the parents of the children we teach. (Click this link to register and to learn more.) Discounts are available for groups.

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!

Creating a "Rat Park" for Our Children

Our school is housed in lower level of the Fremont Baptist Church, a place that in non-plague times also opens its doors to several 12-step groups, one of which met early in the morning as I was getting ready for school. I tried to honor the "anonymous" part of AA and keep to myself, but I nevertheless became friendly with a few of the guys over the years and have taken part in many conversations about addiction.

The 12-step model is based upon the idea that alcohol and drugs (and gambling and sex and other things) are addictive and that any one of us could become an addict were we to systematically abuse them. We treat it like an incurable but controllable chronic disease and the kind of talk therapy offered by groups like AA is generally considered central to subduing addictive behavior. That is the prevailing societal idea, although I'm aware there are some who still consider addiction to be a weakness of character.

Some time ago, I read a fascinating article by Bruce K. Alexander, psychologist and professor emeritus at Simon Fraser University. Much of our current thinking on addiction stems from rat studies in which rats were put in cages with the opportunity to imbibe various narcotic substances and in every case, every rat chose to do so, usually at an increasing rate until they died of their drug use. I've read of other experimental models in which these caged rats were given a choice between water bottles and water bottles laced with cocaine with similar results. And it was from these types of experiments that we came to the conclusion that some things are just inherently addictive and we are best advised to stay away from them.

As a young researcher, Alexander had taken part in some of these studies, but was dissatisfied with the experimental model. I mean, come on, rats in the wild are intelligent, social, active creatures. It only makes sense that if they are confined in a small cage with nothing to do but take drugs that's what they'll do. He and his colleagues decided to perform their own version of the experiment, but instead of isolating rats in solitary cages, they would build what they came to call "Rat Park," a place with plenty of space, things with which to play, plenty of tasty food, and, of course, other rats, including potential sexual partners. It was, in a word, a kind of rat paradise, and unsurprisingly, even when "addictive" drugs were available, the rats did not become addicted. Sure, they would sometimes have a go, but most often in a way that we would probably identify and "recreational," and there was nothing like the universal addiction that had resulted from the earlier studies.

Alexander went on to find ways to study humans, mostly by digging into the historical records surrounding people who had had their traditional cultures destroyed such as Native Americans, but his tentative conclusion is that addiction has less to do with the drugs or the humans themselves, and more to do with the cages, real or metaphorical, in which we find ourselves.

When I talk to addicted people, whether they are addicted to alcohol, drugs, gambling, Internet use, sex, or anything else, I encounter human beings who really do not have a viable social or cultural life. They use their addictions as a way of coping with the dislocation: as an escape, a pain killer, or a kind of substitute for a full life. More and more psychologists and psychiatrists are reporting similar observations. Maybe our fragmented, mobile, ever-changing modern society has produced social and cultural isolation in very large numbers of people, even though their cages are invisible!

Alexander points out that even in societies in which drugs and alcohol are not available, people who had been separated from their culture still exhibited many of the characteristic behaviors of mass addiction:

(P)eople stopped doing productive work and taking care of their families . . . idling away their time. Criminality and child neglect became problems, where they had not been before.

I've been living with this metaphor for awhile now and the more I think about it the more sense it makes to me. The mission of our little play-based cooperative school is to be a community in which we are raising our children together, a place with a thriving social and cultural life, a kind of "Rat Park" for children if you will, a place where we can play together. More than ever, I'm convinced that this is the way we should be doing it: that free play within the context of community is the cure for the dislocations and addictions of modern life.

******

Teacher Tom's Play Summit is nothing less than an attempt to bring the early childhood world together with the singular mission of transforming the lives of young children and their families. It's a chance to listen and learn about best practices and new ideas from around the world from a wide variety of perspectives. As I've interviewed our presenters, this idea of play within the context of community is a strong recurring theme, especially from indigenous educators. Please join us for this important free event. To learn more and to get on the waitlist, click here. If not us, who? Together we can turn this world around.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

If Freedom Lies Anywhere, it is Here

As I'm recording interviews with my guests for the upcoming Teacher Tom's Play Summit, I've noticed that at some level, every single one of them is talking about trusting children enough to set them free.

To me, freedom is a fascinating concept that, like love or play, is a pure good that's almost impossible to define, yet we know it when we see it -- or rather, when we feel it. At any given moment, I'm not free, of course. There is some obligation, self-imposed or otherwise, that hinders me. When I was younger, this idea bothered me so much that I fantasized about running away to a desert island, because, I thought, it was all those other people who kept me in captivity with their expectations, their needs, their constant impingement upon my perfect freedom. 

I don't think that any longer. As I performed the mental experiments that we call daydreaming, I came to realize that freedom, at least in the sense we typically think of it, can never be complete. Even if one eliminates the demands and dictates of living in a society, even if one has a billion dollars, even if one becomes a master of meditation, there is still Mother Nature who sends her storms and droughts and earthquakes. There is still the need to eat and drink. There is still sickness and injury. The physical world does not permit the sort of freedom about which I fantasized.

In her masterpiece novel Middlemarch, George Eliot, as in all of her work, was concerned with the notion of freedom. She wrote that the mind "is not cut in marble -- it is not something solid and unalterable." And this, she believed, was the source of freedom: our ability to constantly change, to alter ourselves, to wake up each morning a new person. As I've talked with people like Akilah Richards, Peter Gray, Lisa Murphy, Denisha Jones, and Raffi, I've found myself reflecting on this insight as they've talked about children, trust, and freedom.

There was a time, within the span of my life, that the leading brain researchers believed that humans were born with a complete set of neurons and that once infancy was over our brains were complete. Or to put it in Eliot's words, our brains were, indeed, "cut in marble." It was one of the leading principles of neuroscience throughout the twentieth century, but we now know that our brains are, in fact, in a constant state of cellular upheaval. Our brains are not marble, but rather clay, and they are constantly evolving. Eliot was right and the science has only recently caught up with her.

And this, I think, is the source of our ability to become free people. We are, according to both art and science, in a constant state of becoming. When we watch young children at play, which is to say, in their natural habitat, we see this happening in the real world. We are inspired by their magnificent brains, their capacity to learn, their drive to become. From day to day, they change, both gradually and suddenly, as they interact with an environment, becoming the person they need to be in that moment, constantly becoming, constantly setting themselves free.

If freedom lies anywhere, it is here, in this irrepressible plasticity of our brains. In this, we are even free from the dictates of our genes, we become more than the sum of our parts. Eliot was correct about freedom: it lives in us as this capacity to embrace the core idea that is now embraced by neuroscience: we create reality in dialog with the world around us. And like anything else, the more we practice, the better we become at it.

If we could see freedom, what would it look like? I think I see it most clearly when watching young children at play in a safe-enough place with adults in the background, unselfconsciously becoming as they engage the world around them. I'm not the first to recognize that the cages are within ourselves. When we trust children enough to set them free, we see what real freedom looks like: human beings in a constant state of becoming.

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Mark your calendar! If you're interested in who to set children free, Teacher Tom's Play Summit is online, free, and takes place June 21-25. To learn more and to get on the waitlist, click here! I'm excited about this line-up, including Akilah Richards, Peter Gray, Lisa Murphy, Maggie Dent, and the one and only Raffi! But I'm mostly excited about all of us coming together, for children, to turn this world around.

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!

Eight in Ten Youths Believe the Adults in Their Lives Value Achievement Over Caring for Others

Here's the good news: in a national survey conducted by Harvard University, roughly two-thirds of youth listed kindness as one of their top three values and 64 percent included fairness in their top three.

Here's the bad news: Approximately 80 percent of these same kids report that their parents and teachers are more concerned with achievement more than caring for others. The vast majority of America's youth agree with this statement: "My parents are prouder if I get good grades in my class than if I'm a caring community member in class and school."

When parents and teachers are asked, most say that raising caring children is a top priority, ranking it as more important than achievement.

In other words, we adults, despite our best intentions, are falling down on the job. There is a significant disconnect between our intentions and the results we are achieving. We might hold things like empathy and compassion dear, but our kids aren't buying it. Indeed, it seems we are teaching them exactly the opposite.

And no wonder. Most children spend their first couple decades forced to attend schools where the highest values are obedience and academic achievement, and they are surrounded by adults who are being judged by how well the kids in their care behave and achieve. For educators, the judgement is overt. Teachers risk losing their livelihoods and schools their funding should the kids' achievement fall short of arbitrary measures set up by policymakers. For parents, the pressure is less direct, but crushingly real nevertheless: we all know that when our children misbehave or if they are indifferent students, we will be, at least in part, blamed for it. "It's their parent's fault" is a kind of mantra we fall back on whenever we consider our collective failures.

We all worry about the "moral state" of our youth, yet most of us don't think we're part of the problem. This also shows up in the research. So just know that if you are tut-tutting right now over all those hypocritical adults out there, know that they are doing the same thing about you. In fact, I've seen other surveys in which educators believe that academic achievement is all parents care about and vice versa.

So what can we do? It seems like we need to spend more time talking to one another. I mean, most of us agree that we live in a society that needs more kindness and fairness. Our children value kindness and fairness. We know that life for everyone would be better with more caring community members. Yet, according to these Harvard researchers, our day-to-day communications send the message that competition, obedience, and academic achievement should be our top priorities. This is one of the primary messages behind my e-course, Partnering With Parents. It seems to me that the way out of this bizarre situation is for educators and parents to get to know one another better, to communicate our values, and to learn that we all want the same things. I can't imagine anything more powerful than educators and parents united, not around grades and test scores, but around the higher values of kindness and caring.

The joke is that our children don't listen to us, but when it comes to values they clearly do. Indeed, we've more or less compelled them to it with systems of reward and punishments, carrots and sticks, both overt and subtle. This is how we are teaching them what we value and, in turn, what they should value. They are listening to us, but it comes at the price of basic human kindness.

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Educators and parents have similar goals for children, but it often doesn't stemlike it. There are few things that can improve your life as an early childhood education than improved relations with the parents of the children you teach. As preschool educators, we don't just educate children, but their families as well. For the past 20 years, I've been working in a place that puts the tri-cornered relationship of child-parent-educator at the center, and over that time I've learned a great deal about how to work with families to create the kind of village every child needs and deserves. I'm proud to announce that I've assembled what I've learned into a 6-part e-course called Partnering With Parents in which I share my best thinking on how educators can and should make allies of the parents of the children we teach. (Click this link to register and to learn more.) Register now to receive early bird pricing. Discounts are available for groups.

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!

I Will Not Prepare Children for The "Jobs of Tomorrow"

I've spent most of my professional career railing against the widely held belief that our schools exist for the purpose of vocational training. Those "jobs of tomorrow" our policymakers are always going on about? "Out educating the Chinese?" Getting the kids "college and career ready?" What a crock. First of all, no one knows what those jobs of tomorrow might be, no matter how authoritatively they speak of the future. The jobs that today's five-year-olds will be applying for 20 years from now are unimaginable to us. Indeed, it will be the children of today who invent the jobs of tomorrow. And this has always been true, going back at least to the Industrial Revolution when policymakers were certain that we would all move to the cities to take our place along an assembly line. My own high school career counselor got it wrong. Most of the jobs our daughter is applying for today didn't exist when she was a preschooler. As for competing with the Chinese, that's a dubious and mercenary adult concern, one that is a cruelty when inflicted on innocent children.

No, the proper "career" aspiration for a preschooler is princess. 

The role of education (not necessarily school) in a self-governing society is to produce good citizens, critical thinkers who are equipped for their highest calling in a democracy: the pursuit of happiness. Which is to say, achieving their highest potential, whether or not that helps economic interests compete with the Chinese.

But, let's take them at their word for a moment and stipulate to the goal of preparing children for a life of serving the economy. One of their arguments is that the pursuit of economic advantage is central to the pursuit of happiness. After all, how happy can you be if you're impoverished? Of course, if that's true, then we must ask why are so few of us are happy at work? A major study of a quarter of a million people from 142 countries reveals that only 13 percent of us actually feel "engaged" at work. That means 87 percent of us are just going through the motions. Our jobs are mere means to an end. We would rather be somewhere else, doing something else. This is not a problem with people. It's a problem with the jobs and an educational system that is tasked with getting them ready for those jobs. 

Other surveys have shown that most children grow increasingly disengaged from school the closer they get to being "college and career ready." So, by that measure, I guess we could say our educational system is doing a bang up job of getting the kids ready for their grim future, but is it one we would wish upon them? It seems to me that a life of disengagement is no life at all.

My goal as an educator is a fully engaged child, one who spends their days in self-selected pursuits, following their curiosity, inventing, creating, and discovering. I want them to grow up to be the kinds of creative thinkers who have the skills and habits required to play a meaningful part in, not the economy, but the project of self-governance. I want them to know it is not just their right, but their responsibility to question, even challenge authority. I want them to stand up for their beliefs. I want them to think for themselves, to create their own path, to, in a nutshell, pursue their own happiness while allowing others to pursue theirs. That is clearly not the goal of our educational system writ large.

The skills of a good citizen are, in fact, the exact opposite of those required to be gainfully employed in a "job." Indeed, thinking for yourself, challenging authority, and standing up for your beliefs will generally get you fired . . . 

Unless, of course, you work for yourself.

The traits required for self-governance are exactly the traits needed to be a successful entrepreneur. And by "successful" I mean "happy." A full 94 percent of small business owners report that they are happy with their lives. What a contrast to those who are working the jobs of today that were once those jobs of tomorrow. 

If I have to prepare children for their economic future, it sure won't be for those mythical jobs of tomorrow. I will not prepare them for a life of disengagement. But I will do everything I can to prepare them for self-employment, for entrepreneurship. It's just a happy accident that doing so is the same process as preparing them for self-governance. No one can promise happiness, but that's not the point. It's the pursuit that engages us. It's the pursuit that makes life worth living, and that is what a real education is all about.

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Mark your calendar! If you're interested in who to set children free, Teacher Tom's Play Summit is online, free, and takes place June 21-25. To learn more and to get on the waitlist, click here! I'm excited about this line-up, including Akilah Richards, Peter Gray, Lisa Murphy, Maggie Dent, and the one and only Raffi! But I'm mostly excited about all of us coming together, for children, to turn this world around.

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!

"I Am . . ."

When we tell a child who they are, they believe us. When we tell them they're brilliant or creative, they tell themselves "I am brilliant and creative," at least until someone else tells them who they are. "You're stupid and lazy." "You are a little squirt." "You are the spitting image of your Aunt Ruth."

"I am stupid and lazy."

"I am a little squirt."

"I am the spitting image of Aunt Ruth."

As we get older, we begin to realize that it's not just the other people who get to tell the story of who we are. We get to tell our own stories. "I am a princess." "I am a fast runner." "I am a hungry beaver." But even as we learn we can tell our own story, the stories that others tell about us never stop also being who we are, although, hopefully, we get better at deciding which of those stores are true and which are illusions. No one ever gets to be entirely, or perhaps even mostly, self-created. Who I am, who you are, is a collaborative project.

This is the theme of Derek DelGaudio's In & Of Itself, a film made from a one man show that was performed over 500 times on a New York City stage. I've never recommended a film here on these pages, but I can't recommend this one enough. I can't tell you how much I wish I'd seen this show live, but the film, directed by Frank Oz and streaming on Hulu, is still a miraculous experience, and not because it is at one level a kind of magic show. I've now watched it three times, twice alone. The most profound viewing was when I watched it with my wife. It's better with another person sitting beside you. I find myself crying and I don't really know why: it's not sad, or at least not mostly sad. There are plenty of jokes, awe-inspiring moments, and mind-blowing concepts, but I cry, like his live audiences always cry. You see their glistening eyes as the camera pans their faces. Some weep without restraint. Last night, when I watched it for the third time, I teared up before a word had been spoken. But it's not sad. It's beautiful.

And horrible.

And true and false. 

It is both a dog and a wolf.

It's about who we are and also about seeing each other and who they are. And, I think, at bottom it's about the enormous responsibility we have for one another.

DelGaudio is a storyteller, telling his own story, telling our story. As he does we realize we too are storytellers, weaving tales from truth and illusion; made and unmade by ourselves and one another. 

Do yourself a favor and take the time for this remarkable accomplishment. 

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There are few things that can improve your life as an early childhood education than improved relations with the parents of the children you teach. As preschool educators, we don't just educate children, but their families as well. For the past 20 years, I've been working in a place that puts the tri-cornered relationship of child-parent-educator at the center, and over that time I've learned a great deal about how to work with families to create the kind of village every child needs and deserves. I'm proud to announce that I've assembled what I've learned into a 6-part e-course called Partnering With Parents in which I share my best thinking on how educators can and should make allies of the parents of the children we teach. (Click this link to register and to learn more.) Register now to receive early bird pricing. Discounts are available for groups.

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 Can't Teach Grit

Few things have put more wear and tear on my teeth than the concept of "teaching" character traits like "grit," "resilience," "optimism," "conscientiousness," and "self-control." It's not that those things aren't important. Indeed, they are vital not just for academic achievement, but for any kind of real, lasting success, be it in school, work, or just being a member of a family or community. No, what sets my teeth grinding is the self-satisfied way in which so-called education reformers, the ones with a product or agenda to sell, insist that they have figured out how to "teach" these things, even going so far as to produce pre-packaged curricula they claim will do this.

It's classic snake oil, based upon the faith-based notion that all these kids need are more lectures, more tests (yes, there are actually standardized tests now that purport to measure these noncognitive traits), and a vigorous system of rewards and punishments. It has been these Skinnerian notions that have lead to such things as zero-tolerance policies, No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and other anti-child measures, none of which have worked in any way to move the needle on the holy grail of "academic achievement." It hasn't worked because what they are doing is not based upon science, but rather an ideology that comes right out of neoliberal economic theory -- the kind business executives, the very folks who are leading the charge to turn our schools into test score coal mines, tend to favor.

To underline this point, Roland G. Fryer, Jr., an economics professor at Harvard distributed nearly $10 million in cash incentives (e.g., rewards) to students in several US cities over the course of several years, with the idea of improving reading scores. These came in the form of cash, cell phones and other inducements just to read books and spend more time on their math homework. The results: "Students performed the tasks necessary to get paid, but their average math scores at the end of eight months hadn't changed at all . . . their reading scores . . . actually went down."

This quote is from an article by education author Paul Tough that appeared in The Atlantic entitled How Kids Really Succeed (they've changed the title in the online version) in which he contrasts actual brain research with current educational practices. It's a worthwhile read, especially the first half in which he discusses the impact of early childhood "toxic stress" on the ability to learn. What researchers are concluding is that the behaviorists are wrong, at least with regard to children:

. . . (W)e are mostly motivated not by the material consequences of our actions but by the inherent enjoyment and meaning that those actions bring us, a phenomenon called intrinsic motivation.

This brings a resounding, "Well, of course," from those of us who work with young children (emphasis mine).

(Researchers) identified three key human needs -- our need for competence, our need for autonomy, and our need for relatedness, meaning personal connection -- and they posited that intrinsic motivation can be sustained only when we feel the those needs are being satisfied.

Competence, autonomy, and personal connection: these are the building blocks of a play-based education where children are allowed to become competent by having the time and space to autonomously ask and answer their own questions within the context of a loving community. This is where those bedrock character traits come from. And it is why they will never emerge from the reward and punishment model of the neoliberal Skinnerians.

Sadly, when Tough asks the question, "So what do these academic environments look like?" (e.g., those that emphasize competence, autonomy, and personal connection) he answers it by going into traditional schools where teachers are using this research to manipulate kids into "learning" what adults have pre-determined is good for the kids, rather than what the kids themselves are driven to pursue, which means they might produce statistically significant improvements, but ones that are still marginal compared to the sort that would come from the kind of systemic change that brain (and psychological and anthropological and pedagogical) research tells us would transform the lives not just of young children, but all of us.

The research tells us that if we are really concerned with grit, resilience, optimism, conscientiousness, self-control, and other character traits, we must set kids free to lead their own learning.

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Mark your calendar! If you're interested in who to set children free, Teacher Tom's Play Summit is online, free, and takes place June 21-25. To learn more and to get on the waitlist, click here! I'm excited about this line-up, including Akilah Richards, Peter Gray, Lisa Murphy, Maggie Dent, and the one and only Raffi! But I'm mostly excited about all of us coming together, for children, to turn this world around.

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!