Because That's Where Community Begins

A while back, I was passing a table at which four boys were eating snack. They were discussing a classmate, a boy with sensory challenges that often manifested in ways that disturbed and even hurt his classmates. One of them said as I passed, "He's a bad guy." That stopped me in my tracks.

"Yeah," a friend replied, "He's a real bad guy."

And another, "He hurts me all the time."

The poor boy had one defender in the group who added, "He never hurts me," but his opinion was overwhelmed by the prevailing sentiment. As I stood there, they came to an agreement that they weren't going to play with him any longer.

As a teacher, it was upsetting to hear. Yes, he had hurt these boys and others. They had every right to be wary of him, even to shun him. That said, this was a preschooler with a diagnosed condition, one that caused him to behave impulsively. He wasn't a "bad guy," of course, but there was no doubt that he frequently did bad things: things that hurt and frightened other people.

I went home that day knowing that we adults needed to do something. There is always going to be a little hitting and shoving around a preschool, but obviously, despite our best efforts, we had not succeeded in keeping the other children safe from this particular boy. Because of that, the kids, or at least the four boys I'd overheard, had decided to take matters into their own hands, labeling and then shunning, "natural" consequences that come right out of our hunter-gatherer past. But obviously, this was a natural consequence we could not allow to stand, not in a school setting and not amongst children.

Ultimately, our "solution" involved the kind of transparency that is one of the hallmarks of a cooperative school. Since all the parents work in the school as assistant teachers, all of them were already aware not only of this boy's behavior, but the underlying condition that caused it. We had already been attempting to mitigate things with a plan of action, but it was clear we were falling short, so after much discussion, some of it tense and tearful, we decided the best thing to do was to extend our transparency to the children, to share this boy's challenges with them, to explain how he wasn't a "bad guy," but that his brain sometimes made him do bad things, like hurting other people. And instead of having these discussions at school where we feared they would have the affect of shaming the boy, we placed the responsibility upon each family to talk about this boy and his challenges with their own children at home. We provided resources as a fallback, but we left it to each family to find their own way of discussing it.

This was, to say the least, a challenging emotional process for the parents of the boy who was not a "bad guy." His mother shared some of her feelings with us, but I can only imagine her private anguish. It was often crushing for her to sit in those parent meetings where we discussed her son's behavior hearing from her peers what the other children had experienced and what they were saying at home. It was almost unbearable to hear her own beloved child being labeled "bad guy." Yet, she understood it too, he had done "bad" things to those other children. She later shared with me, however, that the process had also been cathartic. She had often worried about what others were saying about her family behind closed doors, but now, with it all out in the open, she had found compassion where she had feared accusation.

As the weeks passed, families had their discussions at home, helping their children understand and how they could help him. Things got a little better. We coached the kids to be firm with him, even proactive:

"I don't like that!"

"You can play with me if you don't hurt me."

"You are hugging me too hard!"

"Don't knock down my building."

The hurting still happened, although perhaps not as much as before. But more importantly, the children began to show more compassion toward him when he was impulsive because we had helped them actually understand their classmate beyond the cookie cutter label of "bad guy." Sure, they still yelled at him, got angry, and cried, but they were far less prone toward shunning. I'll never forget one girl saying to him, "I know it's hard for you to do, but if you don't stop pinching me, I'm not going to play with you." It was a kind of perfect balance between compassion and self-preservation.

This process would be a difficult, if not impossible, thing to do in a traditional school where "privacy" and "confidentiality" concerns override those of transparency, but that doesn't mean that parents' hands are tied. The school may not be able to be transparent, but parents can be. We found that one of the most powerful tools at our disposal was one-on-one play after school, at homes where a calmer atmosphere made the boy less inclined to his impulsivity, where the children could form a different kind of bond than was possible at school, where they had the opportunity to make deposits in the "good time bank," so that when problems arose there was a balance to fall back upon. But perhaps most importantly, it gave the parents a chance to get to know one another which is where compassion grows best.

In other words, it all came down to relationships and it started with adults of goodwill, a partnership between educators and parents, because that's where community begins. This is the whole idea behind my 6-week course Partnering With Parents. Please join us. The world needs more villages in which to raise our children.

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It takes a village to raise a child. 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. The cohort starts on March 2, so act now!

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 Preschool Is Better With Parents Playing With You

Based on my informal and unscientific surveys of early childhood educators, one of the biggest hurdles to fully realizing play-based education is "the parents." Not all the parents, of course, but there are apparently a lot who might like the idea of their children playing, but who have bought into the "fall behind" snake oil. This leads them to apply pressure to us to become "more academic" in defiance of the science behind how young children learn.

I've found that one of the best things one can do for your play-based program is to consciously manage those expectations, right from the start. For us, the process of getting parents on our bandwagon starts with our spring orientation.

I use this opportunity to tell the assembled parents that I will not be teaching their children literacy, although they will be laying the foundations for literacy through their play, their dramatic play in particular; every time we read to them or tell them stories, or when they tell stories to us; each time they get excited and say, "Hey that's my letter!" or "That's your letter!" I won't be teaching them, but they'll be doing exactly what they need to do to read when their brains are ready.

I tell them that I will not be teaching their children math, although they will be practicing their math skills every time they count something out, put things in order, arrange things in groups, worked a puzzle, make or identify a pattern.

I tell them I am particularly uninterested in teaching STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) skills so they would be ready for those "jobs of tomorrow," although again, through their play they will be engaged in teaching these things to themselves. When one studies children at play, it's impossible to not see them as scientists or engineers, asking and answering their own questions, engaging in experiments, figuring out fundamental truths about our world and the other people. 

I tell these parents that I'm singularly uninterested in vocational training. The proper career aspiration for a preschooler is princess or superhero. The jobs for which their children will be applying two decades from now do not yet exist and anyone who tells you they can predict the employment landscape that far into the future is blowing smoke. The jobs our 24-year-old daughter is considering did not exist when she was in preschool. The careers my high school counselors suggested that I pursue would have left me unemployable today. But more importantly, we don't educate our children so that they can take their role in the economy, but rather so that they can perform their role as citizens.

We then talk a lot about "community" at our parent meeting. In fact, nearly everyone who speaks finds that word in their mouth, not because it's part of a coordinated effort, but because it is the real foundation of what we do at our school. We're a cooperative which means that we are owned and operated by the parents who enroll their children and these parents will attend school with their children, serving as assistant teachers. We are not just a community of children, but in a real sense, on a day-to-day basis, a community of families, assembled together around the common goal of supporting our children as they learn the foundational skills of citizenship.

At it's most basic, this means that we strive to form a community in which our children can practice living in a world with other people, learning how to get their own needs met while also leaving space for others to meet theirs. Nothing is more important, not just for individuals, but for our larger society. A good citizen is someone who thinks critically, who thinks for herself; a good citizen is someone who asks a lot of questions and who questions authority; a good citizen knows that it is not just their right, but their responsibility, to speak their mind, even when others disagree; a good citizen likewise knows that they must listen, especially when they disagree; a good citizen knows that they contribute to society in ways far more vital and varied than as a worker bee. It is from citizens with these traits that strong communities, strong democracies, are made.

I tell our assembled parent community that their children will be learning these things as they play together, creating their own community, and that it wouldn't always be pretty. Their children will come home covered in water, mud, paint, snot, and even upon occasion, blood. Their children will find themselves embroiled in conflict. They will be learning through joy, yes, but also tears. They will, as they must, mix it up with the other children, sort things out, make agreements, and help one another. They will teach themselves to be self-motivated, to work well with others, and begin to understand the importance of being personable, all of which are, not accidentally, the most important "vocational" skills of all.

I tell the assembled adults that our job is not to teach children anything, but rather to love and support them as they perform their inquiries, test their theories, and figure out what works for them and what doesn't. We're not there to push or command or mold, but rather to create a safe space in which the children can play, together, in the context of their community.

If this sounds like the kind of community you want to create for the families that bring their children to you, please check out my 6-part course called The Empowered Educator: Partnering With Parents. It takes a village to raise a child and this is where it starts.

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If you're interested in learning more about creating a learning village that parents will wholeheartedly support, I've developed this 6-part course called The Empowered Educator: Partnering With 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. How would it be to have parents show up as allies? (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!

"The Degree To Which You Resist Is The Degree To Which You Are Free"

Everybody's had to fight to be free. ~Tom Petty

The American labor organizer, folk singer, storyteller and poet Utah Phillips once said, "The state can't give you free speech, and the state can't take it away. You're born with it, like your eyes, like your ears. Freedom is something you assume, then you wait for someone to try to take it away. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free."

I've often thought that freedom might be the central concern in what we do as early childhood educators. It could also be the central concern in what we do as parents or, indeed, in any of our relationships with other living things. Of course, evolution demands that we care for our babies for a decade or more, otherwise they are unlikely to survive, which in turn means our species would be unlikely to survive. In this way, we are very unlike other species, most of which can measure their requirement to care for their young in terms of months, weeks, or even days. 

Because our young need us for so long, it's easy to fall into the error of treating these relatively helpless humans as ours to control. We tell ourselves, that it's for their own good, and perhaps it is, but for me it remains a concern because, ultimately, my hope for every child is that they not only assume their own freedom, but likewise know to resist those who would exert power over them. This is a real problem for those of us who value freedom considering that for many children, perhaps even most, they will have been under the control of adults for the first two decades of their lives.

In some cases, like with authoritarian style adults, this control is explicit, but even those of us who opt for more authoritative or permissive approaches, still, at the end of the day, find that we must, at least from time to time, "for their own good," excerpt control over the children in our lives. We do it in the name of safety, such as when we forbid them from playing in traffic. We do it in the name of justice, civil society, morality, and courtesy, such as when we don't allow them to hit other children. We expert this power over them, we tell ourselves, in service to our responsibility as important adults in their lives.

But the slope is a slippery one. Too many of us, when we step back and really focus on the central concern of freedom, find that at least some of what we do isn't for their good, but rather our own. For me, most of what passes for "classroom management," for instance, falls into this category: the sitting and silence and walking in straight lines. As a preschool teacher, I felt it was incumbent upon me to know the difference between my actual responsibility to care for children, to keep them safe, to keep them clothed, fed, and sheltered, and the control I exerted for my own ends.

It's not easy knowing where this line is and it is likely different for every relationship we have with a young human. Finding the line is, for me, an ongoing dialog between myself and the children, both individually and collectively. One way I have of locating that line is when a child, or children, resist. Too often, our instinct is to double down when they fight to be free, to view it as a challenge to our authority. But if we are taking our responsibility seriously, if we are truly seeking to raise free humans, and I hope we are, it is incumbent upon us to listen to their resistance as important communication, and reconsider what we are doing and why we are doing it.

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 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. How would it be to have parents show up as allies?Please join me for this 6-week course in which I share my roadmap for enabling educators to transform their relationship with parents and other caregivers, resulting in improved understanding and support of play-based education and becoming supportive partners in their child's learning. Click this link to register and to learn more. Discounts are available for groups. The course begins on March 2, so act fast!

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!

"They Have Never Failed To Imitate Them"

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.  ~James Baldwin

I don't claim to be a parenting expert.  I'm just a guy who has spent a lot of time playing with children, from that I've learned a little bit, and because of this blog people write me for my take on things. If there is any one thing that people write me more than anything else, it's something along the lines of, "I've tried everything and nothing works." I'm talking about universal parenting aggravations like getting kids to eat their vegetables, take a nap, or participate in household chores. And these are important things. Not only do we want our children to be healthy, rested, and responsible today, but these behaviors represent the values of good health and responsibility that, if we can only "instill" them, we know will serve our children throughout their lives.

While I try to be more sympathetic than this with individual readers because I know they wouldn't write to some guy on the internet wearing a red cape unless they were truly at the end of their rope, my answer to their dilemma is really quite simple: Quit trying.

You can serve children healthy food, but you can't make them eat. So quit trying.

You can put children into their bed, but you can't make them sleep. So quit trying.

And you can't make them clean up their room without the promise of a reward or the threat of punishment. 

So, I suppose I could reply to these parents that they haven't, in fact, tried "everything," because obviously you could always come up with a carrot that is sweet enough or a stick that is painful enough that you can get a child to do what you want them to do, but I would never suggest that anyone consciously step onto the vicious cycle of reward and punishment. Rewards and punishments may appear to work in the moment -- the promise of ice cream may well motivate a child to eat a few peas; the threat of having toys taken away may well motivate a child to tidy up -- but human nature dictates that, being unnatural consequences, the value of the rewards and the severity of the punishments must be regularly increased or they lose their effectiveness. Not only that, but the lessons taught in the long run, to be motivated by the approval or disapproval of others, are certainly not what we wish for our children. Values must come from within; they are not imposed from without: that's called obedience an unsavory and even dangerous trait.

Whatever we publicly proclaim, our actual values (as opposed to the values to which we aspire) are always, always, always most accurately and honestly revealed by our behaviors. When we eat junk food, we demonstrate that we value convenience or flavor over eating healthily. When we don't get enough sleep, we demonstrate that we value our jobs or our hobbies or our TV programs more than rest. When we let our homes become cluttered and dirty, we demonstrate that we value something else over a well-ordered household.

No, the better course, I've found, when it comes to teaching values is to simply give up trying to make another person do something that you want them to do. If you value healthy food, then eat it. If you value being well rested, then sleep. If you value a tidy bedroom, then keep yours tidy. And ultimately, with time, sometimes lots of time, it will be your role-modeling of these behaviors that your child will come to imitate, not on your schedule, but one of his own, which is all we can expect of our fellow humans.

You cannot instill values in other people, you can only role model them. And while I've avoided mentioning them in this post, no matter what your priest, rabbi, pastor, imam, or guru says, this goes for moral values as well.

******

 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. How would it be to have parents show up as allies?Please join me for this 6-week course in which I share my roadmap for enabling educators to transform their relationship with parents and other caregivers, resulting in improved understanding and support of play-based education and becoming supportive partners in their child's learning. Click this link to register and to learn more. Discounts are available for groups. The course begins on March 2, so act fast!

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 Would Prefer Not To

"I would prefer not to." ~Bartleby the Scrivner: A Story of Wall Street by Herman Melville

It's important to me as an educator, to reject or defuse or diffuse any power over others that comes my way. Classrooms can too easily become tin pot dictatorships, perhaps benevolent dictatorships, but dictatorships nevertheless.

It's easy because most of us are left alone in rooms with children and children in our culture are lesser. We expect them to obey, to behave, and to been seen and not heard. Even the best intended of us can too easily fall into the habits of command and control in these circumstances.

Perhaps there was a time in our species' past, an egalitarian time, when we didn't assert power over one another. Indeed, there are many theories about human evolution that claim this was once the case, and that evidence of this past can still be found in what remains of the world's indigenous cultures. But in more recent centuries our species has been quite power hungry, with three-quarters of the global population living in bondage to powerful lords of one kind or another as recently as 1800. There are many who would insist that nothing has really changed over the past two centuries; that we've simply exchanged one kind of chains for another.

Maybe it's true that the children in our care are destined for lives lived under the power of others, but, as Herman Melville's Bartleby puts it, "I would prefer not to." 

"One of the effects of power," writes Rutger Bregman in his book Humankind, ". . . is that it makes you see others in a negative light. If you're powerful you're more likely to think most people are lazy and unreliable. That they need to be supervised and monitored, managed and regulated, censored and told what to do. And because power makes you feel superior to other people, you'll believe all this monitoring should be entrusted to you." This sounds very much to me the way many classrooms operate, with teachers serving as factory floor bosses. I would prefer not to.

Bregman goes on to write that those over whom power is exerted experience exactly the opposite effect. "Psychological research shows the people who feel powerless also feel far less confident. They're hesitant to voice an opinion. In groups, they make themselves seem smaller, and they under-estimate their own intelligence." This too, in many ways, is the story of what we call education, one in which children start out as creative geniuses only to emerge at the other end fit for employment, but perhaps little else. I would prefer not to.

My greatest wish for the children I teach is that they know, if even for a few short years, what it means to be free, what it means to not be monitored, managed, regulated, censored, or told what to do. I want them to step out into the world, confident and delighted with their ability to learn, think, and engage as an autonomous human, intellectually, socially, and emotionally. 

To do this, I must remain constantly vigilant because the culture in which I live wants me to exert power over children, even rewarding me for it. I often fail, but it's something I must strive toward every day. When I find myself viewing any child in a negative light, when I feel the urge to manage or regulate, that's when I must turn inward and do what I can to eradicate the urge to superiority. I usually find that I'm clinging to power rather than, as is my responsibility, giving it away, because that is the only way to fulfill my highest purpose as an educator, which is to empower.

That is what I prefer to do. And that, in the end, is the only way any of us will ever be free.

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"I recommend this book to everyone concerned with children and the future of humanity." ~Peter Gray, Ph.D. If you want to see what Dr. Gray is talking about you can find Teacher Tom's First Book and Teacher Tom's Second Book right 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!

And That Is The Point

"Some day, I will live in that hotel," the girl said, pointing to a luxury tower. She was walking with her family -- mom, dad, a couple of older brothers. "I'll let you live there with me, but I get the whole top floor to myself. Don't forget, I'm the main character in our family's story."

Her family gave her a collective eye roll, reacting to a joke she had apparently told before. She ignored them, smirking at her own precociousness.

The overheard comment made me think of my mother-in-law Pat, who recently died after a long, awful decline into dementia. In many ways, she had been the main character of our family's story, a figure of great intelligence and energy, a woman whose life we have always, without really thinking about it, spoken of in terms of chapters. Of course, we all had our own lives, but when we were with her, even after her illness had made her a different person, yet another chapter, she stood at the center of us all. Her death has felt very much like the closing of a book.

Everyone is seeking the feeling of control. Pat's life was evidence of this. And I heard it in the voice of this little girl who insisted on being the main character, not just in her own story, but her family's story. I see it in every child I have ever gotten to know. I feel it in myself. As the famous Serenity Prayer reminds us: there are things we can control, things we cannot, and wisdom is found in knowing the difference. The Buddhist tradition tells us that our discontentments in life come from not being able to prevent the erosion and loss of things we value.

For the better part of two decades I spent hours every day on our preschool's junkyard playground. There had been a time when it was brand new to us: the two-level sand pit, the wooden row boat, the cast iron water pump, the raised bed garden, the swings, the workbench, the art tables, the retractible rain/sun awning. We all knew, from the very start that the sand pit, being built on a slope with a cast iron water pump at the top was going to be prone to erosion, that the sand would need to be regularly moved back up hill. So, we knew, intellectually, that things would not remain the same, but over the years as the row boat began to rot, as the nails came loose on the garden beds, as the awning began to thin and tear, I found myself fretting. Decay was all around us, every day, accelerated by children playing hard, exploring, experimenting, and discovering.

Twice a year, we came together as a community on a weekend with wheel barrows and shovels to haul that sand back up the hill, to re-hammer the nails, and to otherwise patch and repair. Most days, it would remain beautiful to me, and I know it remained that way for the children, but every now and then I would see a photo of how things had been when it was all shiny and new, and mourn what once was.

In Nobel prize winning novelist Doris Lessing's book The Summer Before the Dark, the main character, Kate, is a woman who has made a life as a wife and mother. Her husband earns a good living. Her children are grown. Her marriage is what most would consider successful. As Kate says, "This was a happy and satisfactory marriage because both she and Michael had understood, and very early on, that the core of discontent, or of hunger, if you like, which is unfailingly part of every modern marriage -- of everything, and that was the point -- had nothing to do with either partner. Or with marriage. It was fed and heightened by what people were educated to expect of marriage, which was a very great deal because the texture of ordinary life . . . was thin and unsatisfactory. Marriage had had a load heaped on it which it could not sustain."

Marriage is not the only thing that has had a load heaped on it. It hadn't been easy, but Kate had, over the years adopted the virtues of being a married woman in the 1970's, but, and this is the crux of the story Lessing is telling, "it seemed to her that she and acquired not virtues but a form of dementia . . . The virtues had turned to vices, to the nagging and bullying of other people."

It's normal and healthy to seek control, but that urge exists on a continuum, just as virtue and vice exist on a continuum. It's normal and healthy to mourn the loss of things as they inevitably decay, break, or simply, one day, go away.

Our children are born perfect. Our love for them is perfect. And then they cry from discontent. They transform our lives. They grow, they make demands, they behave in ways beyond our control. That is the nature of everything, and that is the point.

The girl is right. We are the main characters in the stories we are living, but we cannot be the authors in the way Doris Lessing was a novelist. No, our stories are more like our more authentic oral traditions, not set in stone or printed on a page, but alive in our words and deeds. Most of all our stories live in the learning and unlearning we must do as we live the life before us. Just as we awaken each day to a new world, our stories must have new chapters, and they need not even be connected to the chapters that came before, because the parts we cannot control, the decay, the erosion, the brokenness will always turn our virtues into vices compelling us to adopt the new virtues demanded by today. The alternative is nagging and bullying and discontent. 

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If you liked reading this post, you might also enjoy one of my books. To find out more, Click here! 

"Ready for a book that makes you want to underline and highlight? One that makes you draw arrows and write 'THIS!!!!!' in the margin? Then you are in for a treat." ~Lisa Murphy, M.Ed., author and Early Childhood Specialist, Ooey Gooey, Inc.

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!

Real Courage

Ian was a three-year-old with an older sister named Eleanor who he adored. One day he arrived at school wearing one of his sister's dresses.

Even as young as that, he stepped through the door self-consciously. Maybe someone at home, possibly even his more world-wise sister, had cautioned him that he might be teased. It's also likely that he already knew, even without the explicit words of others, that what he was doing, being a boy wearing a dress, wasn't likely to go unnoticed. Gender stereotypes are learned early and he knew this was going against type.

As he stood in the doorway, waiting for comments, for questions, for ridicule, the other children pushed past him, taking no notice. He made eye contact with me. I greeted him as I did every day, "Good morning, Ian. I'm happy to see you."

He was a boy who often wore costumes, both from home and from our racks of dress up clothing, doing so unabashedly, embodying the character he felt suitable for a gorilla or a tiger or a bunny. This was different: in wearing this dress he was being courageous. He was courageous in the way real courage manifests, not like the comic-book bravado of a superhero, but rather the sweaty-browed, nervous, self-doubt that generally accompanies any act of genuine courage. This was not make believe, but rather real life, and in real life one might get hurt. I don't know if he was thinking these thoughts, but I'm certain he was feeling them.

As he stepped into the room, he remained against the wall, eyes still darting about, waiting, I thought, for the worst. Then his older sister Eleanor arrived, passing through the door boldly, catching Ian's arm, saying, "Come on." She was too old for preschool, but we always welcomed siblings to stay and play a bit, especially elementary school aged ones whose days were too full of sitting at desks. As they made their way to the art table, the glamour of the older child pulled several kids along in their wake. They swarmed together through the room. Ian's self-consciousness seemed to disappear as they explored the materials they found on the art table.

Eleanor was wearing a t-shirt and jeans. Indeed, as I reflected, I realized that I'd never seen her in a dress, yet I'd not once considered that she was "dressed as a boy." That's what patriarchy does. We value "maleness" so there is no implied shame. Indeed, we tend to see girls clad like Eleanor as strong and independent, whereas a boy in a dress connotes weakness.

By the time his mother arrived, Ian was fully engaged in his self-selected pursuit, his initial reticence no longer evident. Out of the children's earshot, she said, "I suppose you noticed what Ian is wearing. He wants you to ask him if he's a girl."

I couldn't do that, exactly. I wasn't going to ask a loaded question like that, so later, when I had a chance to speak with him alone, I said, "Your mom thinks you want me to ask you if you're a girl."

"I'm not a girl," he said, "I'm a mommy and I'm going to give my babies milk from my breasts." Then, to prove his point, he chose a doll and held it to his chest.

"That's something that a lot of mommies do," I said. As we sat together, I noted that I'd never seen his mother in a dress either, nor was she currently a breast-feeding parent. These were constructs, dresses and mommies and feeding babies, that he had picked up from our world. None of us escape them, except with conscious, courageous effort, which is, I realized, exactly what this three-year-old was doing.

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If you liked reading this post, you might also enjoy one of my books. To find out more, Click here! 

"Ready for a book that makes you want to underline and highlight? One that makes you draw arrows and write 'THIS!!!!!' in the margin? Then you are in for a treat." ~Lisa Murphy, M.Ed., author and Early Childhood Specialist, Ooey Gooey, Inc.

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Exploring The World Is How We Explore Our Minds

She stopped right inside the gate. In fact, her mother had to nudge her through and there she stood looking at our junkyard playground for the first time. She was only two-years-old and her mother had brought her to the Woodland Park Cooperative Preschool for the first time. She was not going to be left with us. Her mother was going to stay with her, side-by-side, bottom-on-lap, arms wrapped around one another if that was necessary, because that's the way cooperatives work.

The girl's mother waved to me, then bent to talk softly into her daughter's ear. The girl was probably listening, but there was no visual indication that she heard her mother, or even that her mother was there. She was studying this new place, probably, knowing the way humans work, looking for something familiar. That would be her entry point.

For some kids, the newness is so overwhelming that the only familiar thing they can see is the adult who arrived with them, but this girl, Paula, spotted a small stuffed bear lying on its face. She took her mother's hand and toddled down the short stairway. When she hit the ground, she freed herself and careened toward the bear, falling on her belly. It was her first lesson in the slope and unevenness that characterizes our playground. She lay within inches of the bear. She turned over and, from her seat, she picked it up with one hand. With her other, she brushed at it, knocking off wood chips, decaying leaves, and sand. She scowled into its eyeless face, then, still holding it in one hand pushed herself onto her feet and toddled back to her mother, not falling this time. Wordlessly, she offered the bear to her mother and her mother took it, who replied with a torrent of enthusiastic words.

Knowing what I know about humans, and especially young children, I recognized that Paula had made a first connection between life as she knew it and this new place. 

As the days passed, she would hand many more things to her mother, who wouldn't always be enthusiastic. Indeed, as her mother likewise became better connected to our space, she was less inclined to nervous enthusiasm and more likely to respond informatively. She would say things like, "This looks like a steering wheel," or "Ugh, that's disgusting." 

As the days passed Paula began to connect me to her world by handing things to me as well. As she got to know the other children and the other children's parents, she would try out connecting with them too. None of us responded exactly as her mother had, even when handed the steering wheel. For instance, I pretended I was driving a car, saying, "Vroom, vroom" and "Honk, honk." The other children did even more interesting things in response to being connected to Paula through the steering wheel. Some banged it on the ground. Some tried to roll it down the slope. Many dropped it. Most, after putting it through its paces, handed it back to Paula.

Exploring the world is how we explore our minds. This lifelong expedition is about connecting what we know with the new things we come across until those new things are also part of what we know. No one needs to tell us, just as no one needed to tell Paula, that to really understand something, you must strive to have it in your hands and to look at it from a variety of perspectives. And there is nothing more natural, more normal, than to do it alongside loved ones. Eventually, Paula would be experienced or confident or curious enough to explore without her mother immediately at her side, at her own pace, until she could securely explore both alone and in the company of this wider "family" that she had both discovered and created.

"A husband, a wife and some kids is not a family," writes Kurt Vonnegut, "It's a terribly vulnerable survival unit . . . I met a man in Nigeria one time, an Ibo who had six hundred relatives he knew quite well. His wife had just had a baby, the best possible news in an extended family. They were going to take it to meet all its relatives, Ibos of all ages, sizes and shapes. It would even meet other babies, cousins not much older than it was. Everybody who was big enough and steady enough was going to get to hold it, cuddle it, gurgle it . . . Wouldn't you have loved to be that baby?"

This is what our children need, this extended family, this village of connection, this place of love and connection that is our birthright. I share Vonnegut's wish: "I really, over the long run, hope America would find some way to provide all of our citizens with extended families -- a large group of people they could call on for help."

That is what I set out to create as an educator, a place for families to connect, whether for a few years or a lifetime. This is what I wish we all understood as not just education, but life itself.

******

 

If you liked reading this post, you might also enjoy one of my books. To find out more, Click here! 

"Ready for a book that makes you want to underline and highlight? One that makes you draw arrows and write 'THIS!!!!!' in the margin? Then you are in for a treat." ~Lisa Murphy, M.Ed., author and Early Childhood Specialist, Ooey Gooey, Inc.

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 He Wanted To Show Me

Calder said, "Teacher Tom, I want to show you. Come with me." 

I was in the middle of something, so answered, "I can't come right now. I'll come when I'm finished."

He went away, but came back to remind me of my promise. "I want to show you. Come with me."

Children were talking to me. I said, "Oh yeah, Calder wants to show me something." When I went with him, other children followed.

He dropped to his knees near the outdoor drum set that graced our playground until the children played it into the dumpster. He showed me what he had collected from the loose parts that populate our outdoor classroom. "Look what I have!" Then he pointed, "Circle, star, rectangle, pyramid, square, cube, oval."

I said, "You found a circle, a star, a rectangle, a pyramid, a square, a cube, and an oval."

He repeated it for me, for all of us, several times. When he was done, he got up and walked away.

Henry asked, "What did he say?"

"Calder told us what he found: circle, star, rectangle, pyramid, square, cube, oval."

Henry dropped to his knees, pointing, "Circle, star, rectangle, pyramid, square, cube, oval."

"You said those shapes."

Now it was a game. Several kids followed suit, some struggling with the names of the three-dimensional shapes. Then Elana took her place, feeling silly, "Wood, basket, lego, block, box, block, ring."

"Hey, you found different names for everything!"

By then, Calder had returned, "No! Circle, star, rectangle, pyramid, square, cube, oval!" He said it fast, almost too fast to be understood. He wasn't happy that we'd re-labeled his collection. Or maybe he thought we were telling him that his things weren't what he knew they were.

I said, "Circle, star, rectangle, pyramid, square, cube, oval." He said, "Yes," again repeating the list, this time even faster than before, "Circlestarrectanglepyramidsquarecubeoval!"

"And Elana said, 'Wood, basket, lego, block, box, block, ring.'"

Calder cocked his head. He sat quietly by his collection, picking up some of the pieces, then putting them back. Most of the other children had moved on, but Violet was still there beside me. She said, "Wood, metal, plastic, plastic, plastic, wood, plastic."

Calder whipped around to look at her. His expression was fierce for a moment, but then he smiled. Pointing, he said, "Wood, metal, plastic, plastic, plastic, wood, plastic."

A few minutes later, I was standing alone by the collection, trying to take a picture that would help me tell this story. Luella had not been part of the group of children who had been investigating Calder's collection. She looked at my camera, then followed its aim to the objects. As I slipped the camera into my pocket, and turned to focus on her, she dropped to her knees, pointing, "One, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7!"

******

 

If you liked reading this post, you might also enjoy one of my books. To find out more, Click here! 

"Ready for a book that makes you want to underline and highlight? One that makes you draw arrows and write 'THIS!!!!!' in the margin? Then you are in for a treat." ~Lisa Murphy, M.Ed., author and Early Childhood Specialist, Ooey Gooey, Inc.

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!