"There's Going to Be a Lot of Fighting This Year"

On the first day of school he told me, "There's going to be a lot of fighting this year." It was an interesting comment, funny even, coming from this particular boy. I'd known him since he was a two-year-old and he had never shown any inclination toward violence, real or imaginary. On the contrary, tough guy bluster, even of the comical variety, had in the past often seemed to intimidate and confuse him. He was regularly reduced to tears by dramatic play that struck him as threatening, often retreating under our classroom loft for "safety."

Jousting with swings standing in for steeds

His mother explained that he had over the summer become fascinated with knights, including their armor, shields, and other weaponry, items he had taught himself to create using paper, scissors, tape, and staples. And that is how his "fighting" first showed up in the classroom, with him not only arming himself, but also others. He had mastered the fierce pose and when he found another kid inclined toward "fighting," he might threaten something like, "You better watch out, I'm going to fight you." The fighting itself was quite tame by the standards of Woodland Park play fighting, most often involving "swords," but sometimes featuring "jousting." He was clearly thrilled when someone engaged with him, although the moment actual contact was made, even when of the light and incidental variety, he usually called it off, often crying loudly. But once the tears were over, he was back at it, once more trying to lure others into his game of fighting knights.

This knight has been unseated

I hope this description doesn't make him seem like a problem child in any way, because he was not. No one who knew him was worried that he would grow up to be actually violent. This was clearly an intellectual pursuit, one full of questions to which he was seeking answers. Even months into the school year there was still obvious uncertainty as he approached others with his knight game, as he tested the others to see how they would respond. He was delighted by his successes: his face flushed with excitement when it was going as he expected, combatants committed to both ferocity and a kind of chivalry that included not really hurting one another. He was overwhelmed when others surpassed him in intensity or more extreme physicality. He was often disappointed by those who were neither impressed, nor attracted by this knight who was threaten-asking them to fight with him. He had made his knight studies at home as a self-selected "academic" pursuit and was now attempting to apply what he had learned in real life.

One of his classmates did a similar thing with his own animal studies. Earlier in the year, he could be found prowling the playground as a dinosaur, usually as a T-rex, his favorite, roaring and stalking about with his arms draw up to mimic the short forearms associated with the species. Then his interests turned to invertebrates, like his pet snails, but also slugs, worms, and insects. One day, he put shoes on his hands so that he could practice moving like an insect, developing a fuller understanding of how they crawl by studying it with his whole body, in the same way that my knight-loving friend sought to embody a knight in order to more fully understand.

Neither of these boys would be described as particularly physical, at least not in comparison to many of their classmates who spend their days racing around the place. In fact, when they moved on to traditional public kindergartens the following year, they both adapted to desk work better than most. They will never show up as a "problem child" because they possess the sort of self-control and temperaments that will allow them to adapt more easily than will those "active" kids whose teachers will chase them around the classroom, scolding, punishing, and otherwise correcting them for moving their bodies at the wrong time and in the wrong way, perhaps even going so far as to recommend drugs.

It's a pity because it's clear that all children, even not obviously active ones, learn most naturally when allowed to engage their full selves, including their bodies, not in adult-proscribed ways and at adult-proscribed times, but as their own questioning and exploration dictates. Traditional schools are notoriously bad at allowing this because so much of what happens in them is about crowd control rather than learning. We can't have knights and insects anywhere but in the form of words, read or listened to, then regurgitated in their approved form, with bodies in their proper places, doing their proper things. It's a pity because all children learn best when allowed to explore with their full-selves, teaching themselves. And they must use their full bodies to do it.

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For a deeper dive into the power and importance of sensory play, check out my interview on Teacher Tom's Podcast with Lisa Murphy, author and founder and CEO of Ooey Gooey, Inc. To listen to the full episode, click here.

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