"The Truth Will Make Me Free"

Man is nothing else, but what he makes of himself. ~Jean-Paul Sartre

Among the founding principles of our American democracy is the ideal that we each be free to pursue "happiness." That's not a guarantee of happiness, but rather an aspirational statement, one that envisions each of us having the opportunity to choose our own course in life; whether that leads to happiness (however that is defined) or not is up to each individual. 

I don't think anyone believes that we have, as a society, fully achieved this particular freedom of pursuit, but it's an ideal that has the virtue of being noble.

I think about the "pursuit of happiness" nearly every day, my own and that of the children I teach. Indeed, I consider it my highest goal on most days, to do what I can to create a bubble within which we are all free to ask and answer our own questions, which is, I think, the key aspect of anyone's pursuit of happiness. Answering other people's questions simply makes you a tool of their pursuit. It's only through finding answers to our own questions that we come a little closer to our personal truth, and as Mister Rogers sang, "The truth will make me free."

As adults we tend to take a longer view, pinning our future happiness on a set of circumstances that, when achieved, will, we believe, cause us contentment and satisfaction; that will fill us with joy in the morning, love during the day, and peace at night. Children are more focused on their immediate futures and they typically don't spend a lot of energy contemplating even that, choosing rather to apply themselves to the pursuit, to their self-selected path, the one that is paved with their own curiosity. They understand better than we do that the word "pursuit" is best understood as a synonym for "search."

What I see children doing each day as they play is search for nothing more or less than the meaning of life. As sophomoric as that sounds, I've come to understand that this is what education in a democracy must always be about and the degree to which we lose sight of that is the degree to which we rob others of their right to their pursuit of happiness. Discovering the meaning of life, our own life, our one unique life, is what we're here to do. It's a question that we were born to ask and one that only we can answer for ourselves. And we can only do that when we are free to seek our own answers: in that direction lies the meaning of life.

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Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in ways that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

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

"Appreciation is a Holy Thing"

After reading a story, then singing our final song together, the children came forward to hug me, not one at a time, but all together, and there we were, a massive scrum of bodies, wrapping one another up in our arms.

Since my first year teaching, this was the way the two-year-olds said goodbye to me at the end of the day. I never asked for it or encouraged it in any way other than, I suppose, to be open to it. It always started on the first day of class each year because there was always that one child who genuinely felt the urge to hug me, to receive a hug from me, then others saw it, thought, "I want some of that," and came for their hug as well. I said the children's names as they approached, "Here's my Sarah hug, my Nora hug, my Alex hug . . ."

Mister Rogers said, "I believe that appreciation is a holy thing." We were saying goodbye to one another, of course, but we were also saying thank you, expressing our gratitude, showing our appreciation, not in payment for any particular favor, but simply for the time we had together. It started spontaneously, then, as the year progressed, became a sort of ritual, each child making it their own. There were some who rushed to be first, others who waited for the crowd to thin. Some didn't want to let go. Some come back for a second and third and fourth hug. A few didn't want to hug, preferring a high five or simply eye contact. Some were moved to hug their classmates.

It was a beautiful way to end our time together, topping one another up before heading off into our separate lives.

******

Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in way that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

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

"Since We're Neighbors, Let's Be Friends"

For the past several years, I've been limiting my news consumption to about 5 hours of local news a week, usually "watched" while I'm preparing dinner. 

Yesterday, there was a story about a nearby town's preparations for the nation's oldest continually running July 4 parade. From the looks of it, the parade is mostly local groups, marching through the streets, making their music, performing their dances, and waving their flags, while the rest of the town comes out to wave their own flags and cheer. The key figure in the story was an older woman who has been part of organizing the festivities for the past several decades. The story concluded with her saying, "We're just as excited today as they were back then."

There was another "World Cup" adjacent story about a young teen whose health issues have made it impossible for her to play her beloved soccer. She has now started a drive to raise money to help others in her situation. The concluding thought from this girl, "I'm just happy I can help others."

There were more stories, of course, but I'm going to stop there because I'm tearing up as I write this. I often find myself tearing up as I watch my local news. There are, of course, darker stories. There was, for instance, the frozen food warehouse that recently burned down. That story was mostly interviews with the people who live around the facility. The smoke was bad, but some of the people say that the stench of tons of rotting food is worse.

But compared to national news, the overall slant of my local news is much more positive, probably because it's always about my "neighbors." Even national news stories are offered from a local perspective featuring interviews with local people whose lives are directly impacted. This is so much more elevating than professional pontificators who seethe and shout based on some sort of abstract political theory or other. As you know, national news tends to thrive on setting up everything as conflict and performative debate between partisans. It raises your blood pressure, but otherwise goes no where. 

What I enjoy about my small doses of local interviews is that the people on my screen aren't shy about not having all the answers, of being internally conflicted between this or that approach, and overall showing their genuine emotion and concern. Even when I suspect they don't vote the way I do, I still get to see their fuller humanity on display, which naturally allows me to better understand where they're coming from. This is what it means to me to be well-informed about the issues.

This is why I get teary. I get teary because these are the actual people amidst whom I live. And I like them. I like that they're my neighbors. Every year, right around the 4th of July holiday, I find myself getting teary. I know our great "experiment" in democracy is far from perfect. I know that people continue to be poor, oppressed, and left out. I feel for them and strive to use my own political agency to rise them up, set them free, and bring them in. I've shared many of these actions here on the blog over the years, for what it's worth.

I get teary because despite our ongoing failures, I'm moved and even amazed by this audacious thing we are trying to do as a nation. For 250 years, a relatively short time in the scheme of human existence, we have, in our way, as a nation of we the people, attempted to self-govern. It's messy, even ugly at times. And the way our media, politics, and technology has evolved makes it even messier and uglier. But when I turn to my neighbors, when I turn to the people amidst whom I actually live, I continue to be inspired by what we're capable of striving toward, who we are capable of being. Democracy will always be an experiment. It will never be perfect. The promise isn't happiness, but rather the collective pursuit of happiness.

This weekend, I'll be celebrating, not with family, not with old friends, but with my neighbors. 

Among my greatest inspirations is Mister Rogers' whose work with young children was rooted in the metaphor of the neighborhood. In his daily program Mister Roger's Neighborhood, he gave us a blueprint of how the medium of television could be used to pull people together rather than divide them. "Since we're neighbors, let's be friends." It's both a simple and breathtaking aspiration.

It's the neighborhood, the people amidst whom we live, the people we see at the local coffee shop, grocery store, out walking the dog, for which we are made. When I think of democracy, that's who I think about. When I get teary, these are the people, these every day people full of doubts, emotions, fears, and passions, that touch me the most. 

I worry that so many of us don't have the privilege that so many people my age had of growing up in real neighborhoods. They still exist, but they're much harder to find these days.

This is why I believe that the central purpose of every preschool is to be that local community for this generation of young children. To be a place where we learn about and from real people, rather than the cartoon cutouts that come to us through a media that thrives on stereotype and division. Our preschools can be the place where young children first learn that the messiness of self-government need not turn ugly; where empathy and compassion grow best; where real people come together to talk about their concerns, their ideas, and their needs; where negotiation, compromise, and ultimately agreement stand at the center of our relationships with one another. Our preschools can be places in which young children are marinated in community.

I've always approached preschool as an experiment, both for me, and for the children, because that's what our democracy is: an experiment in living together. It's an experiment in which the beaker sometimes blows up in our faces, in which the results are not always what we expected, and in which we the people are the only ones who have the power to do something about it. It's from this foundation of being good neighbors that we can hope for a better tomorrow.

******

Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in way that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

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

"A Deep Sense of Who You Are"

As a child, my family moved around a lot. I'd called four places home before my first day of kindergarten. I attended three different elementary schools and three different middle schools. My parents, themselves, had grown up in a small, tightly-knit farming community in which everyone knew everyone. To this day, they are still in touch with some of their childhood friends. In contrast, I'm in touch with none of mine. In fact, I can't even remember the names of some of the kids I once called "best friend."

I sometimes wonder if I've missed out on something, especially when my wife gets together with her lifelong besties, but the experience of being the "new kid" is so much a part of who I am that I can't really imagine what it would be like to share such a long history with anyone other than family members. My greatest life lesson, I think, was how to make new friends wherever I go.

For this I credit my mother. Mom was determined that we would have friends wherever we went. If the new neighbors didn't show up on the front porch with casseroles, she would make her own casseroles and show up on theirs. She went out of her way to connect with other families with kids. As we got older, she signed us up for team sports wherever we moved, not as a way to learn the dubious lessons of competition, but rather so that we would have the opportunity to make friends. 

Not everyone enjoys sports, but fortunately we did, and throughout my childhood, my social life tended to emerge not through school, but rather through baseball, soccer, football, basketball, and swimming. Of course, there was competition when another team would come to play, but the core of the experience was daily practice where we built relationships with one another around the cooperation of teamwork. There was never any expectation that we would go on to become professional athletes, nor were we graded or tested. The idea was to have fun with friends.

Some time ago, before I began my journey as an educator, in the spirit of paying it forward, I volunteered to coach what is called a "select" baseball team comprised of middle schoolers only to find that youth sports have changed in horrible ways. These kids and their parents already had their eyes on the big leagues, or missing that, at least college scholarships. It was an unpleasant experience for me, but even more so for the kids who, frankly, demonstrated very little joy, and even less friendship. This wasn't the baseball I grew up knowing. When I tried to lighten things up, parents would pull me aside to let me know that they appreciated the sentiment, but really, they didn't want their child to "miss the opportunity," so, you know, knuckle down. Ugh.

One of the foundations upon which our educational system is built is the myth that we live in a "competitive society" so we must get the kids ready for that. Now, I've never been a stock market day trader, nor have I had the misfortune of being part of a corporate hierarchy. I've never been a professional athlete or a contestant on RuPaul's Drag Race. Indeed, the only time that I found myself in genuine, ongoing competition with my fellow humans was during my time in school and only then when I began to understand that I was being judged (graded, tested) in comparison to my classmates. But outside of school, I've found that competition beyond the occasional friendly board game, is not a meaningful part of my life.

Mister Rogers once said, "You rarely have time for everything you want in this life, so you need to make choices. And hopefully your choices can come from a deep sense of who you are."

Competition only gives us, at best, a superficial sense of who we are. It teaches us that if we aren't a winner then we're a loser. But even more harmful is competition's lesson that our fellow humans are impediments, stepping stones, and rivals. It makes "things" of them, it dehumanizes them, and it ultimately prevents and perverts our relationships. What my mother knew was that the only way one can ever discover the key to that deeper sense of self is through relationships.

For the most part, those of us who work with young children understand what my mother understood: relationships are the foundation for any life worth living. When we observe children at play, we see that they are driven, not to competition, but rather to cooperation and teamwork. That is where they find joy. When competition emerges, it always does so as both a threat to their games as well as their relationships. In these cases, when we allow the children to solve their own problems, the unpleasantly competitive games either come to an end as children exercise their freedom to quit, or, impressively, they scramble to remove the prospect of winners and losers, restoring the cooperative balance to their game. 

This, not competition, is the reality I've discovered everywhere I've gone in life. It's inhuman systems, like conventional schooling, that create the illusion that competition is everywhere. When it's just us humans playing together, the only thing that matters are our relationships, built through cooperation and teamwork. And through that our deep sense of self emerges as the only guide we will ever need to make choices that will bring us joy.

******

Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in way that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

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

The Case Against Professionalism

There are children playing in the street who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago.      ~J. Robert Oppenheimer

When architect Simon Nicholson first proposed his theory of loose parts ("How Not to Cheat Children") in 1971 he asserted that the "gifted few" (professionals) got to have all the fun. They designed the buildings, created the music, wrote poems, did the science, and then the rest of us were left to just sort of live with, but never touch, change, or question their work. His big idea was to give amateurs, and especially children, the ability to do the fun part themselves by filling their spaces with "loose parts" that they were free to manipulate, connect, and transform.

It was a radical idea, one that holds the potential to turn education upside down. It was an idea in keeping with the ideas that had been emerging over the preceding 70 years from education pioneering amateurs like John Dewey and Maria Montessori right through Loris Malaguzzi and even Mister Rogers. The idea was to put the "fun part" of learning into the hands of the learners themselves, to allow children to determine their own curriculum from the loose parts of life.

Those of us who have embraced play-based learning strive to do this, but we continue to be outliers. Most "professional" educators today have acknowledged the theory, then absorbed it into their professional work, manipulating it to fit in their professional orthodoxy, and generally colonizing it with their professionalism. It is in the nature of professionalism to accept the current "environment" and only consider change that can happen within that current environment. If they stray beyond the current boundaries, they risk being deemed "unprofessional," which is the kiss of death. That's why, you can today find preschool classrooms with "loose parts" corners that are little more than a few tidy baskets of bits and bobs, just another watered-down concept that allows the profession to say, "See? We're open to new ideas."  

I'm not blaming the educators: I'm blaming professionalism. Professionals have a lot to lose, amateurs and children do not. As philosopher Marshall McLuhan puts it, "The "expert" is the man who stays put."

I understand why professional educators want to be seen as professionals. If nothing else, being a "professional" often carries with it both prestige and money. That's why we fight for the recognition. I have nothing against prestige and money, but I resist, at some level, being a professional in the name of . . . well, professionalism. I strive for a professionalism that constantly questions the status quo: one that abhors staying put, that recognizes that, at its heart, learning always involves upsetting the status quo.

As adults, we become experts by learning the rules of our professional environment and that's useful, of course. It allows us to navigate the professional world efficiently, which is one of the hallmarks of professionalism. But it also tends to blind us. When we learn those lessons too well, when we get too wrapped up in the jargon and "best practices," we have a tendency to stop noticing possibilities that fall outside those rules.

This is, I think, what Oppenheimer was referring to as well. He certainly wasn't saying that children know their physics as well as the father of the atomic bomb. Rather, he's pointing out that children, as amateurs, haven't yet had their sensory perceptions boxed in by all those professional assumptions. They're inclined to ask questions a professional would never think to ask. They consider objects in ways professionals would never imagine. They see possibilities where professionals see obstacles. Even a child can see the insanity of creating an atomic bomb, while the professionals went right ahead and created a way to destroy life on earth.

Children are classic amateurs, or even dilettantes (in the best sense of that word). They're not incompetent, but rather free from the systems of conventions and agreements, the environment, that too often captures professionals. Amateurs dispense with the professional jargon that often seems designed to exclude amateurs. Amateurs retain the freedom to ask questions that professionals cannot conceive of asking because to become a professional, to be considered a professional by their peers, they have mastered the assumptions and "problems" of the world as the other experts know it. Curious amateurs are inclined to question whether they're even addressing the right problems.

We see this phenomenon all the time in education. Go to almost any online resource for educators and you'll find professionals asking professionally appropriate things like, How do we get children to learn letters sooner? Or How do we improve compliance? Or How do we measure learning more accurately? Or How do I motivate these children? Or How do we get children to listen?

Being a professional too often means losing the ability to perceive the profession's own assumptions. "Professionalism" means delivering curriculum, adhering to "best practices," aligning with standards, and achieving measurable results. That's the professional environment. Anything outside of that is, by definition, unprofessional.

Meanwhile, children are asking valid questions that fall beyond the scope of the professionally accepted ground rules; genuine questions like Why do we have to learn this at all? Why can't we think about something more interesting? Who got to decide that this crap matters? Why can't we just go outside?

In our work with children, these are the questions play-based educators ask: the amateur's questions. The children's questions. We fight to remain connected to our amateur status. 

I've never done most of the "professional" things that educators in normal schools do. Instead, I create environments, I pay attention to the children, I respond to what emerges from their play, and I trust the children's competence. I listen to the questions the children are asking. Instead of being professional, I strive to remain curious, to retain the capacity to be surprised, and to be willing, at any moment, to abandon any plan when something more interesting emerges. I'm more interested in children learning to motivate themselves, to assess their own learning, and to practice life itself within the context of community.

This is what play-based learning is all about. It's what pioneering amateurs like Montessori, Malaguzzi, and Mister Rogers understood. They distrusted expertise that had, as it always does, become disconnected from direct experience. They wondered what would happen if we stopped deciding, in advance, what learning is supposed to happen, and instead let the children pursue learning that is meaningful to them.

Of course, children are not merely amateurs—they are also novices. They don't know what they don't know. It is also part of our job to keep them safe enough, to provide information that they need, and to help them figure out how to be part of a community. But we err when we make the mistake of trying to professionalize childhood. We cheat children when we forget that childhood is, and always must be, a season of life when curiosity matters more than expertise.

That's why children need play, the natural environment of amateurism. Not because play prepares them for the real world, but because it preserves ways of seeing that the rest of us too often lose. Our job is not to rush children toward professionalism. Our job is to create beautiful environments, keep them safe enough, answer their questions, and then stay out of the way as much as possible. The future doesn't belong to the experts who stay put. It belongs to those who can still discover possibilities where everyone else sees only the way things have always been done.

******

Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in way that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

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

International Day of Play: Protect Play, Protect Childhood

Today is the third annual International Day of Play as established by the United Nations. This year's theme is Protect Play, Protect Childhood.

In their call to action, the UN through it's agency UNICEF (United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund), is calling on governments, businesses, and other stakeholders to:

1. Scale up services, including parenting programs, that promote play and attachment
2. Enable access to pre-school and learning through play for every 3-6 year old
3. Ensure every child has access to safe, inclusive, and well-maintained play areas

The United Nations was founded in 1945 in the aftermath of World War II with the express mission of maintaining world peace. In that same year, Loris Malaguzzi founded the first schools that today are knowns as Reggio Emilia, believing that democratic education was essential to creating a peaceful society. Maria Montessori, the creator of her Montessori approach to early childhood, explicitly saw her work as the path to lasting peace. Mister Rogers wrote, "Peace means far more than the opposite of war." He saw nurturing empathy, emotional intelligence, and human connection in children as foundational to creating a more peaceful world: he was explicit about helping children become the kinds of people who can create peace.

Our work as play-based educators has always aligned with the higher ideals that underpin the United Nations. In our world of competition, colonialism, and war, a world that I worry is on the verge of forgetting the promise of democracy, our work with young children stands in contrast, even opposition. Play is not always peaceful, but that's the point. Peace is not the absence of conflict; it is knowing how to resolve conflict without resorting to violence or force. Play teaches us the power of good faith negotiation, compromise, cooperation, and the sacredness of agreements. When children grow up in safe environments in which they have permission to pursue their instincts to play, the most important lesson they learn is how people can come together and work something out. 

When we protect play we protect childhood, but we also protect and promote the promise of peace. I'm always proud of the work we do with and for children, but today is the day for all play-based educators to hold their heads high, even as we bend to the child before us. Play is the path to peace.

******

Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in way that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

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

What Makes a Good Preschool Teacher?

Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person, they are almost indistinguishable. ~David W. Augsburger

Not long ago I had a series of conversations with business people about teaching. I've been a preschool teacher for over two decades, yet I had a hard time with some of their questions, and specifically those centered around the idea of what exactly it is that makes a "good teacher." It's in the nature of business people, it seems, to want to take things apart, to figure out how they work, to reduce them to their essentials, and then find ways to replicate them, preferably very efficiently and for profit. 

They were good conversations, useful, casting a new light on our profession for me. Are there some things that all good teachers do? I genuinely don't know. Maybe. I don't even know if someone can be taught to be a good teacher, even as I know that many, many of us demonstrate the skills. Generally speaking, it's widely assumed that it takes at least five years in the classroom to even know if someone is a good teacher or not, because nothing replaces experience. It seems that apprenticeship, working alongside veteran teachers, can accelerate learning, but as for "teaching" them to be teachers, I don't know.

I mean in all honesty, although I go by the moniker Teacher Tom, I'm not sure I do much of what these business people would define as teaching, which is widely understood as a synonym for "instructing." I know that the children I've worked with have grown and learned. I even have a pretty good idea what they've learned in some cases, but as for successfully instructing them, I have a very short, undistinguished track record. Can I prove that the children have learned? Can I prove what they've learned? No, at least not to the satisfaction of someone who is looking for the kind of hard data that business people tend to like behind the things they do. Traditionally, we've done it by starting with "learning objectives," providing instruction, then testing to see if the kids meet our objectives. I've never done any of those things because, while it produces data on the effectiveness of certain types of direct instruction, it forces children through a process that is the antithesis of how we know children's brains are designed to learn. Will we ever be able to produce acceptable hard data on children learning through play? I don't know.

I do know that I've spent very little time over my career in the role of instructor. People have suggested that maybe a better word for what we do would be facilitator or coordinator or perhaps more whimsically, guide on the side. I put quite a bit of energy into preparing the environment for children, getting it ready for them, providing what I think they will need on any given day to pursue their self-selected interests or answer, through their play, their own questions. I can do this because I've spent the previous day paying close attention, observing, studying, striving to understand their motivations, individually and collectively. I've never, however, taken it on as a systematic study, but rather an intuitive one with a sniff test that manifests along the lines of "Oh, the kids are going to love this!" or, equally as often, the singular version, "Billy is going to love this!" Could this be made into a systematic, replicable thing, a chart or something with boxes to tick? I don't know.

Is there anything that all good preschool teachers do? It's a question worthy of thought. I know that the foundation of what I've always done is to simply strive to treat children like people. What do I mean by that? It mostly means that, like with non-child people, I don't get to tell them what to do. It means I should avoid offering unsolicited advice, because most people, most of the time resent it. If I ask them questions, they should be real questions in the sense that I don't already know the answer and I have a reasonable expectation that this child can tell me what I need to know. And the most important thing is to listen to them, to shut up and let them say all the words they want to say to me about what's on their minds. (This is something that I actually do much more consistently with children than I do with adults.) And then to let them know through my words and actions that I've heard them.

Can this be called teaching? I don't know, but it's what I do and I know it's what the great teachers I know do. As Mister Rogers said, "Listening is where love begins: listening to ourselves and then to our neighbors." And at the end of the day, this is why I struggle so much to answer the questions these business people ask me. Love can't be qualified or quantified, although I think it can be replicated, quickly: it is infinitely scalable. Love is like play. It is a pure good that can't be defined or measured, even when we know it when we feel it. That is what a great teacher of young children will always be: someone who loves us and who is loved in return.

******

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

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 Love of Children v. the Love of Money

On the one hand, we have hundreds of children being currently imprisoned in concentration camps by our federal government and billionaire child rapists being protected by our courts, politicians, and the Justice Department. On the other, we have consistent and chronic underfunding of anything having to do with children and families, including education.

We are lead to believe that the culture war is about books, bathrooms, religion, patriotism, or “family values.” It's not. The real culture war is between people who love children and systems that love money. It's easy to despair, but there is some good news.

The Iowa state legislature is putting the finishing touches on a law that would mandate play-based learning in preschool and kindergarten. The law requires a minimum of 3 hours per day of play and child-directed experiences, including unstructured classroom discovery, in addition to recess and physical education. The law only specifies 45 minutes per day in kindergarten, but it's still an important step in the right direction.

Iowa joins Connecticut (2024), New Hampshire (2018), and Oklahoma (2021), all of which have legislated play for their youngest citizens. Nevada, Maine, Michigan, and Illinois have all adopted or are considering play-friendly policies and approaches. The Connecticut law even permits play-based learning through 5th grade. Of course, none of these laws goes far enough in my opinion, but they're all encouraging steps in the right direction.

For better or worse, our Constitution explicitly puts states in charge of education. The federal government is meant to be hands off, leaving states the freedom to experiment. The idea is that if something works in one state, it will be adopted by others. Of course, the federal government, with it's ability to grant or withhold funding has, under both Democrats and Republicans, tried to force misguided educational mandates on our schools (e.g., No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, Common Core). This federal (and I think illegal) incursion into our public schools has been one of the main driving forces behind the drill-and-kill high stakes testing regime that has come to dominate the educational experience of a vast majority of our children, including, cruelly, preschoolers and kindergarteners. 

My hope is that what we are seeing right now is the beginning of a trend in which states take meaningful corrective measures to protect children from those who love money more than children. 

Of course, legislation is not the same thing as making real change. Legislation signifies a direction, in this case a positive one, but it still takes people to make change happen.

For one thing, play, like love, is a notoriously illusive thing to define. Each state has adopted its own definition. I see words and phrases we've all used to describe our work, like "child-directed," "unstructured classroom discovery," "developmentally appropriate," "free play," "games," "movement," "socially interactive," and even "joyful." But when the rubber meets the road, as with anything to do with schools, it comes down to how individual teachers implement it.

Some veteran teachers in Connecticut, for instance, are requiring children to make a plan for their play and stick to it, in the name of "teaching" executive function. I'm pretty sure that can't be taught. It's something that develops through life experience, like those encountered while playing. In Oklahoma, the law prohibits districts from restricting teacher's use of play-based learning, but doesn't exactly require it. The New Hampshire and Connecticut laws define the role of teacher as "facilitator" or "guide on the side," but there is a lot of wiggle room. Only Iowa imposes a minimum number of hours for play-based learning, which means that in the other states the amount of play permitted to children can vary depending on the teacher's bent. It leaves the door wide open for play being dangled before children as a kind of reward or punishment, instead of a right.

Still, I'm encouraged. But if we are going to make these laws effective, we are going to have to tighten up our definitions of play and make sure that educators are well-trained in play-based pedagogy. As a play-purist, I'd like to see young children (and that includes children up to at least 10-years-old), playing all day. I know that's not realistic in the current climate, but we should have, as in the Iowa law, minimums set for preschoolers and kindergarteners, otherwise  play will continue to be treated as a "relief from serious learning" rather than the proper work of childhood (to paraphrase Mister Rogers). And I would definitely want to see us getting our children outside and away from screen-based technology which is replacing authentic childhood with artificial experiences.

I remain encouraged, even in a world that too often seems to love money more than children. I'm grateful to the bi-partisan coalition of legislators who are compelling schools to follow the science of learning and best practices by mandating play. And I'm fully in awe of those advocates -- educators and parents -- who have had the tenacity and skill to convince these legislators to do the right thing for our youngest citizens.

This is progress. Let's keep it up! No turning back!

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

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!

Topping One Another Up

After reading a story, then singing our final song together, the children came forward to hug me, not one at a time, but all together, and there we were, a massive scrum of bodies, wrapping one another up in our arms.

Since my first year teaching, this was the way the two-year-olds said goodbye to me at the end of the day. I never asked for it or encouraged it in any way other than, I suppose, to be open to it. It always started on the first day of class each year because there was always that one child who genuinely felt the urge to hug me, to receive a hug from me, then others saw it, thought, "I want some of that," and came for their hug as well. I said the children's names as they approached, "Here's my Sarah hug, my Nora hug, my Alex hug . . ."

Mister Rogers said, "I believe that appreciation is a holy thing." We were saying goodbye to one another, of course, but we were also saying thank you, expressing our gratitude, showing our appreciation, not in payment for any particular favor, but simply for the time we had together. It started spontaneously, then, as the year progressed, became a sort of ritual, each child making it their own. There were some who rushed to be first, others who waited for the crowd to thin. Some didn't want to let go. Some come back for a second and third and fourth hug. A few didn't want to hug, preferring a high five or simply eye contact. Some were moved to hug their classmates.

It was a beautiful way to end our time together, topping one another up before heading off into our separate lives.

******

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

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!