My New Adventure

I have been the preschool teacher at Woodland Park Cooperative School for a long time. Nearly two decades ago I welcomed my first class of 3-5 year olds. A couple years later, I added a class of 2 year olds. Then we created our summer program, followed by a 4-5's program, which evolved into our current 4's program with the advent of our kindergarten. During that time, we've moved to larger facility, created two state-of-the-art playgrounds, built a magnificent greenhouse, educated thousands of parents, and created dozens of teachers who are still working in classrooms today. I'm proud of what I've done to grow and nurture the Woodland Park community, working to make it a place where everyone values children and understands the importance of their play. And I'm beyond grateful for everything this community has done to grow and nurture me.

In many ways, I grew up at Woodland Park and the families who entrusted me with their children have been my family. They've made it possible for me to become the "Teacher Tom" the rest of world knows, the blogger, author, and public speaker. Looking upon it from the perspective of today, it's a story that reads in my mind like a kind of fairytale, one that has had it's ups and downs, never dull, a daily adventure, but most importantly, always buoyed by love. I have been the luckiest man alive.

But as anyone who reads fairytales knows, the protagonist must inevitably leave home. I'm writing today to tell you about my new adventure as Teacher Tom. I am leaving my beloved Woodland Park at the end of the month to help found a new venture called Weekdays. Our vision is to help teachers, daycare providers, and parents to be their own bosses by starting their own play-based neighborhood preschools and daycares. I'm inspired by the idea of helping thousands of educators to take their financial futures into their own hands almost as much as the idea of creating thousands high-quality preschools. We're only in Washington state right now, but we intend to get to other states as quickly as possible. If you're interested, even if you're in another state, go ahead and create an account so that we can keep you apprised of what's happening.

Over half of the the US is currently in what are being called "childcare deserts," places where there are three or more children for every one preschool or daycare spot. This presents incredible challenges for families who are forced to cobble together care and education for their young children, often being forced to drive hours every day, often settling for sub-par options, often having to turn to an unreliable network of friends and family to fill in the gaps, all of which creates tensions and even toxic stress for families. At the same time, those who care for young children are barely earning enough to make ends meet. Here in Washington state the average annual income is around $30,000. Our idea is that there should be a high-quality preschool not just in every neighborhood, but ultimately on every block. Our idea is that children should grow up playing in their own neighborhoods. And our idea is that preschool educators should make a real living wage. Our goal is to do nothing less than transform early childhood education in America.

Our role is to support edu-entrepreneurs through the most daunting business challenges, such as navigating licensing, regulations and other paperwork, providing insurance, handling billing, helping with marketing and enrollment, and generally being their business partners so that they can focus on the most important part: caring for and educating young children. In my role as head of education, I will spend my days working with our teachers and providers to help them to create the kinds of programs that children deserve.

As for this blog, I will continue to write here every day, I will continue to write books, and I will continue to travel the country speaking out on behalf of children and their families just as I always have. It's only my "day job" that will change.

I'm excited about my new adventure even as I'm melancholy about leaving Woodland Park, although I expect to continue to be a frequent visitor and will always be a staunch supporter. This morning I am Max, the boy in the wolf costume who has discovered that the walls of his room have become the world all around. I'm looking forward to the wild rumpus ahead!

I've published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

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!

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What Real Learning Looks Like

"(Real learning) does not look like 6-year-olds slumped in chairs . . . staring at iPads . . ." ~parent's testimony before Cambridge School board

This is the problem with letting dilettantes, even well-intended dilettantes, lead when it comes to education policy. They don't have the experience to recognize what real learning looks like, and since they tend to come from the world of business, they don't trust mere "employees" (teachers), especially if they belong to a union, so they come up with arbitrary data points that carry with them a hint of education-ness, then subject children to their amateur hour. I don't think that most of them want to be cruel to children and their parents, but in their ignorance they believe they know better because they've managed to make money off selling software or hardware or something, so they conjure up education-ish sounding ideas and, because they can, they impose them, despite the objections of those of us who do have the experience to know what real learning looks like.

Anyone who has spent any time in a classroom knows that real learning does not look like children slumped in chairs staring at iPads. Real learning looks like stepping in a puddle you've made with your friends, then sinking in until the water tops your boots.

Real learning looks like pouring water through systems of funnels and tubes.

Real learning looks like mixing a whole lot of stuff together with your friends to see what happens.

Real learning looks like negotiating how to share scarce and valuable resources.

Real learning looks like children imitating one another . . .

. . .  then taking it to the next level.

Real learning looks like testing our physical limits.

Real learning looks like performing experiments.

Real learning looks like trying on costumes.

Real learning looks like princesses and fairies.

Real learning looks like figuring out how to make something new from unfamiliar materials.

Real learning looks like conflict and resolution.

Real learning looks like hanging out with a friend and talking about the world.

Real learning looks like engagement in a process one has never tried before.

Real learning looks like children cleaning up after themselves.

Real learning looks like children doing things for themselves.

Real learning looks like preschoolers in a brewery carrying kegs.

Real learning looks like children playing in a concrete pond in the rain.

Real learning looks like animals lined up in a row.

Real learning looks like patterns made from goldfish.

Real learning looks like keeping track of important things like how many bowling pins you've knocked down.

Real learning looks like hands covered in purple paint.

Real learning looks like standing in play dough with your friends.

Real learning looks like creating great beauty with your friends.

Real learning looks like doing any project with your friends.

Real learning looks like being together, doing things together, figuring things out together.

Real learning looks like children carving out their own space in the world.

Real learning looks like children following their own path.

This list only scratches the surface of what real learning looks like. I've been teaching at Woodland Park for 18 years. It would take at least that long to give you my full list. But I assure you, one thing that real learning doesn't look like is children slumped in chairs staring at iPads.

I've published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

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!

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The Eye Of The Beholder

Our community built the prototype of our junkyard playground over a decade ago. We were in our old digs atop Phinney Ridge, working with a tiny space, but still managed to create most of the features our larger space has today: sand pit, work bench, garden, art space, and what we later learned were called "loose parts." When we moved to our current location in the Center of the Universe, we were obviously ready for the challenge a larger space presented, creating the foundation of new playground in a week because that's how much time we had before school started that year. It has since continued to evolve, as we've added, subtracted, and moved things around in the ongoing project of creating our preschool version of what we later leaned was called an "adventure playground."

From the outside looking in, the place looks a bit like a junkyard or vacant lot. This is not by accident, but it has become a sort of dividing line between those who see Woodland Park as a sort of childhood fantasy land and those who would never, under any circumstances, allow their little ones to set foot in that place. Indeed, even current parents sometimes make comments about the mud, the broken toys, the spare tires, the jumble of shipping pallets, and the general debris of crates, wood scraps, and other miscellany that is strewn about the place. Even I, one of the lead proponents and curators of our space can find myself wanting to give it a tidy.

The good news is that we have regular all-hands-on deck weekend parent work "parties," with our state-of-the-art outdoor classroom receiving the bulk of our attention. For one thing, at the behest of a five-year-old named Thomas, we built a two-level sand pit with our cast iron water pump positioned at the top, which means that the continual flow of water downhill causes the sand to re-locate from the top to the bottom. One of the big jobs at these events is to man shovels and wheelbarrows to return the sand back to the top where the process of erosion begins once more.

Another of our tasks is to essentially make a distinction between what is garbage and what still has play value. This is a job where a lot of judgements must be made because, as we all know, one person's trash is another person's treasure. In the past, I've felt the need to monitor this process with an eagle-eye, sometimes even going so far as to pull perfectly good junk out of the dumpster, sometimes even engaging in friendly debate with parents over the play-value of this or that piece of debris. But on Saturday, as our team of parents undertook the task, I realized that they no longer needed me to "helicopter parent" the playground. Each time I peeked at the trash pile, I saw nothing but actual garbage. In fact, I even heard these parents discussing who and how this or that was used yesterday or last week or a few years ago as they told the stories of our junkyard playground to one another while they worked, allowing themselves to be in awe of the ingenuity, creativity, and industriousness of the children who play there.

It wasn't long ago that our junkyard playground confused people, even those whose children played there, but no more. What I learned over the weekend is that we are now a community of adults who truly understand the value of playing in "natural" places like this, places where play is not proscribed, where loose parts dominate, and where mess, like trash and treasure, is in the eye of the beholder. In other words, we as a community really do seem to understand play.

If you or someone you know is interested in joining the Woodland Park Cooperative School (Seattle), we are currently enrolling for the 2019-20 school year. Click here for information. There are still spots available for 2-5 year olds.

I've published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

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!

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The Promise Of Democracy

A cooperative is an enterprise that is owned and operated by its customers. It's a model for organizing people toward common ends that's been around for centuries and over that time it has been successfully applied to both non-profit and for-profit ventures alike. I've spent the better part of the past two decades, more than half of my working life, in cooperative preschools, and because of that I often think that I must be, by now, one of the world's leading experts on how a small-scale cooperative works.

Our political candidates are being asked these days if they are "capitalists" or "socialists." They've scrambled to figure out a palatable answer, but when I put myself in their shoes, I think I'd be inclined to answer that I'm "none of the above." If I had to put a label on it (and I'd rather not), I reckon I'd say that I'm a "cooperative-ist." Unlike with capitalism, which requires an impossibly level playing field in order to operate as the sort of meritocratic utopia envisioned by its supporters, and socialism, which requires an impossibly benevolent and uncorrupted bureaucratic apparatus to fairly distribute prosperity, cooperatives have the advantage of actually having been tested successfully in the real world. In other words, the world has never experienced a pure enough capitalistic system, nor a pure enough socialistic system, while purely cooperative systems not only exist, but thrive.

The strength of the model is that individuals have voluntarily come together toward a common end, in our case to educate our own young children. Our school is owned by some eighty families, each of which is a co-equal owner of the school, and each of which is responsible for assuming a role in the day-to-day, week-to-week, year-to-year operations, up to and including serving as assistant teachers in the classroom. Decision-making is necessarily democratic and transparent. Because our cooperative's "customers" are also its managers and employees, tuitions and expenses are kept as low as necessary (as opposed to as low as possible). The natural state of a cooperative is to be economically efficient without the austerity. When extra funds are needed or desired by the community, they tend to show up, one way or the other.

Of course, things are not perfect, which is the case of any human endeavor. Whereas we are unsurpassed in our economic efficiencies, cooperatives like ours can appear quite inefficient when it comes to decision-making. With so many co-equal owners, as you might imagine, we spend a lot of time in meetings, often hashing and re-hashing everything from the behavior of the children to what type of paper towels we will use. It can be frustrating for some of us, but no one ever said that democracy would be fast or easy, and at the end of the day I really can't think of a better use for my time on the planet than getting together with my neighbors and figuring out what kind of world we want to share.

Every now and then I've contemplated life outside of our cooperative, a place where I've grown up in many ways, a place where I've seen time and again the power of people of goodwill coming together without hierarchy in common cause. Every time I consider other pastures, I opt for the beauty of what I know, despite the occasional frustrations. We've overcome challenges and created opportunities together, talking, cooperating, and compromising. In many ways, I think that the cooperative model embodies the true vision of what our nation's founders had in mind when they conceived of a self-governing nation, which is why I think the most important thing we do in our cooperative community is to, on a daily basis, role model for our children the promise of democracy.

If you or someone you know is interested in joining the Woodland Park Cooperative School (Seattle), we are currently enrolling for the 2019-20 school year. Click here for information. There are still spots available for 2-5 year olds.

I've published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

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!

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