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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I Hadn't Expected That

A while back, I met a well-known architect who designed a building for children that has received international acclaim. I've not seen the building in person, but judging from the videos and photos, it appears to be a beautiful, well thought out, special place for children. At one point, in private conversation, I praised the building, then asked what I thought was an interesting question, "What was your biggest surprise once children and teachers actually started using the space?" He replied, "Nothing. There were no surprises. The people used the building exactly as I expected."

I didn't believe him for a second. English isn't his native language, so I have to allow for something to have been lost in translation, but I've been around young children long enough to know that nothing ever goes exactly according to plan. I'm quite certain that there are aspects of his building that children have commandeered for their own purposes, that other aspects are entirely ignored, that things have already had to be changed or altered to allow for the advent of real children in a real space. And I also know that these unknown unknowns change from year to year as the mix of children change, and month to month as the children grow and develop, and week to week as the kids invent and collaborate. The only way for things to go even close to "exactly" as expected is for the adults to act as dictators, and even then, the kids will find a way to make it their own.

I've been writing on this blog almost every day for a decade now, sharing my best thinking on whatever it is that's on my mind. Occasionally, I go back and look at some of the things my younger, less wizened self thought to be true, but not too often because it can be painful. A great deal of it is cringe worthy, especially when it came to my expectations. A prime example is what I called "Little World." If you want to take a journey though this aspect of my personal journey, you can find those posts under the tag "Little World" located on over there on the right-hand column under the heading "Teacher Tom's Topics."

At the time, we had just begun our community's our attempt to transform outdoor space to better serve children, a process that has ultimately lead, a decade later, to our current state-of-the-art junkyard playground. Little World emerged from my nascent understanding to the theory of loose parts. My idea, which seemed somehow brave at the time, was to set aside a small patch of our playground for the building of fairy houses. For this purpose, I curated a collection of bits of bark, moss, pinecones, rocks and other natural items, along with figurines of trolls, unicorns, fairies and other such magical creatures. The idea was to have this place set aside for Little World play. At first, the children played with it exactly as I expected, but very soon began to transport my precious items outside of the Little World area, taking the figurines to the sandpit and the pinecones to the garden. I found myself constantly scolding, "No, that belongs in Little World." It took me a good month, to finally realize that this would never go exactly as I expected. Looking back it was the beginning of my understanding of the true nature and value of loose parts: they must be loose and the children must be permitted to make it their own.

A couple days ago, one of those original little fairies turned up on the playground. Not much bigger than a dime, it has somehow managed to move with us from our old building on the top of Phinney Ridge, to our current place in Fremont. It has remained missing for years at a time, but keeps turning up at the tips of little fingers. When I saw it, I enthused about it like one might upon bumping into a long lost friend. Children gathered around to look at it, taking turns handling it, treating it like something special because of my reaction. And then, as suddenly as she had re-appeared, she was lost again, amidst the debris of our junkyard playground. I've been thinking since then about my journey, one that has been paved with disappointed expectations.

When I got home from school, I was emptying my pockets, and there she was again, this fairy from the past. One of the children had apparently slipped it in there without my knowing. I hadn't expected that.

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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Recombobulation Area

I’ll be traveling for the next couple weeks (which explains why I’ll be posting here at odd times). I started my journeys in Milwaukee where I was honored to speak at the Summer Spark Conference hosted by the University School of Milwaukee. I’m not the first to note that air travel can be a challenging experience: it took me almost a full day and three flights to get there from Seattle. Then on Wednesday morning, I set out on in the direction of Sydney, Australia, and another set of three, even longer flights. After passing through the TSA security line, carrying my shoes, belt, and jacket, I came to the sign in the photo at the top of this post.

“Recombobulation Area.”  Nice. It cheered me up to be standing under it as I, appropriately, recombobulated myself alongside my fellow travelers who were likewise recombobulating.

We need more recombobulation areas in our world. We spend so much of our lives striving to be “combobulated,” but try as we might it can never last. Of course, our homes are such places, but you never know when you’ll find yourself discombobulated. Schools and places of work should definitely have such places set aside for when we, for whatever reason, lose it.

I expect I’ll be less combobulated than normal during the next couple weeks. If you want to come see me Down Under and help me get recombobulated, you can find my public events in New South Wales, Queensland, and Victoria by clicking here and scrolling down. Hope to see you!

Here’s a note from my hosts at InspiredEC: 

If you are coming to one of Teacher Tom’s Australian events this month, please get in touch with InspiredEC (resources@inspiredec.com) for your coupon code. This will enable you to pre-order his book at a discounted price and collect it at the event! Pre-orders are closing soon. Be quick! If you haven’t booked, check out the events here!

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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For Their Own, Better, Purposes

I recently visited a friend's school where he pointed out their purpose-built "mud kitchen." He noted that the kids had dumped all the moveable parts of the kitchen into the sand pit, where they were being used as sand toys, something they did on a daily basis. He said, "I don't think they've ever actually used the mud kitchen." That didn't surprise me: children always have better ideas than we adults about what to do with materials. I can't tell you how many schools I've toured that feature abandoned mud kitchens. And yes, there was a time when we attempted a mud kitchen at Woodland Park with similar results.

This doesn't mean the kids at our school don't sometimes pretend to be cooking up a pot of mud stew or mud cake or mud pasta. Just yesterday, one of our newly-minted three-year-olds set up a three-course dinner along a concrete ledge using containers she collected from around the playground. But what we've learned from experience is that you can't force, cajole, or lure children into a particular type of play without rendering it "not-play." The adults might set up what they think are cool provocations, but after that, it belongs to the children: that's what I've learned, often painstakingly, over the course of many, many "failures."

Over there in the right hand column of this blog, you'll see a header labeled "Teacher Tom's Topics" and under that you'll find a link to posts tagged with "Little World." There are 19 posts there, most of which are dated from 2010. The final post is entitled, "Little World is Still Dead". When I go back and re-read these posts from the beginning, I'm more than a little bit embarrassed by most of them, even to the point of being tempted to delete a few, but I've opted to leave them up as evidence of the journey that has brought our community from there to here when it comes to the introduction of what are commonly called "loose parts." In a nutshell, our journey began with "loose parts" that were not so loose and ended with the children having taught us how to let go to the point that we rarely use the term "loose parts" any longer, going instead with the more accurate moniker "junk."

Indeed, going back over the decade of writing on this blog, there are more than a few posts, especially from those early years, that today make me cringe. I don't go back and read them often, but every time I do I become aware of how much I've grown, both as a teacher and a human being and that's why I don't delete them. I fully expect that if I'm still writing here in 2029, I'll look back on some of what I'm writing today with the same sort of chagrin. If not, that would mean that I've not continued to grow and learn which would be a sign that it's time to move on to something else.

Often, children will begin by playing with our mud kitchens or Little World's in the way we envisioned, but they quickly learn, through their play, all they can from the artificial limitations we've set and must to move on, which is why they dismantle our creations for their own, better, purposes, the next steps in their own journeys.

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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Becoming Our Own Unique, Quirky Selves

In the last couple weeks, I've traveled to speak at early childhood education conferences in Virginia, Florida, and Ohio. For whatever reason, I'm more often invited to speak in other countries, so it's been a treat to find myself among my fellow American citizens talking about values like education, freedom, democracy, and play.

I can't tell you how thrilling it is to mix and mingle with these dedicated, passionate educators, people who are not doing this to get rich, famous, or, even (in some cases) respected. It's clear to me that for most of us, what we are doing isn't a job as much as a calling. Indeed, while I do believe that teachers deserve to be paid more for the important work we do, I'm also aware that if, by some miracle, our average salaries were raised to the level of, say, lawyers, the profession would begin to attract those whose motivation is more monetary, and we would all suffer for that.

I'm at these conferences to share the stories from our progressive, play-based cooperative school located in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle. There is no other place like it in the world and I like to think that our school, our Fremont school, reflects this unique, quirky community. It's the Center of the Universe where we sometimes dance naked in the streets; where we gather annually to light up and sing Festivus carols around a 16-foot tall, seven-ton cast bronze statue of Vladimir Lenin; where we celebrate the Halloween birthday of a giant, VW devouring troll who lives under a bridge; where we brew beer, create art, make chocolate and go about our day-to-day lives in a place where you are officially advised to set your watch ahead five minutes upon crossing our borders. Not all of our families live within the physical limits of the neighborhood, but since being a Fremonster is a state-of-mind, we are all citizens of the Artist Republic of Fremont. This is where we are choosing to raise our children, this is our community, and our school strives to reflect the values and spirit of this special place.

That said, there are things we do at the Woodland Park Cooperative School that other schools cannot and, indeed, should not do. Every community is special, every neighborhood has its own character, its own reason for being, and if there is any message I want to convey at these conferences it's that our preschools must reflect the community in which they exist. We might be inspired by the schools of Reggio Emilia or Roseville or Framingham or Fremont, but at the end of the day every school is at it's best when it acknowledges and embraces the place the children themselves call home. Woodland Park could not exist in Richmond or Ft. Lauderdale or Columbus, just as the schools I visited in those places could not exist in Fremont. And that's the way it ought to be.

As education author Alfie Kohn wrote, "Progressive education is marinated in community." For 99.9 percent of human existence, humans have lived in hunter-gatherer societies, small communities that create and were created by a unique set of values, history, and geography. It is from within these types of communities that we learn most readily. It is within the context of community and through the process of play that humans have evolved to learn, especially in the early years.

I do not write this blog to tell anyone how to do early childhood education, just as I do not speak at conferences to provide a blueprint for how to do it. No, my hope is only that I can provide food for thought, that by telling our stories I can help others to reflect upon their own stories. I don't expect anyone to agree with everything. In fact, I hope no one does. No, what I strive to do is to make my own reflective practice and journey transparent, to share it with my colleagues and peers, and hope that in some small way I can help others build their own unique, quirky community, and in that way provide a place in which the children can become their best, unique and quirky selves.

I've just 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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A Journey Without End

I've done a lot of traveling lately. In the past three weeks I've been to eastern British Columbia, Vietnam, and Sandusky, Ohio, where I keynoted the OAEYC conference. It's an honor and a thrill to have been invited to those places to meet like-minded colleagues and share our stories. It's been both a whirlwind and a grind, the way modern travel always is: I've been on 11 planes, eaten countless restaurant meals, and only slept in my own bed four nights during that span. I've stood in front of an audience of over 2000, but more often been all alone, an island of anonymity in a sea of strangers. Needless to say, I've had ample opportunity to reflect on journeys, both actual and metaphorical.

If you had told me ten years ago that I'd be doing this, winging my way around the globe to stand in front of audiences of strangers, I'd have accused you of wishing a curse upon me. I'm fairly introverted by nature, a man who needs his time alone in order to re-charge his batteries, and the idea of public speaking was a terror to me. During my first year as a teacher, I couldn't even bring myself to make eye-contact with parents of the children I taught as I sang and danced with the children, a fact that resulted in several performance reviews that read, "He's great with the kids, but needs to work on his communication with adults." Looking back from where I stand this morning, I can see that I've come a long way, even if I still have a long way to go.

I've been writing here on this blog since 2009, doing so conscious that I was setting out on a kind of journey, one with no particular destination in mind, but one that I expected to take me somewhere nevertheless. I've been hyper-aware over the past few weeks of regular life interrupted of how important this daily ritual of sitting in my darkened living room to write these posts has become to not just my practice as a preschool teacher, but also as a human living in this world of other humans. I would be lying were I to say that I didn't want people to read what I'd written, or else otherwise I'd have just jotted notes in a private journal, but I didn't really expect anyone to take note other than the families of the children I teach. I can't express how flattering and uplifting it is to have educators and parents approach me in far-away places to tell me they've been reading this blog, sometimes for years, letting me know that I've found fellow travelers, moments of meeting and recognition that are the greatest rewards of having put myself out there, one foot in front of another on this journey. I feel almost like I'm finding long lost sisters.

Sometimes when I go back and have a look at some of the things I wrote nearly a decade ago, some of the things I've believed and thought, I'm embarrassed beyond belief, so much so that I've considered deleting them. But I've stopped myself because those posts, as flawed as they are, are evidence of my own journey, reminders that I've not always been where and who I am today. It would be easy to call them missteps, but I'd rather look at them as necessary way stations without which I'd never have gone anywhere at all. As I've meet all these other travelers spread across states, provinces, territories, nations, and continents, I've become conscious of their journeys as well, and even if we don't always see eye-to-eye, I can't judge them, nor should I attempt to hurry them along their way. If they ask, I can point them in a direction, but the journey, for each of us, is our own, and we must be free to pursue it, even if it somethings takes us through places that we will later look back upon with regret. I fully expect to look back on the things I'm writing here today from the perspective of where I find myself ten years hence, and cringe at my ignorance. That's in the nature of a journey.

But we can't dwell there for long, because it is in the nature of a journey to look forward, to put our regrets on our shoulder alongside our worries and to take that next step in anticipation of something higher, clearer, and better.

Last week, we visited the local fire station with the kids. It's an easy 10 minute walk, just up the hill, and across a few streets, but I allowed 45 minutes because it's spring and the flowers are blooming, the birds are singing, and the temperatures are mild. Young children, like the rest of us, are better served when we don't hurry along our way, when given the time to pick some flowers, even if we are only going a short distance from here to there. We might start out with a destination in mind, although that's not essential, because as cliched as it is, it's our journey that comprises our life, and every destination is nothing more than a place to catch our breath before choosing a direction and continuing on, a journey without end.

I've just 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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A Proud And Grateful Cowboy

I've been writing here, almost daily, for eight years. When I posted on Teacher Tom for the first time, I don't think I'd ever even read a blog before. As most of you know, the word "blog" is a shortening of the term "weblog," and the original bloggers tended to treat theirs as a kind of online, public diary, which is how I started out as well. And in most ways, it's how I still use this platform.

You would think, by now, I would have run out of things to say, and it is true, that when I go back through the archives I see a tendency to repeat myself, hitting on the same themes over and over, even phrasing things in similar ways. If I dig deep enough I can find contradictions, of course, because part of any diary is to record one's personal journey and I'm certain that I would have dropped this project long ago if I weren't always in the process of evolving as both a teacher and a man.

Over the years I've found that most bloggers start strong, then as the weeks and months pass, tend to leave longer and longer spaces between posts, finally petering out. As part of attempting to promote my new book, Teacher Tom's First Book, I've been seeking out those early childhood education blogs I've lost track of over the years only to find a lot of dead ends. I doubt their demise had anything to do with running out of things to say: my guess is that the self-imposed "pressure" of posting on a regular basis became too unpleasant, because I simply can't imagine anyone in our business ever running out of things over which to ponder, enthuse, advocate, or grow.

Probably the main reason I continue to blog is that I continue to be a full-time, classroom teacher, which means there is always something to write about. I tried other jobs and professions prior to becoming a preschool teacher and left every one of them largely because at some point I ran out of "things to say." In other words, those other jobs tended to become routine and predictable, and if there is one thing for which I'm temperamentally unsuited, it's the tedium of rote. No one could ever say that about teaching preschool, at least the way we do it at Woodland Park, where the children lead the way. When kid's play, they are turning the world over and over, examining all it's facets; they are opening it up to look inside; they are discovering it's great beauty and grotesque ugliness for the first time. Almost daily, their explorations reveal views into the world that I've never glimpsed before, usually revealing it as more lovely than I previously thought, sometimes even shaking my soul. These are the things I try to write about.

I would be lying to say I'm not proud of the blog. I am proud of how long I've done it. I am proud that people read it. And I am proud that even as I may tend to repeat myself, I have continued to grow as a teacher and human: the evidence is in the archives. I am grateful to everyone who reads here, past, present, and future. I am grateful for the families of our Woodland Park Cooperative School who continue to support me. And I am grateful for the unexpected opportunities this platform has given me.

In less than a month, I'll be winging my way to Australia, where I look forward to spending time with my colleagues Down Under. I'd love for you to join me.

In the fall, I'll be flying to the UK, then to Iceland for the International Play Iceland Conference. I'd love for you to join me.

Indeed, I've had the opportunity to travel the globe in my role as Teacher Tom, having been all over the US and Canada, as well as Greece, New Zealand, China, and England.

And of course, I've now published a book.

It might sound glamorous, I know it would have looked that way to me eight years ago when I first sat down in my PJ's to post here for the first time, and sometimes it is. There is nothing like the thrill of standing before an audience of several hundred enthusiastic early childhood educators, peers and colleagues who have come together in the expectation of continuing to evolve as both teachers and humans. But it's also exhausting, challenging, even frightening. And above all, there is a part of me that regrets every second I'm away from the classroom, which is the source of every bit of professional success that has ever come my way.

If there is one thing that blogging has taught me it's that I'm blessed. I've found something I love, that rarely feels like rote, and that feeds both my pocketbook and soul. As Johnny Cash sang, "I'm no slave to whistle, clock, or bell/Nor weak-eyed prisoner of wall or street." That's his version of a line from Badger Clark's poem "A Cowboy's Prayer."

As a boy I learned to dream a lot of dreams, none of which were to become a teacher, although I did often dream of being a cowboy.

(I've just 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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Teacher Tom's First Book

As many of you already know, I've been working on a book these last many months. Indeed, if it hadn't been for encouragement from readers, there's no way I'd have done it. This morning I'm happy to announce that our website has gone live and while the book itself, Teacher Tom's First Book, is still a few weeks away from being available to thumb through, we're taking pre-orders now. Here's the link if you're interested. (If you are in Australia, click here. For the time being, those of you in New Zealand can place a pre-order by emailing Resources@inspiredec.com. We expect to be able to take pre-orders from Europe and Asia by early next week, please bear with us.)

When I was a younger man, I really, really wanted to publish a book, although back then I was determined that it would be a novel. In fact, somewhere on my hard drive there are five novel length manuscripts, none of which will ever see the light of day. I hold a degree in journalism, but the novel was my gold standard.

I spent many years in business, working in communications, public relations and whatnot, but then broke free and managed to work as a freelance writer for the next dozen or so years. Always in the back of my mind was the idea of a book, but that's not what anyone apparently wanted to pay me to do. I got plenty of work as a copywriter, journalist, editor and other kinds of writing, but for me a book meant fiction and there were no buyers. I did get a couple gigs as a ghostwriter so there are a couple books out there in the world that I "wrote," but then signed over to another author.

Shortly after I began teaching, I was approached by an outfit that was publishing a series of city tour guides for parents. They wanted me to be the author of the Seattle edition. I got it done and I'm proud of it, but it wasn't really a proper "writing" project in that most of what it involved was researching various attractions and points-of-interest around the area then creating little blurbs about them. Nevertheless, the result was a book with my name on the cover: A Parent's Guide to Seattle. Last I checked, there were used copies available on Amazon for less than two dollars.

The best thing about that project was that it sort of satisfied the urge to produce a book even if it wasn't the great American novel, and so, being checked off the bucket list, it hasn't been among my top-line aspirations for some time.

When I discovered blogging back in 2009, I feel like I found my true "art form," and I've not looked back. I write here almost every day and at the risk of sounding boastful, I feel like I'm threatening to become pretty good at it. That said, for the last several years, several times a week, readers have been asking me "When is your book coming out?" At first, I simply took it as flattery, but over time I was finally persuaded that there were some people, at least, who wanted to see an actual book.

So now I've done it. I can't wait to hold a copy in my hands. In many ways this is better than that novel I dreamt of in my youth. It may or may not be a work of quality. It may or may not be a work of value. Those are things for others to judge, but I can say that whatever else it is, it is a work that is uniquely mine, a product of both who I am and who I am becoming, and of that I'm very proud.

I want to thank all of you who have urged me write this book and who read my daily blog posts. Without you it really never would have happened.

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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Poor Suckers

When our daughter Josephine was born, we lived in an apartment on 1st Avenue above Seattle's Pike Place Market. This was back in the mid-90's, before downtown had become a popular place to live. We had just returned from four years in Germany, however, and the area was the part of the city that reminded us every day that we were back home, so we wanted to be there, at least for awhile. As Josephine grew and became more mobile, we began to feel that we wanted her to have a little more space and a yard of her own, so we bought a house in the Seward Park neighborhood in the southend, a 17 minute drive away.

Josephine and I would spend a lot of time together downtown, especially after Jennifer went back to work, even though we no longer lived there. Several major new developments had opened during the late 80's just before we had moved away so Josephine and I spent a lot of mornings checking them out, or going to the Seattle Art Museum, or hanging out in the market, then we would have lunch together. And for us that meant a proper sit down lunch.

I know now that we were lucky to have a daughter constitutionally capable of enjoying a restaurant meal and she did, very much. Even as an 18-month old we would discuss the pros and cons of various establishments, reading menus in the window, remembering past meals, considering views and service, before finally settling on one.

Among our favorite spots was a corporate-style place located on the top floor of the mall portion of the City Centre building on 6th Avenue called Palomino, which is still there. It catered to a business crowd at lunch and having only a few years earlier "escaped" the suit-and-tie lifestyle, it delighted me to be there as a daddy with his little girl. One day as we talked about our fellow diners, I said, "I feel sorry for these guys because they don't get to have lunch with their children."

She was struck by that and fell silent for a moment watching them knife and fork their way through their working lunches, before saying, "Where are their children?"

"At home, I guess, or in school."

"I'm sorry for them," she agreed.

I nodded, "Poor suckers." She found the expression funny and so it turned into our nickname for Palamino from that moment forward: The Poor Suckers Restaurant.

We were mini-celebrities at Palamino for a time. The waitstaff was mostly young women who were charmed by Josephine in her floral print dresses. Her favorite dish was a squash soup with a pad of butter melting on top. By the time she was two she had figured out how restaurants work. If the table needed more bread, for instance, she would look pointedly at a waiter and raise her finger in the air the way she had seen me do it. In the beginning, I would have to mirror her gesture over her head to actually get service, but after a few weeks as regulars, she didn't need even that support. Someone had said to me that women tend to pick husbands who are like their own fathers, so I decided to be the best date she would ever have, focusing my full attentions on her, asking her for her thoughts and opinions, and generally behaving in the ways I wanted her future boyfriends to behave.

Before having a child, there were many promises Jennifer and I made ourselves about the kinds of parents we would be. We were late starters as parents among our friends, so had, as non-parents, seen how "badly behaved" they were, how "spoiled," and how they seemed to "ruin" our good times by demanding all the attention. When the realities of parenting hit, however, we quickly recognized how unintentionally mean-spirited we had been as we eventually broke every single one of those promises we had made in our ignorance, with one exception: our kid would know how to behave in a restaurant.

Today Josephine is definitely a city girl, like her parents, having chosen to attend NYU in the heart of Manhattan and we still like to go to restaurants together where I ask her about herself and take a moment to feel sorry for all the poor suckers.

*****

Note: Over the holiday break I started a new blogging project called Stories from 6th Avenue. Essentially, it's a place to publish my non-education related writing. It's been a long time coming so I'm excited to get it off the ground. It's still under construction and I don't expect it will have general appeal to Teacher Tom readers unless you have a particular interest in my thoughts and memories about downtown Seattle. I will likely be cross-posting a version of this piece over there in the next few days. Just wanted you to know.

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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A Well-Meant Lie

My goal has always been to make this blog seem as homemade as possible. I use a basic off-the-shelf template and the cheapest, most utilitarian platform available. I rarely engage in marketing, promotions or give-aways, I don't accept advertising, and generally speaking I steer clear of bells and whistles. I don't know if anyone else appreciates it, and well-intended people quite regularly give me advice on how I could make the blog snappier or boost my readership, and I'm happy for the free advice, but the amateur hour vibe is more or less intentional.

When I'm invited to speak at conferences, I strive for a similar thing: no Power Point presentations or videos or music. It's just me, in my jeans and hokey red cape, with a stack of notes, most of which are handwritten, some of which are in spiral notebooks. 

I suppose one could call it a "gimmick" or "style," this homemade-ness, but I tend to think of it more as an ethic, one that is full-blown at the place called Woodland Park, where parents come together to cooperatively make a school for their own children in the basement of a church. 

It's a place where we rarely buy new stuff, but rather finish using stuff others have cast-off, and where the playground shares much in common with a junkyard. When we do purchase something nice and new, like the fantastic Flor brand carpet, I worry that we're getting too fancy. 

I feel the same way about all those clean, crisp, purpose-built preschool facilities I've been in over the past several years: they're nice, and I even envy them, but I still have the urge to splash paint on the walls and tromp mud on the floors.

It's not that I particularly favor messiness or clutter or disorder (my apartment, for instance, tends to be a tidy, with everything in it's place) but rather that I am suspicious of slickness. 

Slickness is a trick, a way to hide the warts. It's the thing that separates the rest of us from Martha Stewart. At it's best, slickness represents a sort of unattainable ideal, but it also covers the cracks and dust bunnies that we all know are there -- that need to be there.

Like many of you, I spend a good deal of time on blogs and websites that deal in our preschool world, some of which you will find over there in the right-hand column under the heading "Teacher Tom's blog list." A big part of this is sharing "art projects," and all too often, we're lured in by slick pictures of slick activities with slick end-results and slick learning goals. 

For instance, I recently came across a particularly appealing article that employed one of my favorite art activities to "teach literacy." The idea, according to this writer, is for an adult to carefully write each child's name in white glue on a piece of paper. The child is to then carefully sprinkle salt onto the glue letters, shake off the excess, then use eye droppers to place dots of liquid watercolor on the salty-glue to create a sort of rainbow of their name.

These art materials -- glue, salt, and paint -- lend themselves to wonderful art explorations with the salt absorbing the paint while the glue holds it in place, and I reckon I could micromanage a child through this slick little process, correcting and coaxing along the way, but why? 

Even if I do hound the children like this, none will ever turn out as slick as the ones in the pictures that accompany this article, even the most obedient, careful child will dribble paint, smear glue and get salt stuck to her fingers. An experienced teacher, of course, already knows this, but that deceptive slickness is an intimidating lie, one that I fear leads many teachers and parents and even kids to frustration when the real world cannot match the pretty pictures of product-based art and dutiful children.

When we use these materials, I typically demonstrate the "right way" once, to the parent-teacher responsible for the project, not because I want them to teach it to the kids, but only because I want the adult to see what I think is really cool about using these materials in this proscribed way. I then always say, "The children will want to make it their own." 

Most of the kids do, at some point in their process, create the opportunity to explore the absorbency of the salt, the stickiness of the glue, and blending of colors, but they also must explore the properties of the glue bottle, the techniques of using a pipette, and effects of fists full of salt. 

They need to try using the pipettes as paint brushes, to empty bottle after bottle of glue, and to get glue and salt and paint all over their hands. The only limits we set are those of supply, but since we have glue by the gallon, salt by the pound, and paint by the case, we're prepared.

This is how process-based art works, this is how preschool works. It's a messy, free-form exploration of the universe, and there is nothing slick about it. The slickness is only a well-meant lie with no connection to reality that makes us feel as if we're doing it wrong. It's what I mean when I say that "homemade" is not a style, but an ethic.

Of course, I find our art "products" beautiful as well, those pages of tag board that take a week to fully cure, crinkling and curling and dripping on the floor. When I finally pull them out to send them home, mountains of salt crumble off, even as I try to balance it on there by way of honoring the child's intent, leaving much of it for the car ride home where it likely winds up all over the backseat. 

These aren't product at all, but rather homemade masterpieces, the kind of thing one simply can't do the wrong way.

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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