The Natural State of a Hoarder is Misery

Preschool is a time for children to experiment with community and their place in it. One of the things they experiment with is hoarding. What happens when I manage to control all, or most, of a valuable resource?

Of course, they probably don't frame the question so clearly. More often than not, a child who likes, say, Hot Wheels, will keep adding to their collection until they have all of them. A boy once took a fancy to our giant plastic insects, put them in a pile and sat on them. It happens because it seems like more or all might be better, but it doesn't usually play out that way.

In many classrooms, the adult steps in, first cajoling, and then commanding the child to "share." This, in my view, is not sharing, but rather compliance to authority, which is not something I'm interested in teaching. Experienced children may give in, sullenly, but those who have not yet resigned themselves to being bossed around will fight back. They refuse, they resist, and they shout, "That's not fair!" contrary to the adult's intent, which is, after all, fairness. The lessons learned in this scenario aren't about hoarding, but rather about the ability of the powerful to use force to get their way.

I want children to learn from their experiments. One of the words that I teach the children in my care to understand is "hoard" (another is "exclude") because I want to be able to point it out when it's happening. I don't do it to shame anyone. In fact, I try to state it as a simple fact. 

Someone will complain, "Mary has all the dolls!"

And I'll respond matter-of-factly, "Yeah, she's hoarding them."

If someone complains, "That's not fair!" I'll respond with something like, "You can use them when Mary's done hoarding them." I'll even smile at Mary to assure her that I will not interfere with her experiment. And I genuinely don't because I recognize that she is about to start learning the great lesson about hoarding: the natural state of a hoarder is misery.

The boy who sat on all the giant insects was at first nagged by his classmates to let them have some, or even "just one," but he held firm. After a while, the kids gave up, opting to play with something else, and more importantly, someone else. Slowly, you could watch the boy begin to sulk until before long he was a picture of misery. As he sat there, this previously valuable resource became less and less valuable until it was so worthless that he abandoned it.

One time I was sitting around a table with four 4-5-year-olds. One of them, Phillip, had collected most of the play dough and was sitting with his arms around it possessively. He seemed to enjoy rejecting the other children as they begged him for a chunk. As they bickered, I began to gather up the tiny bits of play dough that remained on the table, eventually gathering a small ball of the stuff about an inch in diameter.

I said, "He doesn't have all the play dough. See? I have some too." I then began pinching off portions of it, saying, "I'm going to give a piece to you . . . And you . . . And you." As the rest of us began making tiny balls and cookies and swords with our bits of play dough we were chatting, laughing, and showing off. Meanwhile, Phillip was looking on with a grim expression, probably beginning to feel miserable in his isolation.

I looked around at everyone's faces. The children with the least were clearly enjoying themselves. I said, "Alex is smiling. Sonya is smiling. Salvador is smiling . . . Phillip is not smiling." We all sat there for a second, just looking at each other's expressions. Then Phillip broke into a huge smile before breaking off large chucks of his hoard to share with the rest of us. I said, "And now everybody is smiling!" 

Both Phillip and the boy on the bugs experienced something the central to hoarding which is that though they may have had a monopoly in terms of possessions, the rest of us had something far more valuable: the happiness that can only come from participation, connection, and friendship. 

******

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!

Agreements We Make With One Another

There was no reason for me to be close, so I kept my distance. There was no reason for me to be a part of their game, so I remained invisible.

It probably began days, if not weeks, before I understood it was a game, but it came to my attention in the form of a girl filling a plastic witch's cauldron with things she had scavenged from around the playground.

A friend said some words to her. Maybe he asked, "Can I play with you?" but it was more likely something along the lines of "What are you doing?" which is typically a better playground question if the goal is to be invited in. So then they were filling the cauldron together, discussing each item, coming to agreements over what went into the mix and what was cast aside.

A decision was made to add water to the cauldron. By now it was heavy with the debris they had purposely, even meticulously collected. But it wasn't too heavy so it only took one of them to carry it over to the cast iron hand pump. While the girl held the cauldron, her friend began filling a smaller bucket, which they then poured over their collection. As they worked together, another child joined them. After a discussion that may or may not have included the phrase, "I've got an idea," they agreed they would forego the unnecessary step of the bucket and slide the cauldron itself under the flow of water.

Agreement, however it is arrived at, stands at the center of our preschool, as it does in life itself. Conflict, all conflict, emerges from the inability to agree. These children were not playing a game; they were living.

The children took turns pumping until the cauldron was full, or at least as full as they collectively agreed it needed to be. Now it was too heavy for a single carrier, so they circled around the cauldron and lifted it together. Walking with it was a complicated matter: they had to agree about where they were going, at what speed, and who would have to walk backwards or sideways. Maybe it was still too heavy. They staggered a bit under its weight before another friend joined them, dashing in to slide his arms under the cauldron. It was still too heavy, but when another playmate tried to squeeze her body in amongst them, it became clear that they could lift it, but not effectively carry the heavy thing, even when they all worked together.

They agreed they would need to put it down, which they did, carefully, not spilling more than a drop or two.

As they discussed their next steps, someone said, clearly enough for me to hear it, "I've got an idea! Let's use the wagon!" This was met with approval, with the exception of one girl, the girl who had tried to squeeze in. She objected. "I'm using it." I had previously noted her idly pulling the wagon, alone, watching the cauldron situation from afar. She had abandoned it briefly to help.

"Please!" the other children begged. "We just need it for a second." The girl stood with her back to the group, apparently considering what to do. It wasn't long before she relented, "Okay, but I want it back when you're done." Another agreement.

Now the challenge was how to get the wagon to where the cauldron sat on the ground. It sat on the other side of the row of tree stumps that line the upper level of the sand pit. One child attempted to lift it, but when the others didn't join his effort, he gave it up in favor of what the group decided was a better idea, which was to pull it around to the side with the slope. It appeared to be the work of a single child, so the others stood around watching as he wheeled the wagon the long way around. He struggled, however, when it came to the steep part of the slope, so other children, spontaneously, pushed from behind.

Then, the wagon in place, a small miracle happened. The girl who had started it all, easily lifted the heavy cauldron all on her own, placing it into the bed of the wagon. As it turns out, it could have been carried by a single child, but they had collectively agreed that together was better, even if that made things more complicated, perhaps even more difficult. The agreements were the important things.

The project, this project of life itself, continued to play out for some time as the wagon, propelled over difficult terrain made its way in stops and starts around the space, eventually winding up back where the whole thing had started. The cauldron hadn't, after all, mattered. The debris and water it held didn't matter. Whether it was a witch's brew or a soup didn't matter. Indeed, even where they were going with it didn't matter. All that mattered, it seemed, were those agreements and this project.

******

I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 14 years. I've recently gone back through the 4000+ blog posts(!) I've written since 2009. Here are my 10 favorite in a nifty free download. Click here to get yours.

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Because We Live in a Society

My wife and I have lived with dogs for most of our 40 years of marriage.

Our first dog came before our daughter was born. He was our gateway "child." One of the responsibilities of a dog owner in an urban or suburban place is to pick up after it. The concept disgusted me: turning a plastic bag inside out, grabbing it with my hand, and carrying it until I came across a trash can. Honestly, I often skipped it when I didn't think anyone was watching.

That said, it irritated me when I came across unpicked poo. What slobs, I would think. Don't they realize they live in a society? Then one day, my hypocrisy hit me. How can I expect other people to pick up after their dog if I myself sometimes let it lie?

Today, I always pick up after my dog, not because I've come to enjoy it -- it's still an annoying, unpleasant task. And not because I'm worried about any kind of punishment or public shame, but because, well, we live in a society. 

At preschool, one of our health and safety requirements is that every person who comes into the school starts by washing their hands. This goes for both children and adults. Indeed, we enter our school through a room with a sink. At the beginning of the school year, we remind the children, "Don't forget to wash your hands," but typically, by about this point in the school year, reminders are no longer necessary: they enter, stash their stuff, then hop up on the stool to wash their hands. Often, you hear them reminding their parents.

They do it because it's what we do; because they are part of a society. They are not doing it to avoid punishment. They are not doing it because they are concerned about being shamed. It's a responsibility that each of them has assumed. I suppose you could say it's part of the price of entry into our little community. Or perhaps more accurately, hand washing could be understood as one of the small daily rituals that hold us together.

Parents and educators often want their children to be responsible. We assign them tasks or chores and tell them that they are "responsible" for getting them done. We scold them for being "irresponsible" when they fail or neglect them. But I don't think this is how responsibility works. We assume responsibilities, not because others are dictating to us, not because we will otherwise be punished or shamed, but because, quite simply, we live in a society, and this is what we do.

******

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!

"To Daily Converse About Virtue"

"Well, although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good," said Socrates, according to his student Plato, "I am better off than he is -- for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor think that I know."

This is one of his most famous assertions. Whether it's true or not, can be debated. Self-evidently, he knew more than nothing. My mother used to say, whenever I thought I'd caught her in an inconsistency, "All wise people change their minds." It was a frustrating parry in the same way I imagine Socrates' claim was frustrating to those who sought to debate the famed orator.

And he was quite famous in his lifetime, at least in Athens where he spent most of his life. When he was still a relatively young man, Aristophanes' play The Clouds was first performed, portraying Socrates as a ridiculous intellectual clown teaching young people to undermine traditional beliefs. He was sufficiently famous even then that audiences were expected to recognize him. 

It's hard not to compare him to, say, The Beatles, who were initially laughed at, then criticized as corruptors of youth. Or maybe he was more like a modern influencer, who many of us old people view as lightweights, at least until one of them pops through our bubble and we find ourselves outraged at the things they are saying. I'm not saying that any of them are Socrates, but then again, the Beatles were a bunch of silly mop tops before they became icons.

The Beatles, of course, didn't have the internet, but they did have radio and television, which allowed them to "converse" directly with their young audience. Today, most of us know about Socrates through Plato's writing, but Socrates himself wasn't a fan of the phonetic alphabet and its ability to lock things down. As he complained, if you want to question the written word, it cannot reply. Things that are written are fixed, whereas direct discourse between people allows for the kind of public square give-and-take he was, and still is, famous for.

Another of Socrates' most well-known assertions is that "the life which is unexamined is not worth living." But what he actually said (again, according to Plato who was writing it down) was, to me, far more interesting. The fuller quote from his Apology, in which he was defending his life against accusations goes, ". . . the greatest good of man is to daily converse about virtue, and all that concerning which you hear me examining myself and others, and that life which is unexamined is not worth living."

"The greatest good of man is to daily converse about virtue."

The Greek word that gets translated as "virtue" is aretē, which carries a broader meaning of excellence and fulfilling one's potential. He's not advocating for endless conversations about being morally upright, but rather asking what it means to live well, to be a good human. In other words, what he is advocating is something far beyond mere introspection. He is calling for conversations, daily, in which we engage our fellow human beings about what it means to be fully human.

I doubt anyone would have cared about Socrates had he been content to sit in his ivory tower examining his life and writing books about virtue. What outraged the establishment to the point that they condemned him to death was his insistence on conversing about it in the public square.

He was condemned by a jury of what was, by tradition, comprised of 501 fellow citizens (all free men). Apparently, his death sentence was decided by a slim majority, illustrating one of Socrates' objections to the kind of direct democracy practiced in Athens at the time: the tyranny of the majority. Without protections like "freedom of speech" and "freedom of assembly" his ideal of "daily converse" was a dangerous thing.

It doesn't seem that Socrates thought of "free speech" in the way we do today, as a legal protection for everyone. He was more focused on the moral obligation to speak one's truth and ask challenging questions, even if it did lead to ridicule and even death.

Although Socrates is recognized as one of the foundational figures of our Western traditions of thought and philosophy, his notions of democracy were different from how we understand it today. Indeed, he wasn't a fan, even though, in the end, he accepted his democratically decided fate. 

Our current experiments in democracy are attempts to fix the flaws of ancient democracy. The written US Constitution along with The Bill of Rights and the mechanisms of amendment were an attempt to balance majority rule with individual rights. It was intended as a living document, one that could be changed, just not in a willy-nilly-wims-of-the-moment fashion. It was, one might say, intended to be an ongoing, daily, conversation among we the people; a dialog about excellence, fulfilling potential, living a good life, and, yes, virtue. The fact that it has evolved beyond the framer's original ideas about gender, race, and other matters is evidence of this.

The fact that so many of us avoid politics is evidence that we are failing. I've long believed that "voting" is the bare minimum of democratic participation. The real work and promise of democracy is the conversations we have with our fellow humans. That includes through the media, social and otherwise, but perhaps even more central are those conversations we have with the actual humans in our lives -- our neighbors, those with whom we do business, in our churches, our workplaces, and above all, in our schools.

Preschoolers engage in daily converse about virtue. It happens every day, all day long as they express their opinions and show their emotions. It happens in each negotiation, in each agreement, in each decision about with whom and what we play. In my role as an adult who works with young children, my responsibilities are clearly defined as keeping the children safe and doing what I can to ensure their physical and psychological needs are met. And as a member of the community (one who perhaps knows "nothing") my role is not to direct, but to interact as much as possible as an equal. The rest, then, is up to all of us, and that is to engage in daily converse about excellence, living well, being righteous, and to discover, together, what means to be fully human.

This is a life worth living.

******

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!

I Fought the Temptation to "Correct" Them

When my grandmother-in-law died, she left us with a set of The Great Books, a 54 volume set of renowned works by European men, from Homer to Freud. Published in 1954 by Encyclopaedia Britannica, this was meant as a comprehensive study guide for adults interested in learning about intellectual underpinnings of the Western world. The idea was that students would encounter the original works, rather than textbook summaries, and, more importantly, the curriculum was built around conversation, debate, and inquiry rather than to simply deliver direct instruction.

The Great Books approach to higher education had been underway decades before this set was published, versions of it having been adopted by several respected universities, including Columbia, University of Chicago, Notre Dame, and St. John's College, which to this day organizes its entire undergraduate program around it.

Over the years, I've cherry picked volumes to browse, reading, say a bit of Plato here or a passage from Goethe there, but largely they've lived with us ornamentally, or, as I often say about books on the shelf, aspirationally. 

My attention was drawn to these books recently when I read that schools in South Korea have begun adopting the Great Books seminar approach by partnering with St. John's. Hwacheon High School began offering the program as a two-credit course in 2025. Five other schools in Chuncheon offer seminars using readings from Plato and Thomas More, and the Incheon National University has adapted it for Korean students and is currently extending it into local schools.

At first, this confounded me. Why would Korean schools be embracing a deep dive into this curriculum of "dead white guys." I mean, certainly Korea has its own rich intellectual and literary tradition to draw from, and apparently they have included Asian thinkers, but the point isn't the specific content. The stated goal, according to educators, is for Korean students to discover a new way to learn. They want their students to learn by speaking as equals, questioning one another, and exploring ideas without being expected to reach a single correct answer. This, of course, is a reaction against school cultures that have traditionally been more hierarchical and lecture-based.

Equally important, I think, is that they are consciously seeking to move away from vocational training and toward supporting students to become facile, confident critical thinkers.

This is happening in Korea as US universities and high schools are moving away from reading entire books altogether. 

Of course, as a preschool teacher, I've always worked in schools in which the students don't read any books at all. Or rather, books are read to the children. And then, invariably, they are discussed, not as lessons to be learned, but very much with the goal of becoming facile, confident critical thinkers. 

One of the greatest reading episodes of my life involved a reading of The Little Red Hen. This classic morality story involves a hen who finds some grains of wheat and decides to do the work of planting, tending, harvesting, grinding, and ultimately baking it into a loaf of bread. At every step of the way, she asks the others, "Who will help me?" to which they reply, "Not I." As an adult, I know the intended moral of the story, but when we got to the end where the hen, justifiably, refuses to share the bread, the children were confused and outraged.

"Why didn't she share?"

"They're hungry and she's eating all the bread!"

"That's not fair!"

I fought the temptation to "correct" them, but rather allowed the discussion to unfold as the children, together, determined that the little red hen was a jerk.

Another time we were collecting books for a fundraiser. The intent had been picture books, but one of our families donated a bunch of paperback novels, among them William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. People my age know that this book is difficult and dense, made particularly confusing by the fact that the narrator of the first quarter of the book is a grown man, Benjy, with a severe intellectual disability. A five-year-old brought it to me. I told him, "That's a grown-up book. You'll probably have to read it when you're in high school."

"Let's read it now."

It was a sunny day, so we took the book outside and I began reading it to a small assembly of preschoolers. I figured they would wander off before I'd reached the bottom of the first page, but I was wrong. For the next week, we read and discussed this book on the playground, as a group. Not only that, but the children, together, were able to discern exactly what was going on ("They're playing baseball." "No, they're playing golf." "He's hiding from them." "He's trying to get their golf balls."), something I'd struggled with as a teenager. They made me stop to define words, and they were particularly interested when I skipped over the N-word. "What's so bad about it?"

Our policymakers are forever talking about the "jobs of tomorrow" and how our schools must "prepare" our children for them. What BS. No one can possibly predict what jobs our preschoolers will be applying for 20 years from now. They're just blowing smoke. They're, at best, talking about the jobs of today, but more often than not, they're talking about the jobs of yesterday. It will be today's preschoolers who will be inventing those jobs of tomorrow.

What we do know, however, is that whatever the future holds, we will need those critical thinkers. 

That's what educators in South Korea are thinking about. Maybe we should too.

******

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!

Your Children Already Know How to Be Successful

I think most of us, if asked to define "success," would think deeply enough to consider more than the capacity to acquire great wealth. Certainly, we would cite things like having "enough" money and a holding personally satisfying job, but we would also include things like mental and physical health, good personal relationships with friends and family, and a general sense of well-being about how life is going.

There has never been a study that links early literacy or early numeracy to any of these aspects of "success," even the superficial one of wealth. None. Never. 

The research that's been done on successful people tends to find, rather, that their success comes from being self-motivated, sociable, and having the ability to work well with others. These are the skills and attributes children work on when they have ample opportunity to play, especially outdoors, with other children, with few toys and lots of time, and with a minimum of adult intervention. Our job as adults to prepare an environment in which free play is possible, to keep an eye out for hazards (as opposed to risks children choose to take on their own), and where children have the opportunity to do things for themselves, even if it means failing, and failing often.

As a teacher in a cooperative and a parent myself, I understand the pressures parents are under. On the one hand there are those who insist we must drill and grill our youngest citizens lest they "fall behind," while on the other, there are those who are in the business of selling us on the idea that children are constantly at risk of abduction or injury or other dangers. These twin manufactured fears, and they are largely manufactured, have caused a generation of parents to behave as what is popularly called "helicopter parents," always hovering nearby, always ready to step in, always urging and cajoling and warning, teaching helplessness instead of independence. All this leaves precious little time for the children to actually play in the way that will allow them to grow into successful adults.

I reckon by writing this, I'm now, at one level, joining the fear-mongers, providing parents who are already pulled this way and that by fear, one more thing about which to worry: is my child getting enough free play? For that I'm sorry, but the answer is, if you're a typical American parent, probably not.

I've spent my career at a cooperative preschool, which means that I worked more closely with parents than most teachers. I write here often about teaching children, but one of the most important things I did was to also teach their parents, which was done formally through our parent educators, and informally by our larger community of families who were, collectively, striving to offer children the opportunity to acquire the skills and attributes of success through play. It's a learning process I've witnessed time and again, one that I experienced myself as a parent. I know that for some it is a painful one of "letting go," of coming to trust the world enough to know that those inevitable bumps and bruises our children experience, both physical and emotional, those "failures," are the true building blocks of success. It's hard because we live in a culture that tells us our job as parents is to fix things for our kids, to make things easy, to soften the blows. We have to consciously push back against the culture of fear that has come to surround parenting if we are to raise truly successful adults.

Most of our three-year-olds were out of diapers. When they told me they need to go to the potty, I pointed to the bathroom and said, "The toilet is in there." If you asked their parents, many would insist their child still needed their presence, if not assistance, in the bathroom, but it was really no longer true. Sure, children may want mommy with them, after all it can be an intimate, private moment, but when mommy isn't at school, they've shown they are more than capable. Yes, some struggle to get their pants back up, others miss the toilet, and I'm sure few do as thorough a job of wiping as mom, but they all come out of there, mission accomplished, then hop up on the stool near the sink to wash their hands.

It's likewise difficult for parents to step back and allow their children to engage in, say, conflict or risk, but it must be done if our goal is successful children. Yes, they will fail, and those failures form the foundation of success. Indeed, when looked at from the wider perspective they aren't failures at all, but rather steps along a pathway. As Thomas Edison famously said about the invention of the light bulb when asked by a journalist how it felt to have failed a thousand times: "I did not fail a thousand times. Inventing the light bulb was a process of one thousand steps."

A pastor friend of mine once said that our main purpose in life is to assure the other people, "Don't be afraid," and that is what I'm saying to parents. Your children already know how to be successful, and that may require a lot of failure. What they need from you is to love them, to trust them, and to keep them safe. Otherwise, relax and get out of their way. It's through freedom that their own unique success will be found.

******

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!

We Had Built a School and We Were Our Own Teachers

When I was a college sophomore, I had four roommates. We'd all been randomly assigned to the same dormitory floor as freshmen and liked each other enough to give it a go in a large two-bedroom house just off campus.

Many of our other friends from the dorms had joined fraternities, but none of us saw ourselves as the frat boy type. Our house was located to the west of the majority of the frat houses, so we mockingly called ourselves Frat West. Our joke caught on. One evening, while I was there alone, an entire sorority stopped by to serenade me: just me alone hanging out a window with 30 young women singing to me. 

My roommates and I made an agreement to start the year: we would create a schedule that required one of us to be responsible for a dinner for all five of us each evening, Monday-Thursday. That left us with a schedule that meant we each got an occasional week off kitchen duty. Our other rule was that you were allowed one "cheat meal" per quarter. A cheat meal was anything that we collectively agreed was not "real cooking" (like frozen pizza), but even then it had to be balanced according to government guidelines (e.g., dairy, meat, vegetable, fruit, grains). None of us were seasoned cooks, although my mother had taught me a few of her recipes, which gave me the reputation as the "gourmet" of the bunch.

Our friends predicted the schedule would fall apart within weeks. Even my own mother later told me that she doubted we'd be able to stick with it. And I don't blame them. Here we were, five young men, responsible for preparing our own food for the first time in our lives. No one expected young men to manage a household. Certainly studying and social life would come first. 

That doubt unified us. By the end of the school year, we could tell the story of each of our collective meals together. 

There was the night that Mike made "rhino burgers": burnt on the outside and raw on the inside. 

Kevin tried his hand at Chicago style pizza. It's still the standard by which I judge deep dish.

Dan disliked salad dressing, so one night I served him an unaltered head of iceberg lettuce in his salad bowl, which he gamely consumed in its entirety.

Brian got us to agree that he could be replaced one evening by guest chef Father Patrick from the Catholic House. Father P complained about our dull knives. 

Friends often asked to join us as a sixth or seventh, which we typically accommodated.

Between defying doubt and our friendly competitiveness, we stuck with the program from September through June. And even when one of us failed, we praised or panned accordingly, but we always ate the food. 

Looking back, I can see that the year was the product of accidental genius. We placed constraints on ourselves through agreement -- dinner for five, balanced, Monday through Thursday, only one cheat per quarter -- but within those constraints we'd given ourselves enormous freedom. And we had the most useful, and brutally honest, feedback mechanism imaginable: people who knew us well actually eating the entire meal. 

I didn't see it at the time, but I now recognize that we had created a functioning anarchistic community, in the original sense of the word. Or in less controversial language, we created a pretty sophisticated cooperative labor system.

Those balanced dinners became more than mere healthy eating. They were community meetings. They were events in the shared history of five people. Remember the turkey-extra-crappy? The meals became landmarks.

Nobody taught a course called Cooking 101. Together, we constructed an environment with real responsibility, meaningful constraints, repeated opportunities, natural consequences, and a community that depended on us. We all learned because learning was a necessary part of living together. In fact, I know that I learned at least as much from this experiment in community as I did in any of my classes.

This is where I first really learned to cook, but it was much more than that. We had a communal need. Rather than each of us solving it individually, we created a cooperative system into which everyone contributed, and from which everyone benefited. Responsibility rotated. 

This isn't far off the kind of cooperative preschool community in which I spent my teaching career. It's where I got first-hand experience with rules designed not to enforce obedience, but as agreements that allowed our community to function. We didn't do any of it to avoid punishment or earn praise, but rather because the other four guys were counting on us. The original goal might have been to eat decently and save money, but the real outcome was learning about one another, developing traditions and stories, and creating community.

Every Sunday at midnight we would do our grocery shopping. We chose that exact time because we agreed that none of us would have other plans. There was a big, no-frills grocery store called Waremart, known for its low prices. We each contributed $20.

We took a single cart through that virtually empty store and together shopped for the ingredients we needed for our meals, but also what we individually wanted to have around for breakfasts, lunches, and weekends, not to mention household necessities like toilet paper. We were in a constant state of negotiation as we jockeyed to stay within our collective $100 budget. One thing we all agreed upon was that we each got our own loaf of sliced bread, white or wheat, for the week. Another was that the common budget could not be spent on dessert . . . Unless it was ingredients for chocolate chip cookies, which would be made, and consumed on an evening when we were all at home.

I'll never forget the cashier, a middle-aged woman, checking us out after our first group shopping expedition. When the final bill came due, we were within pennies of $100. She said, "You boys made good choices." 

The best part is that even at the time, we all approached it as a kind of lark, a challenge, an adventure in which failure was always a possibility. Even our midnight shopping felt like a night on the town with friends. 

In other words, we were playing.

It was just a bunch of young men experimenting with life, creating it together to suit ourselves and one another. It's kind of stunning to think about how much learning was embedded in our play: budgeting, meal planning, nutrition, compromise, division of labor, accountability, generosity, cooking, economics, shopping, conflict. We needed no other curriculum because we had something to accomplish together. That's what we play-based educators call project-based learning.

In Frat West we had built a school and we were our own teachers.

But most importantly, I think, is that we were learning that autonomy isn't the opposite of community. Indeed, we were learning that a healthy community is what makes autonomy possible.

******

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!

"Not Just Allies, But Accomplices"

Fin whales, the second largest animals on earth after blue whales, can communicate across entire oceans. They are capable of producing extremely low-pitched calls that travel up to 13,000 miles under water. They are also capable of hearing those sounds which means that a fin whale off the shores of Bermuda can "talk" to whales hanging out near Ireland. 

Mice and other rodents carry on like birds, twittering, chirping, and singing, yet they do so at such high-pitched frequencies that they're undetectable to the human ear.

Many fish interact with the world through electrical fields, turning their bodies into batteries, essentially extending their sense of touch beyond their physical bodies. Migratory birds, sharks, and a host of other animals orient according to the earth's magnetic fields. We know they do these things even though, as humans, we have no way to imagine what it might be like to "see" through electricity or "hear" through magnetism. Indeed, we are even limited to the metaphors of sight and sound which probably have little in common with the actual experience.

There is so much going on in the world about which we are totally unaware. This is true of all species. We are trapped in the bubble of our senses, or what scientists call our umwelt. The entire umwelt of some spiders is the vibrations of their webs. The umwelt of bats consists largely of echoes. Even the umwelt of the dogs who sleep in our beds is largely incomprehensible to us.

We struggle to understand what it might be like to experience the world as another species, just as we often struggle to understand the different experiences and perspectives of our fellow humans. A while back, I was talking with Nick Terrones, who was then the director of the all-tribes Daybreak Star preschool in Seattle. He told me that many Indigenous people conceive of other species, including plants, as relatives, an idea that might be alien to someone, say, from a European background which has long viewed Mother Nature as a collection of resources to exploit.

While it may be impossible to fully understand the experience of other species, all we have to do to better understand other humans, including children, is to be curious and to listen with the intention of understanding. When we do this we come to see the world through their eyes, through their traditions and cultures, through their respective umwelts. They are showing us truths about which we were totally unaware, helping us overcome the hubris and arrogance of believing that our own perspective is all there is. When we do this, we expand our understanding of who we are.

They have also, just as importantly, shown us where our umwelts overlap, creating connection and relationship, showing us that we are all relatives, and making it possible for us to go through the world, as Nick says, "Not just as allies, but as accomplices."

This is how we expand beyond our bubbles to become the curious and connected adult accomplices our children need us to be.

******

Books, like Sand Talk, 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!