She Was Meant for Life

Many young children arrive on our doorsteps ready to attend to us, to what we point out to them, to sing our songs, to play our games, and to follow our lead. In standard preschool classrooms, these are our teacher's pets.

But then there are those other kids. These are the ones with their own agendas.

Miranda had no interest in toys. Dolls, blocks, and puzzles were in her way. Other children were interesting unless they wanted to "pretend." She had little patience for pretending. She preferred real things. 

As a two-year-old, she hunted out light switches, then pulled furniture over so she could climb up to reach them, flashing the lights off and on until someone helped her find something else to do.

Our vacuum cleaner was aces. 

She was so fascinated with our pencil sharpener that I wound up purchasing a whole collection of different types of sharpeners for her to explore. 

She liked tools of all sorts and would make a beeline for the workbench whenever we were outdoors -- she was particularly fond of screwdrivers and pliers. 

Indoors, she would sometimes engage with art-making tools like brushes, brayers, and scissors, but she was most often found in the kitchen where she insisted on helping with snack prep.

She would not sit for circle time. She played with the other children when they played with real things, but otherwise she was content to play on her own.

Our junkyard playground was her favorite place because, well, that's where we kept most of our junk.

The naturalist and author Joseph Wood Krutch was writing about the Sonoran Desert, but I believe his words apply likewise to every "natural" place, including those places like our preschool where humans provide the habitat:

"Perhaps the mind is not merely a blank slate upon which anything may be written. Perhaps it reaches out spontaneously toward what can nourish either intelligence or imagination. Perhaps it is part of nature and, without being taught, shares nature’s intentions."

Miranda could be a handful, but she was not necessarily meant for standard school. She was meant for life.

******

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.

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!

Life at the Cutting Edge of Reality

The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. ~Albert Camus

In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was the king of Corinth, a clever trickster who offended the gods and was condemned to spend eternity rolling a large stone up a hill, only to have it roll back down before he reached the summit.

As a metaphor for life itself, it works, which is why the myth continues to resonate today. Camus' interpretation of the story as related in his 1942 philosophical essay The Myth of Sisyphus, was a response to the absurdity of our human cravings for meaning in a universe that seems indifferent. He rejects religion and suicide as responses to the absurdity, ultimately concluding that one can live fully without expecting the universe to provide purpose. "One must imagine Sisyphus happy," is a conclusion that leaves many of us cold, but as early childhood educators, we see it in action every day.

As adults, we've learned to strive for summits. To achieve our purpose, we push the stones in our lives, large and small, toward our goals, only to find that even when we achieve our wildest dreams, there are more hills and more stones. Young children have not yet learned the lesson of summits. They see only the rocks and slopes and the adventure of life. 

"No child on earth was ever meant to be ordinary, and you can see it in them, and they know it, too," writes Annie Dillard in her book The Living. They go through their days unaware of the absurdity, because, when one embraces the present, not as something to improve upon, but rather as something with which to play, the absurdity vanishes. They know the stone will always roll back to the bottom, and it fills them with wonder when it does.

It's learning that reveals the absurdity. "(A)nd they wear out their brains learning what folks expect," writes Dillard, "and spend their strength trying to rise over those same folks." 

As early childhood educators, we get to live with them during that magnificent time of life. We call it naiveté or innocence or ignorance, but it's the paradise, the happiness to which we all hope to someday return. The absurdity is that we've been taught by expectations and competition to think that it's a shining city atop that mythical hill, that's where happiness lies, if only we can get this damn stone to stay up there.

But it always rolls back down.

I'm 64 years old. The children with whom I grew up are now retiring, the summit. But I can tell you it's a false summit. There are still plenty of stones to push. My peers are battling cancer, arthritis, insufficient funds, family traumas, and an ever-changing world from which they, in their retirement, feel increasingly alienated. Kids these days!

This isn't a promise, but I can't imagine joining them if only because the children have shown me that you simply can't retire from life. Yes, you can stop pushing that one particular stone, but there will always be other stones to push. It's not the stone that matters. It's how you approach the struggle.

Immediately before the famous ending, Camus describes Sisyphus as conscious of his fate and embracing it. "His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing." Early in the same concluding passage, he contrasts sorrow and joy, and insists that Sisyphus's conscious return to the rock can take place in joy. This isn't about tolerating or enduring or accepting one's fate, but rather the stronger and stranger claim that happiness is possible. It's how you approach the struggle.

"Each atom," Camus writes, "of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man."

We are meant to conclude that Sisyphus is damned by the gods precisely because his process produces no lasting product. The stone always rolls back down the hill. The gods assume that this makes the punishment unbearable, but the children in our lives find a workaround in the recognition that there are no "products," only "processes," and so too are we.

Children don't stop building block towers just because they know they will always fall down. Indeed, they understand that building is a process that must include the blocks falling down. Sometimes they build the tower for the purpose of knocking it down. They come to us to paint and pretend and bicker and climb and dance and cry and laugh, often all at once. And they come back tomorrow and do it again, not chasing products, but rather immersing themselves as a part of processes that flow and change and come to include everything there is, including themselves as both subjects and agents. And in that, they find joy.

So what if the stone rolls back down? C'mon everybody, let's roll it back up again!

This is life at the cutting edge of reality.

******

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!

What I Told Parents to Expect of Our Play-Based Preschool

At the beginning of each new school year we held mandatory parent orientation meetings where I told the assembled parents that I would not be teaching their children literacy, although they would be laying the foundations for literacy through their play, their dramatic play in particular; every time we read to them or tell them stories, or when they tell stories to us; each time they get excited and say, "Hey that's my letter!" or "That's your letter!" I won't be teaching them, but they'll be doing exactly what they need to do to read when their brains are ready.

I told them that I would not be teaching their children math, although they would be practicing their math skills every time they counted something out, put things in order, arranged things in groups, worked a puzzle, made or identified a pattern.

I told them I was particularly uninterested in teaching STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) skills so they would be ready for those "jobs of tomorrow," although again, through their play they will be engaged in teaching these things to themselves. When one studies children at play, it's impossible to not see them as scientists or engineers, asking and answering their own questions, engaging in experiments, figuring out fundamental truths about our world and the other people. 

I told the parents that I'm singularly uninterested in vocational training. The proper career aspiration for a preschooler is princess or superhero. The jobs for which their children will be applying two decades from now do not yet exist and anyone who tells you they can predict the employment landscape that far into the future is blowing smoke. The jobs our adult daughter found herself considering did not exist when she was in preschool. The careers my high school counselors suggested that I pursue would have left me unemployable. But more importantly, we don't educate our children so that they can take their role in the economy, but rather so that they can perform their role as citizens and community members.

We always talk a lot about "community" at our parent meetings. In fact, nearly everyone who spoke would find that word in their mouth, not because it was a coordinated effort, but because it is the real foundation of what we do at our school. We're a cooperative which means that we are owned and operated by the parents who enroll their children and these parents will attend school with their children, serving as assistant teachers. We are not just a community of children, but in a real sense, on a day-to-day basis, a community of families, assembled together around the common goal of supporting our children as they learn the foundational skills of citizenship.

At it's most basic, this means that we strive to form a community in which our children can practice living in a world with other people, learning how to get their own needs met while also leaving space for others to meet theirs. Nothing is more important, not just for individuals, but for our larger society. A good citizen is someone who thinks critically, who thinks for themself; a good citizen is someone who asks a lot of questions and who questions authority; a good citizen knows that it is not just their right, but their responsibility, to speak their mind, even when others disagree; a good citizen likewise knows that they must listen, especially when they disagree; a good citizen knows that they contribute to society in ways far more vital and varied than as a worker bee. It's from citizens with these traits that strong communities, strong democracies, are made.

I told our assembled parent community that their children will be learning these things as they play together, creating their own community, and that it wouldn't always be pretty. Their children will come home covered in water, mud, paint, snot, and even upon occasion, blood. Their children will find themselves embroiled in conflict. They will be learning through joy, yes, but also tears. They will, as they must, mix it up with the other children, sort things out, make agreements, and help one another. They will teach themselves to be self-motivated, to work well with others, and begin to understand the importance of being personable, all of which are, not accidentally, the most important "vocational" skills of all.

I told the assembled adults that our job is not to teach them anything, but rather to love and support them as they perform their inquiries, test their theories, and figure out what works for them and what doesn't. We're not there to push or command or mold, but rather to create a safe space in which the children can play, together, in the context of their community.

******

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!

Children are Not Nouns. They are Verbs.

"To garden," writes Ferris Jabr in his book Becoming Earth, "is to engage in a form of coevolution -- not just with plants and pollinators but also with roots and fungi, microbes and microfauna, sun and soil."

Our garden in the center of our preschool playground is a place to play. The plants are there to explore with our fingers, our eyes, our noses, and our tongues. We discovered one year that we enjoyed eating radish seed pods more than the radishes themselves, which we had neglected to harvest, making it possible to experience those pods. 

We tend to think of farmers as people who "work" the soil, who tend and harvest radishes and other plants as food, ripping them by the roots, leaving only a few to serve as seed stock for the next crop. But "to garden," I think, is a wholly different thing: it is a process of existing with these plants, pollinators, fungi, microbes, microfauna, sun and soil. That is to say, to play with them, or put another way, to co-evolve.

When children play together we see them adapt to one another through an ever-moving process of agreement, negotiation, and bickering. Sometimes it all erupts in a kind of supernova of impossibility, everyone scattered, everyone briefly on their own as they seek others with which to play. Other times it dwindles to an end. But if the game is to continue, everyone must find a way to get their own needs and desires met while creating the space for others to get their needs and desires met. This means it must change, must evolve, or die, like everything.

We tend to talk about evolution as something that happened over millennia, or as a competition, or as a climb toward some higher state. When children play, however, they are simply doing it.

They are not nouns, but rather verbs. They are both shaping the process and being shaped by it. They are in the midst of the process that connects us with one another, and with everything. It's a process without beginning or end or purpose other than to sustain itself by becoming something else.

A game of chase becomes a game of fighting becomes a game of "let's pretend" becomes . . . And so on. Play, like learning, like gardening, like living, is a process that interacts with other processes. Children too are processes, not products. 

So much of conventional education treats childhood as a manufacturing operation whose product is a particular kind of adult. School readiness. Kindergarten readiness. College readiness. Career readiness. We're forever evaluating children according to what they're going to become rather than attending to what's happening right now. It's like we see ourselves as farmers producing a crop rather than gardeners tending a garden.

When we're gardeners -- to garden -- we don't have to teach children to understand the assignment. We don't have to get them ready. When they are playing, making art, wondering, talking, building, destroying, rebuilding, running, pretending, they aren't producing things, they are making connections. They are engaged in co-evolution.

Maybe our greatest mistake isn't that we've failed to teach children how the universe works, but rather that we persist in interrupting them while they're already doing it.

******

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!

They Will Forget Most of Today

Much, if not most, of what you experience today will be forgotten by tomorrow.

It's why we write things down. We know that if we don't, we'll "forget." It's why we keep calendars, maintain "to do" lists, and write diaries. We think of these things as memory prompts, but they can also be thought of as ways of extending our minds beyond our bodies. We've not evolved to remember everything on our own, so we devise ways to make sure we don't forget certain things. 

It drives my wife crazy sometimes, but if I want to, say, remember to make a dentist appointment, I'll leave my toothbrush in an awkward spot before going to bed, in the spirit of tying a string around my finger. The idea is that when I see my toothbrush in an odd spot the following morning, it will remind me of what I need to do. If my wife decides to "tidy up" after me and put it away, I'll "forget" to make the appointment. 

There are techniques for improving one's memory (e.g., "memory palaces" or Method of loci), but most of us don't need that level of recall. In fact, for most of us most of the time, it's extraordinarily unimportant.

I'm thinking about memory because I've just returned from a visit with my parents, my brother, and my sister. As you might expect, when the five of us are together, we talk about our memories. At one point, my brother was telling a story about something that had happened to him. It was a familiar story, but in my version, it had happened to me. I realized that my memory had managed to reshape his story as my own.

Experts tell us that literal recall isn't the primary function of memory. As memory researcher Charan Ranganath puts it, "The human brain is not a memorization machine; it's a thinking machine. We organize our experiences in ways that allow us to make sense of the world we live in. To handle the complexities of the world, without falling prey to interference, we exploit one of the brain's most powerful tools for organizing information: the schema . . . A schema is a kind of mental framework that allows our minds to process, organize, and interpret a great deal of information with minimal effort. The way the human brain uses schemas to construct new memories is not unlike how an architect uses a blueprint to design a house. An architectural blueprint functions as a kind of map of the bare-bones information about the structure . . . of a building that shows how everything is connected. The abstract nature of a blueprint means it can be reused over and over."

In other words, it's not so important whether or not we can recall the specifics of what happened (episodic memory), but rather that we recall what we've learned about the world, "regardless of when and where that information was learned" (semantic memory). And quite often, the process of thinking causes us to reshape the specifics of our memories into a more useful story about what must have happened.

My brother and I remember the same story differently because we have different goals, emotions, and beliefs that cause us to interpret the story from our own particular perspectives. This, of course, shapes how we reconstruct our memories.

And that's the most fascinating thing about memories: they are not something we have, but rather something we construct. Indeed, experts tell us that the more often we recall a memory, the more often we've constructed it, the more it tends to stray away from what actually happened. In other words, we re-tell the story, the memory, to fit within our schemas.

This is what the children in our care are doing as they play and why the specific things we try to teach them are relatively unimportant. What they are doing in these early years is building a repertoire of schemas, of blueprints, that will serve them as they move through the world. Indeed, most of us recall very little from before we were five-years-old, but the important learning remains in the form of those schemas. 

At the end of a preschool day, I'm aware that most of what happened, the children will have forgotten by tomorrow, but that doesn't mean they haven't been doing important work. This is why I often do the minimum of tidying up. I try to leave things on the playground and classroom as the children left them. To put them away might well be the equivalent of my wife putting away my toothbrush. This pile of stones, that arrangement of twigs, these costumes on the hooks, may or may not be mind extensions, prompts, that the children have left, intentionally or not, to remind them of where they were and where they were going.

The hope is that they will more readily return to yesterday's play as through no time has passed. They see the stones and remember something about what they were thinking about. They find the cape hanging where they left it and are reminded of who they have been. They discover the half-built structure and know what comes next. Naturally, they may not remember any of this at all. They may look at the stones and see something entirely new. That's how memory works as well. We don't simply retrieve the past, but rather reconstruct it in service of the present.

This is why I'm wary when adults become too concerned about whether children "remember" what they've been taught. We ask, "What did you learn today?" as though learning can be measured by their ability to retrieve information. That's what computers are for. The most important learning, especially in early childhood, is almost never available to us in that form. What's important is the blueprint: what other people are like, what happens when I try, what my body can do, how friendship works, what happens when things fall down, how conflicts unfold, what it feels like to belong.

They will forget most of today by tomorrow. But tomorrow, they will use what they learned today to think.

And perhaps we'll have the good sense not to put away all their toothbrushes.

******

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!

"May I Dump This Bucket of Water Over Your Head?"

There are three broad categories of things about which we adults know more than the young children in our care: safety, schedules, and courtesy.

The rest is trivia. Yes, I may know more about Elizabethan novels than the typical five-year-old, but they know more about, say, Kpop Demon Hunters, so that's a wash.

Safety is obvious. Indeed, it's our number one job. None of us will last long in this profession if we're regularly sending kids home with major injuries. We say, "My job is to keep everyone safe. That's not safe. I can't let you do that." Then we don't let them do that.

Schedules can be inconvenient. We do what we can to minimize interruptions to the children's play, but the reality is that most of us have some sort of schedule to which we must adhere, even if it's just a matter of getting everyone ready when it's time to go home. We say, "My job is to make sure we're in the lunchroom at 11:30. It's 11:30. Now is lunch time." Then we usher them into the lunchroom.

Courtesy may not at first blush seem to fit with these other two, but this is where I see "consent" living. I don't expect children to align their behavior to the etiquette formulas with which many of us grew up (e.g., Emily Post), but I can't let them, say, dump a bucket of water on someone's head without first checking to make sure it's okay. I mean, it's only basic courtesy.

I once watched a boy sneak up behind a girl and dump a bucket of water over her head. He was shocked when she burst into tears. Later, as we discussed what he might have done differently, he asked, "Why is it funny when it happens on TV?"

The difference is consent. I explained that those people on TV are actors who have agreed to have water dumped on their heads, even if they pretend they didn't like it. Obviously, this kind of thing can be confusing for preschoolers and it's why they need our help to tease out the difference.

I remember when the Miss Manners column began appearing in our local newspaper back in the 1978. What made her advice different from what came before her was her insistence that etiquette wasn't about arbitrary rules, but rather about making social life work while preserving everyone's dignity. Courtesy is the answer to the question: how do we behave toward other human beings so that we respect their autonomy while still making it possible to live together? 

Young children might not grasp that concept exactly, but by the time they're three or four, most children are capable of understanding the concepts of consent and agreement. And this requires dialog, even going so far as to ask the question, "May I dump this bucket of water over your head?" then respecting the answer.

The Golden Rule is often offered as a kind of catch-all guide to living with others, but its weakness is that it allows us to judge the autonomy and dignity of others by our own sense of autonomy and dignity, rather than, you know, actually asking them how they feel about it. It's only basic courtesy.

A boy one time spent an entire morning asking his classmates if he could shoot them with his finger-gun. I admired his sense of fairness even as I found his line of inquiry unsavory. One after another, the children told him they didn't want to be shot. At some point he complained, "No body wants to play with me."

I answered, "Well, no body wants to be shot. I know I don't want to be shot. But maybe they'll play a different game with you."

He didn't like that idea. "But I won't really shoot them," he moaned, "It's just pretend."

"Maybe they don't know that."

He thought about this for a moment, then approached another child, "Do you want to be pretend shot?" Before long, half the kids were joyfully blasting each other with their fingers, everyone's dignity and autonomy intact.

******

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 Laughed Together Subversively

I looked up to see a familiar face. For a moment, however, I couldn't place it, but then recognized my friend who I'd not seen since he was five-years-old.

"I recognize you!" I blurted before his name came back to me. He was standing with his mom, pressed into her legs shyly, a posture I didn't recall from a couple years ago when we had seen one another almost every day. But, of course, he would feel that way. For a young child, two years is a very long time, long enough to have completely forgotten his old preschool teacher.

Yet he hadn't forgotten me. He was here because he had told his mother he wanted to visit me. When she asked if it was okay, I'd said to feel free to drop by any time. I've always had an open door policy for alumni.

His mother nudged him to respond, "Hi, Teacher Tom."

I'd met Duncan as a two-year-old who was enthralled with his older sister, often coming to class wearing her old clothes, sharing stories about what Bella had done or said, drawing pictures and making paintings to take home to her as gifts. As he got older, he turned his attention to "great apes," which he taught me included chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans. He wore our classroom gorilla costume almost every day, which included an anatomically correct backside that he would shake to make the rest of us laugh. During the three years that he and I were together he took himself along a wandering path of self-directed learning that carried him from Bella to the great apes, then, in a progression that made sense to him, on to dinosaurs, arachnids, outer space, Star Wars . . .

He intuitively signaled his changing interests by changing costumes, using dress-up as a way to embody his current driving passion. And through it all was woven an abiding interest in connecting with the other children, often bringing them along for portions of his journey.

In other words, he was a kid who always made the most of our days together.

I used my standard line that I use on visiting alumni, "Hey, I used to know a kid who looked a lot like you, but he was a lot smaller."

"It's me, Teacher Tom -- Duncan."

He was taking an afternoon off from first grade to be here. As much as I wanted to spend more time with him, I had other responsibilities so I left he and his mother to nostalgically go through the arrival routine of signing in, hanging up his jacket, stashing his backpack, and washing his hands. We later reconnected up by the cast iron water pump, which his mother had mentioned as something he particularly remembered. By then he had warmed up.

"This pump seems a lot smaller," he said. "Everything seems smaller. My school is huge."

"Yeah, well you got a lot bigger," I answered, "so you need a bigger school. Is your teacher bigger too?"

He thought about it for a second, not hearing it as a joke, then answered, "She's not bigger . . . but she's meaner."

"Oh, come on! She can't be that mean."

He conceded, "Well, she's not mean, but she made a rule -- no costumes except on Halloween."

"That's too bad."

"And she always wants us to tell her math facts."

"Wow, you know math facts? That's pretty cool."

"It's not cool, Teacher Tom. It's stupid."

"I hate doing stupid stuff."

"Me too, but did you know that I'm the smartest kid in my class?"

"I didn't know that."

"I know all the math facts. None of the other kids know all the math facts."

"That must make you feel good."

"It doesn't," he answered while lazily pumping water as the younger kids scrambled to dig channels in the sand into which it was flowing. The kids are always hoping for someone to pump the water for them and Duncan was obliging. "It makes me feel bored, but Bella told me that school is always boring. She's in fourth grade now."

"I'll bet Bella knows even more math facts."

He nodded earnestly, "She even knows more math facts than me. And she gets really good grades, like As and Bs. I also get As and Bs."

"And that's good?"

"Miss Herring says it's good," he answered brightly before glumly adding, "but I can do better."

I thought of the fully engaged boy from a couple years ago. "Good" and "better" and "smartest" and "bored" were not words anyone could ever attach to his learning. It wasn't the first time, nor would it be the last, that I've seen how this system we call school had taught yet another of my young friends to focus on competing, ranking, rating, and jumping through hoops rather than simply engaging the world through their own curiosity.  

I knew that this was why he had remembered preschool, however, and why he had wanted to return. I also knew that this was why his mother had pulled him out of school for a visit. As he reengaged with his self-selected project of being the big kid pumping water for the little kids, I stepped back to stand with his mother.

I asked her about the family and specifically about Duncan. She told me he was miserable at school. I sympathized, then repeated some of what he had said about math facts and grades. She replied, "Oh, he's doing fine. The school work is easy for him. It's this," she said, waving at arm at the playground, "that we're missing. I want that boy back . . . Look at him!"

He was down on his knees in the mud, taking charge of building a proper dam as the little kids swarmed around this big boy, everyone playing the trail-and-error game, the research technique that underpins most play.

"I won't be able to take him back to school now," she laughed. "They won't let him in the classroom covered in mud. I packed a couple of towels in the car just in case."

We stood together watching Duncan in his element for a long, silent moment, before she added, "But it's still in there, you know? All that time with you is still in there. I know that's why he needed to come back. Thanks for having us."

We send them off into the world, us play-based educators, knowing that while life itself is ultimately self-directed, while schooling stands starkly apart as a place of pleasing adults, competition with your peers, and learning to game the system. It is a kind of battle they will be compelled to fight, one that pits their natural instincts and curiosity against tests, homework, and grades. We can only hope that we've fortified them for it. What gives me hope for Duncan and the other children I've taught is that "it's still in there." And because we're a cooperative school, it's still in their parents as well. 

Later, I found Duncan standing in front of our classroom costume rack looking disappointed. "I'm too big," he shrugged, "None of them fit me."

"Yeah, you always liked our costumes. Too bad you can't wear any at school."

"Actually, I do."

"But I thought you said your teacher has a rule."

"She does, but she doesn't know that I wear Darth Vader underpants every day!" We laughed together subversively.

******

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!

Action is Character

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, "Action is character." 

As has often been the case, this artists was just asserting something that modern scientists are now confirming: not only do our actions reveal who we are, they also become who we are. In other words, neuroscience and sociological research are finding that when we act kindly (even if we don't feel kind), when we act courageously (even if we don't feel courageous), when we act generously (even if we don't feel generous), the more habitual and natural those behaviors become until, before we know it, we are the kind, courageous, generous person we aspire to be.

Of course, we don't need scientists to tell us that this is true when it comes to negative habits, so why wouldn't it work with virtuous ones?

Young children don't worry about what kind of person they are, let alone what kind of person they will become, even as we adults worry about it on their behalf. Indeed, much of what passes for parenting or teaching falls into this category. We worry that the child who hits another child will grow up to be violent. We worry that a child who snatches toys from another child will grow up to be selfish. We worry that a child who climbs too high, runs too fast, or hurls their body into the fray willy nilly, will grow up to be foolhardy. We scold or punish or forbid or otherwise seek to teach them the right habits. By the same token, when a child is gentle with their friends or thoughtful or generous, we reward or praise them all the while crossing our fingers that the cruel world doesn't victimize them.

When a child puts on a cape and says they are Batman, they are not aspiring: they are Batman. They stand in their power pose, strong, brave, heroic and a champion of those in need. In the very next moment they may crumple to the ground in tears, a baby who needs its mommy. We're all this way throughout our lives. The idea that character is fixed is a myth. Oh sure, we may have been shy or anxious or melancholy for a long time, we may need a therapist or even medications to help us, but in the end, the way to something better will not begin with feeling or thinking differently, but rather with acting like Batman. Of course, as adults, we may not be able to become Batman all at once. But if we can, each day, starting small, engage in a small act of heroism (or whatever), then do it again and again, the more natural it becomes. We will slowly become capable of bigger and bigger acts of heroism, until . . . Well, no one is Batman all day long, not even Batman, but the more we will feel and think like Batman. We do this through action.

I'm not saying this is an easy thing to do, but becoming the person we want to be will never happen if we wait until we feel like that person. Action is character. The rest will follow.

We worry too much about the children, I think, and not enough about ourselves. There is a tendency to see ourselves, both individually and as a society, as too far gone to be saved, our character is already set, but maybe this child or this generation will be the one that finally gets it right. Too many of us seem to think that if we do our parenting and teaching jobs just so, according to this method, or with this or that attitude, then we will be able to produce future humans who are kind, courageous, and generous. We see it all the time in public policy when we turn to schools to fix the poverty, bigotry, ignorance, and violence that pervade our society, when the problem isn't with the kids, it's with us. It's us that have to change. It's us that have to act even if we don't feel like it.

As Gandhi said, "Be the change you wish to see in the world." It's a truth that is being confirmed by science. It applies to individuals as well as the world at large. We can't do it for other people because no one can self-actualize for anyone other than themself. We can provide for basic needs and safety, we can love them and let them know they belong, we can even support them in feeling good about themselves. And a just society would provide all those things for all people. But when it comes to character, when it comes to becoming, that is the part that each of us must do for ourselves. That's what a child is doing when they declare, "I'm Batman!" We can all do it and it starts today, right now, with one small act of heroism, even if we don't feel like it.

******

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!