The Gold Standard For Playing In The World Together

One of the five-year-old boys in this, our final summer session, has sparked the imaginations of several of the younger boys. He is bold and inclusive, and enjoys taking the role as the authoritative (as opposed to authoritarian) leader. Several parents have told me that their kids talk of him at home, insisting that they are going to play with him, even if, in reality they spend their days watching from afar. Most of the games this glamorous boy organizes involve, at some level, rough housing or, if not that, pretend fighting of some sort, which can intimidate some of the younger kids, even as it also attracts them.

Yesterday, the game involved shooting one another with weapons devised from sticks and other longish items.

There was a time when I would have felt that it was incumbent upon me, the teacher, to be proactive about gun play, but the longer I've done this job, the more I'm inclined to not see it as a problem until the children themselves see it as a problem. At first, their game was fairly self-contained, with the older boy and his group of admirers mainly shooting at one another, but at one point they trained their sites on a three-year-old boy who had previously been part of their game, but who had, overwhelmed for a moment, opted out without telling them. He had a worried look on his face, so I asked him, "Do you like that they're shooting you?" He shook his head, so I drew attention to that by saying, "He doesn't like to be shot. He has a worried look on his face."

The younger boys kept shooting for a few seconds, my words not immediately registering, but the older boy stopped instantly, commanding, "Stop firing! We have to find some real criminals," which caused the others to imitate him. As they roved around the playground, the older boy orally weaving the story of the game they were playing, both commanding and cajoling, he served, in a way, as the group's pre-frontal cortex. He recalled that during the school year we had, as a class, agreed, that you must ask someone before you could shoot at them, and was enforcing it on his troops. Coming from him, it was far more effective than had I been trailing around after them with reminders.

At one point, their fierceness frightened another younger boy. Their leader, seeing the tears, lowered his weapon, bent down so they were face-to-face, put a hand on his shoulder, and said, "It's okay, we won't shoot at you. You're a good guy," then after a brief pause, added, "We're just pretending." This assurance calmed the boy almost instantly. Later, they frightened another boy, who I began to console. I was thinking the play was now beginning to show up as a problem and would need some intervention on my part, but the glamorous boy, apparently sharing my concern, announced in his best voice-of-god, "No more shooting! Now we have to march!" And that's what they did: march in a well-ordered line around the place in a noisy version of follow-the-leader. Later, one of them offered himself up as "the criminal" and they spent the rest of the morning, weapons abandoned, trying to take him to "jail."

I understand why we are so quick, as adults, to jump on weapon play of this sort. It smacks of violence and other societal problems. It sometimes frightens other children. We have had school years during which it was officially banned (by a consensus of the children), but that never prevented it from happening. It just gave us adults the right to step in and scuttle it, effectively pushing it "underground." I won't pretend to explain why, but I know that this sort of play emerges all over the world wherever children play in groups of any size. I know that there has never been a connection made between this sort of play and future violence: indeed, some research seems to indicate that children who are permitted to play these games are less likely to be violent adults. I know that dramatic play is how children process what they see in the world around them, how they come to understand it from all sides, and how it can become the foundation for empathy. I also know that forbidden fruit is always the sweetest: since I've stopped being so proactive about weapons play, instead treating it like all other sorts of play, I've definitely seen a drop in the amount of time and energy children spend on these games.

Yesterday was an exception in the sense that it rose to the level that it was beginning to frighten some of the other children. They took it to the edge, but they were, with the help of their leader, for the good of everyone, able to reign it back in. For me, that's the gold standard for playing in the world together.

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Doing Their Job

Some of the younger children still don't like to go to the bathroom alone. If we weren't a cooperative school with lots of adults available for escort duty, it would be a real pain given that our toilets are located down a long hallway which means that the classroom is down two adults (our rules don't permit any adult to be alone with a child that is not their own) for a considerable amount of time when this happens. It's not that the kids necessarily need us there with them in the sense that most have mastered the physical aspects of the process, but rather that they are in the habit of having an adult with them. So most of the time, the adults are there to more or less keep them company as they go about their business.

Our summer program is in a somewhat better situation because we spend our full days outdoors and the toilet is visible from the playground. Many of the kids are happy so long as an adult is visible, which means one of us just needs to hang around near the doorway so they can see us. Still, it's an obligation that temporarily depletes my team of parent-teachers each time it happens. I don't want to make this sound like it's a major issue or anything; it's more of a occasional annoyance.

Last week, a situation came up when a two-year-old, performing the classic dance, announced that he needed to "go potty." I was in the midst of doing something from which I couldn't be immediately extricated, but telling someone who has recently graduated from diapers to wait doesn't usually lead to success. I looked around for another available adult. They were all either likewise engaged or not visible, so I said, "You know where the potty is, right?"

He nodded.

"Maybe you can go by yourself. I'll come as fast as I can."

He continued to dance in place, "I want someone to go with me!"

I was about to say he would have to wait a minute, when one of the five-year-olds offered, "I can take him." She then took the boy's hand, walked him in to the bathroom, and remained with him right through hand washing.

It was an eye-opener for me. For the rest of the week and into this one, whenever a child indicated they wanted to be escorted to the toilet, I would announce to the surrounding children, "X wants someone to take her/him to the potty," and every single time there was a four or five or six-year-old volunteer. For the last couple of days, I've not even always needed to make any sort of announcement, as I've witnessed any number of older children walking younger ones to the bathroom totally unprompted by me.

Yesterday, they took it up a notch. Not once, not twice, but thrice, I heard a younger child crying, only to be beat to the comforting hug by an older child, and in one case several older children, on the spot, caring for the younger children, doing what has now clearly become their job.

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Monkeys Jumping On The Bed

"There were one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven . . . little monkeys jumping on the bed . . ."

As I fit the classic chant to the number of children jumping up and down on the table, I began to be concerned about the possibility of someone falling. I was particularly worried about the two-year-olds up there crowded together with all those four, five, and six-year-old bodies. The table isn't exactly high, but they were rowdily jumping up and down right near the edge of the table: all it would take would be for one of them to lose their focus or decide to take it to the next level or give in to an impulse to create more personal space with a push and someone would find themselves head over heels on the ground.

It's a game I've often played with the kids over the course of this past year, one I have mixed feelings about pedagogically, because it puts me too much at the center of things, but there had been quite a bit of pleading, so I'd given in.

". . . One fell off . . . two fell off . . . three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven . . . fell off and bumped their heads . . ."

They jumped one at a time and several at once, landing on their feet, then falling to the ground. I was concerned about the possibility of someone landing on someone else. I was particularly worried about the two-year-olds being stomped on by one of those four, five, and six-year-old bodies. The ground isn't exactly soft: all it would take would be for one of them to get a little crazy or to miss time or aim their jump or to decide to find out if it enhanced the fun to land unexpectedly on top of another person.

When we've played this game in the past, not as many kids opt in. Usually, we have a half dozen or so, but this game grew to include double that at times, not to mention a few who appeared to be waiting for the crowd to thin a bit before joining in, probably feeling concerned, like me, that this game was a knocked noggin or bruised knee waiting to happen. Specifically, I imagine they were thinking about the potential for their own bodies to get injured, assessing the risk at this time to be a little much for their taste.

". . . Teacher Tom called the doctor and the doctor said . . . " And this is where I put on the show of frustration that the kids find so hilarious, "No more monkeys jumping on the bed!"

Then they clambered back up on the table, jostling one another as the each found a place of their own in anticipation of the next round of the game. I was concerned again about the possibility of a fall or push or a finger being stepped on, but once more the children kept managing to keep any of my worries from coming to fruition.

As we played the game again and again, I found myself admiring how they all, from oldest to youngest, jumped on that crowded table in their own self-space; how they each measured and timed their jumps to the ground so as to ensure (to the degree possible in such a game) that both their own body and the bodies of their playmates remained uninjured; how they created space for themselves and one another as they reassembled on the table top; how the children in the "audience" took their places with confidence when the crowd of monkeys thinned.

My concerns didn't exactly lessen. I remained close and vigilant, but the children's behavior didn't once prompt me to act upon my concerns. The kids, two, three, four, five, and six-year olds, were taking care of themselves and those around them, while at the same time having a rowdy good time.

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Clearly As It Should Be

Our school is divided into four classes, based on age. There is a 2's, 3's, and 4's class, as well as a kindergarten. There is a lot of data, both empirical and anecdotal about the benefits of mixed age classrooms, but Woodland Park has been doing it this way for a long time, since 1977 to be as precise as we can be, and it can be hard to break with tradition. Last year, as a cooperative community we spent several months discussing the pros and cons of switching to a mixed age format, both in terms of pedagogy as well as logistically, financially, legally, and practically. One of our biggest challenges was that by the time we got around to taking a vote, we had already begun enrolling families for the coming school year, so we felt that a significant "last minute" change of this sort should require the vote of a supermajority, a threshold we missed by a couple percentage points. As a community we tend to value democracy above everything else and so as disappointing as the results were for me, they also affirmed who we are.

That said, I hope we'll re-approach the idea again in the fall, but for the time being, we're still largely divided by age most of the time. This isn't to say that the ages don't sometimes mix on the playground or that both younger and older siblings never attend one another's classes or that elementary-aged siblings don't regularly hang out with us, say when their schools are otherwise occupied with standardized testing or in-service days, but it isn't a formal part of our program. We do have a multi-aged adult community, spanning many decades, and while that also has its benefits, it's not the same thing.

We extended our school year by a few days last week to make up for the unusually large number of days we missed during the winter due to snow. Since many families had already made plans, however, attendance was sparse so we decided to fill up the classroom by making it a sibling day. So we wound up with about twenty or so kids, ranging in age from around 18 months to 10 years. It was, in the words of more than one of the parent-teachers helping out that day, "magical."

One of the concerns voiced by families as we considered a multi-age model last year was how will we accommodate all those ages in a single space. Won't the older kids need more stimulating experiences? Won't the younger kids feel left out? As we saw last week, there are no age limitations on things like easel painting or playing with play dough. Of course, the children used the materials in different ways. A fourth grader, for instance, used Legos to create an elaborate superhero hideout (in cooperation with a preschooler) while a two-year-old transported fists full of Legos from one table to another, then back again. Running, swinging, climbing, pretending, collecting, and bickering are likewise adaptable to all ages.

Older children fell to their knees to help the younger ones. Younger children stepped up their game, stretching themselves to join the play of the older kids. Our summer program is a multi-aged endeavor, with children ranging from 2-6 playing together, so it's not like our community has no experience with the phenomenon, but it was indeed magical to see them learning from one another. This is clearly as it should be.

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The Real Value Of Education

The small, landlocked South Asian Kingdom of Bhutan uses an index called "Gross National Happiness" to guide all of it's economic and development plans. They take it very seriously and the success or failure of every governmental policy is measured according to this index. One must even submit a GNH impact statement for review before undertaking any new endeavor, public or private, that may impact on the general well-being of the nation.

I just mention that by way of pointing out that there are ways other than money, perhaps even better ways, to assess the real value of an economic activity, just as there are ways other than test scores and grades, perhaps better ways, to assess the real value of education.

For instance, I've never come across a standardized test that measures the ability and willingness to take turns, but everyone knows that it's one of a happy life's most essential skills.

And you're sure not going to get very far if you don't work well with others, but you don't see that on any of the corporate academic assessment matrixes.

Or how about curiosity? I'll take curiosity over knowing the capital of Bhutan any day. (It's Thimphu. I was curious and looked it up.)

And anyone who has studied what it takes get what you want out of life knows that boldness . . .

. . . and the willingness to take risks . . .

. . . and the ability to fall down . . .

. . . and get back up is far more important than the ability to diagram a sentence or deduce that the answer is "none of the above." What meager things we've come to expect from our schools.

A well educated person is skeptical and often full of doubt.

She looks at things closely and doesn't necessarily take my word for it.

An educated person tries new things . . .

. . . and plays dramatically with his friends, practicing the complex interpersonal skills that will ultimately get him through life.

When I'm assessing students, I want them to be able to stand on their own two feet.

And to invent new things (at least things that are new to them) . . .

. . . and to feel proud of their accomplishments.

I'm looking for kids who help others . . .

. . . and can work well on their own . . .

. . . concentrating . . .

. . . and persevering . . .

. . . and just being silly.

I want to see that they are full of awe and wonder.

And ultimately, like the King of Bhutan, I'm always looking out for our Gross National Happiness.

Because in this world if we are to be truly happy, we are to be happy together. No one can call himself educated unless he understands this. And therein lies the most important academic skill of all -- the capacity for unmitigated . . .

. . . unbridled joy.

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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