"I Know This Place!"

We all shape and are shaped by the community in which we live. We are both the cause and effect of, among other things, our local culture, commerce, politics, and religion. Those of us who have always lived in a single place or who have raised children in a place are typically aware of the impact of place in our lives, for better or worse. Transplants and nomads often feel they are more a part of a place they have left behind or that they are the product of many places, never fully at home in any, but our current place, wherever that is, is shaping us nevertheless, even if that shape is into an antithesis.

This is even more true for young children, I think, because this place, right here, right now, is the only place they know: this house, this neighborhood, this school, this town or city. They lack the experience to know other places the way they know this one and they lack the cynicism to be judgmental. This place, its rights and wrongs, its ups and downs, its strengths and follies, is their whole world, and they are, as humans, driven to make it their own, to understand and absorb it. I've known many transplanted parents, aghast at the place they find themselves, who strive to prevent their children from learning certain aspects of the local culture, language, or values, only to find that they've set themselves an impossible task, with their children often becoming more "Seattle" or "American" than those of us who have always lived here.

Last week, on a drizzly day, tourist season and its attendant crowds dissipated for the winter, we hopped a bus for a 10 minute trip to Seattle Center. Our primary destination was the playground with it's giant slides, but we all knew that there was more to this place than that. Of course, we also played in the International Fountain, some of us becoming drenched, which is as traditional an activity as our city offers. We tried to climb the humped backs of the bronze orca whales that emerge from the pavement. We passed through the Center House which is always scented by an overwhelming and familiar perfume of grilled meat and caramelized sugar. We checked out the monorail at its station, enthusiastically telling stories to one another of rides we have taken on it. There was a robot statue there that I had never noticed before, but with which the children seemed to already be familiar. We stood at the foot of the Space Needle, arching our back to take it in.

"I've already been here!"

"I've done this before!"

"I know this place!"

This wasn't the first time any of the children have been here, even if it was the first time this particular group had come together. It was hard to ignore the reality that this place is a part of who we are, as we played in our neighborhood. Making this place and being made by it, knowing it and being known by it, that is what makes a place home.

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To Talk And Listen And Agree

As we gather for circle time I sing . . .

Come on over to the checker board rug.

Come on over to the checker board rug.

Come on over to the checker board rug

And have a seat on the floor.

Over the years it's become a kind of ritual, with the children often singing or humming along with me. Sometimes I goof on the lyrics, replacing "rug" with "slug” or "floor" with "ceiling." The children tend to delight in correcting me, telling me "No! That's not right," laughing together as they come together which is a good way to start, even if we're going to be discussing serious matters like feelings or work on forging agreements about how we want to treat one another. 

We are always unconsciously working on becoming a community, of course, in everything we do or say with one another, but circle time is where we consciously focus on creating it, each of us having the opportunity to both speak and listen, to disagree and agree, to assume our collective responsibility for the world in which we live. This is where we actively create our world.

As animals with certain, limited, abilities to perceive, we tend to experience reality as a concrete thing, something that exists outside of us, built of undeniable facts, and this, to a greater or lesser extent, shapes and limits all of us. Since the Enlightenment, at least, the dominant view of scientists, artists, and philosophers tended toward a "clockwork" view of the universe, everything ticking along according to an as yet unknowable (but perhaps someday knowable) plan, machine-like, inevitable, unstoppable. Humans were clockworks as well, our brains, our bodies, our chemistry all subject to the immutable laws of nature. But more recently, we've begun to understand that this is not the case at all, that rather than being subjects of reality, we are in fact creators of it.

What we see is not what we see, but rather points of reflected light from which our brains create what we see.

What we hear is not what we hear, but rather waves that our ears transform into vibrations, then electricity, that we then use to create what we hear.

What we taste is not what we taste, what we smell is not what we smell, what we remember is not what we remember: all of it is our brains and bodies (which are really the same thing) creating order from chaos. 

Sometimes when I call the children over to the checker board rug, I hum the song while rapidly vibrating a finger between my upper and lower lips, speed boat style. I'm not singing the words, but the children hear them, singing along, anticipating, creating the full song from their own brains. Insisting, in fact, that I am singing the words even when I demonstrate that I'm not. They are making reality together, which is what humans do.

It's mind blowing stuff: it's hard to wrap our brains around it. I think of the young children I wrote about yesterday, those humans who are born with the wisdom of the true nature of time, living in it not as a continuum, but an ever-emerging present. The younger humans are, the closer we seem to be to perceiving the universe as it really is. Then we gain experience. We learn to instead perceive the world the way the other humans do, with it's lies of perception: we believe in what we see, hear, taste, smell, and feel, not because it is true, but rather because we've agreed that it's true.

On a day to day basis, I suppose, this all falls under the category of "true, but not necessarily useful." We are, after all, animals that have evolved to perceive the universe in a certain limited way, forever blocked from perspectives that would allow us to experience beyond our senses. Yet, if the scientists and artists and philosophers are correct, even this is a matter our own creation, individually and collectively. And looked at that way, perhaps it is useful. Perhaps it tells us that things are never hopeless. Maybe it allows us to know that change, even massive, sudden, earth-shaking change is possible, and it can happen in a moment if only we will come together on our checker board rugs to talk and listen and agree.

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Getting Home Safely

While visiting Athens, Greece some time ago, I decided to challenge myself to find the house our family lived in when I was a boy of 10-13 years old. It involved taking a train from downtown to the neighborhood of Kifissia, cutting across a large park, passing through the village, then winding my way around a maze of suburban streets. Arriving there from memory without a hitch, I set myself the additional challenge of locating the old American Club where I'd spent a lot of my childhood leisure time. This required a bit more trial and error, but I found that as well. Feeling good about myself, I elected to return to the train station via an alternative route and proceeded to get hopelessly lost.

There was no phone reception, so resorting to GPS was out of the question. I came across precious few fellow pedestrians out during the heat of the day, and I couldn't make myself understood to the ones I did solicit. I was too shy to knock on doors to ask directions. Of course, at one level I knew that I would find my way home. I would eventually find a place of business or wander out of the telephone dead zone, but there was a primal edge of panic there nevertheless, one that didn't go away until I found myself back in familiar territory.

It's unsettling to not know how to get home. As author and poet Diane Ackerman wrote in her book A Natural History of the Senses, "(R)oaming is one of the things humans love to do best -- but only if they can count on getting home safely." I think this is particularly true for young children and explains the undying popularity of such classic tales as Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are, the story of a boy who roams, has strange adventures, then returns to the security of home. It is knowing that we can get home that allows us to be bold, which is where much of the magic in life is found.

I'm thinking about this here at the beginning of the school year as preschoolers everywhere suffer from separation anxiety. Even as we assure them that mommy will come back, that we will take care of them, that they will return to their homes, they still don't quite believe it. They are in an unfamiliar place without phone reception. Our assurances might appeal to their rational minds, but until they are convinced that they will get home safely, their journey will be one fraught with anxiety. This is an ancient human fear, one that can only be assuaged through practice, through learning the "map" of how to get home.

It takes time for children gain this knowledge, longer for some than others. They create their "map" home through practice, familiarity, and routine. It's obviously vital that they know we adults can be trusted, that we love them, but that is only the beginning. We can provide comfort and predictability, but the difficult, frightening work of finding the way home is theirs to do.

This is important work. The knowledge that we know the way home, safely, is ultimately what allows us to feel powerful, confident, and bold in the world.

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The Emotion Called "The First Days Of School"

First days of a new school year can be exciting, but also intimidating. This goes for children, parents, and teachers. It's about stepping into the unknown and it has an effect on us all, even if you, like me, have been doing it for decades.

I've always started the year with easel painting, a kind of personal tradition, one, I suppose, that brings me a bit of comfort and control. Before applying paint to paper, one four-year-old, a veteran of our school, combined red and blue to mix up a proprietary hue, then took a brush in each first and began to paint energetically, swirling her paint into a massive storm of purple. She painted like this for a good twenty minutes. Adults commented on her work, but she barely looked up. Other children suggested adding other colors, offering yellow, red, and blue as suggestions, but she didn't take them up on it. A few people asked her, "What is it?" but she didn't answer.

Last year, I'd not thought of her as a child with particularly strong focus, but here she was, only three months later, pouring every ounce of herself into a self-selected project, indistractable. I stood beside her, for a time, more in admiration than anything else. Occasionally, I thought I saw her entire body quiver, betraying some strong emotion. At one point she began to paint with her hands near her mouth, as if speaking the paint onto the paper. And then I understood: she was painting the emotion that can only be called "the first days of school," a purple storm made with intensity.

As I watched, she spoke, not looking at me, but at the paper that was beginning to wrinkle under the force and wetness, "I can make anything I want." She said it again, "I can make anything I want." She was speaking to herself, to her painting, to me, and to the school. "I can make anything I want." She painted for several more minutes, stopped, decided to add a few dots of orange and green, then declared to the room, "I'm finished. It's time to get it dry."

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"Appreciation Is A Holy Thing"

After reading a story, then singing our final song together yesterday, the children came forward to hug me, not one at a time, but all together, and there we were, a massive scrum of bodies, wrapping one another up in our arms.

Since my first year teaching, this is the way the two-year-olds have said goodbye to me at the end of the day, and they have taught it to the older kids attending this session of our summer program. I've never asked for it or encouraged it in any way other than, I suppose, to be open to it. It starts on the first day of class each year because there is always one child who genuinely feels the urge to hug me, to receive a hug from me, then others see it, think that's a good idea, and come for their hug as well. I say the children's names as they approach, "Here's my Sarah hug, my Nora hug, my Alex hug . . ."

Mister Rogers said, "I believe that appreciation is a holy thing." We are saying goodbye to one another, of course, but we're also saying thank you, expressing our gratitude, showing our appreciation, not in payment for any particular favor, but simply for the time we've had together. It starts spontaneously, then, as the year progresses, becomes a sort of ritual, each child making it her or his own. There are some who rush to be first, others who wait for the crowd to thin. Some don't want to let go. Some come back for a second and third and fourth hugs. A few don't want to hug, preferring a high five or simply eye contact. Some are moved to start hugging their classmates.

It's a beautiful way to end our time together, almost as if we're all topping one another up before heading off into our separate lives.

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Scrambling Up And Down The Concrete Slide

There's a concrete slope along one side of our junkyard playground, poured generations ago in the interest of erosion control. It's a hard, steep slab, one that struck us as so hazardous when we first moved into the place nine years ago that we forbade the children from playing there. Today, we refer to it as the "concrete slide," and children use it that way, wearing holes in the seats of their trousers, tights, and rain pants, but that's just the start of it.

We've installed a strong rope across the top as a hand hold for the kids. From this the children have tied several ropes that hang down the face of the slope. (Yes, we supervise to make sure they don't get tangled around necks.) These are then used to ascend the face of the incline in the manner of mountain climbers, but also as a way to control their speed of decent. Sometimes these ropes become strands of spiderwebs, a la Spiderman, and the kids swing from side to side by running across the slope in an arc like a type of human pendulum. A stray rope ladder has recently been added to the mix, but since it only hangs about halfway down the slope, one still needs a running start to use it.

At the top of the slope are four mature lilacs that make nice nests, homes, and hideouts, and at any given moment there's a project going on around the roots of one of them that requires children to race up and down the concrete slope to forage, collect, or reconnoiter. The top of concrete slide is also the highest place on the playground, even higher than the top of our two story playhouse, so it's a perfect spot from which to spy down on the rest of us. It's likewise a place where adults rarely climb, giving the steepness of the the slope and the narrowness of the spaces. It can therefore take on the mysterious character of a place apart, ideal for hatching secret, whispered plans. I'm sure that we are going to have to, at some point, take drastic measures to rescue the lilacs, but their roots have become exposed in places, creating brilliant hidey holes for stashing treasures of all kinds.

Most of the two-year-olds cannot climb to the top of the concrete slide, while most of the the three-year-olds can, which makes it the site of one of our school's unofficial rites of passage, where children fail to make it to the top until one day they do, calling out, "Look at me!"

Yesterday, there were a dozen kids scrambling up and down the concrete slide: dropping to their hips to slide down, running up with and without the aid of the ropes, dragging objects to the top then letting them roll or slide or tumble to the bottom, sometimes while astride them, scraping their knees and elbows without fussing, hiding and finding, swinging and stashing, chattering amongst themselves, their words creating stories, projects, and friendships.

The slope is still a hazard, I suppose, in the sense that heads still get bonked and sometimes the scrapes require a bit of first aid, but I'm likewise struck by how impoverished we would all be without it, this accidental feature of our playground, something no one would intentionally build in a place children play, yet without which our lives at Woodland Park would be so much poorer.

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Hang Together Or Hang Separately

We must hang together gentlemen . . . else we shall most assuredly hang separately. ~Benjamin Franklin

Happy Independence Day! And “happy” is the appropriate greeting for today. The Declaration of Independence was the first historical instance of the word "happiness" appearing in the founding documents of any nation.

Today in 1776, 56 men signed their names to this radical document. As a result they were, without trial, proclaimed traitors by the government and sentenced to death. These were middle class people. John Hancock was the wealthiest among them and he was not even a millionaire by today's standards. The wealthy sided with the king. Most of the signers were working people -- farmers and tradesmen primarily. None of them left behind a family fortune, or a foundation, or any other kind of financial memorial of their lives. Our nation is their legacy.

Their average age was 33 (Thomas Jefferson's age at the time). The youngest was only 20-years-old. The oldest was Benjamin Franklin, who was 83.

As a result of having signed the Declaration of Independence, all 56 of the signers were forced to flee their homes. Twelve returned to find only rubble.

As a result of having signed the Declaration of Independence, 17 of them were wiped out financially by the British government.

As a result of having signed the Declaration of Independence, many of them were captured and tortured, or their families were imprisoned, or their children were taken from them. Nine of them died and 4 of them lost their children.

As I read the Declaration of Independence, as I do each July 4, I find myself in awe of their courage. They were all aware of the likely consequences, but they did what they knew must be done. Two centuries later, I still feel the outrage they must have felt as I read through the specific governmental abuses that lead them to that critical moment.

Even more than our Constitution, the Declaration of Independence is the beginning point for the United States of America. I find it both educational and inspirational to return to the source before heading out for fireworks.

When Franklin was asked what kind of nation they were forming, he answered, "A republic, madam, if you can keep it."

I worry at times that we won't be able to keep it, that, in fact, we've already lost it. I worry that too many of us have declared our independence not from tyrants, but from one another, not understanding that in creating a constitutional government of, by, and for we the people, we were also declaring our interdependence.

At the signing to the Declaration of Independence in 1776, Franklin famously said, "We must hang together gentlemen . . . else we shall most assuredly hang separately." 

And while we come together today to commemorate our independence from tyranny, this is also a day for embracing our fellow countrymen, for celebrating our interdependence. In that direction lies happiness.

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What I Get To Do And With Whom I Get To Do It

He's a boy who has always been in motion, moving his body according to the story he's telling in his head. Even as a two-year-old he was that way. He's forever embodying personas, usually guys who throw things over and blow things up. He expresses himself with this full body, sometimes without apparent regard to those around him, although I also know that that's not always the case. You sometimes have to say his name several times to get his attention.

He has told me he hates me, usually right after falling hard. He tends to use me like one of his loose parts: ignoring me for long spans, then getting into me, intensely, for a day or two, before moving on to something more interesting.

He has a best friend. He loves his best friend.

I sometimes feel like he doesn't hear me when I speak to him; his internal voice is so insistent.

Last week, we performed our play, a project we've been working on, all of us contributing, since January. In the aftermath of this magnificent success, he approached me in a crowd of children, parents, grandparents, and family friends, seeking me out to say, "Teacher Tom, I love you. I'm going to miss you next year." Then he spread his arms for a hug. Not all the kids get what the end of the school year means. He does.

The parents organized a year-end "card shower" for me, working with their children to produce "something" for Teacher Tom. I've collected them in a canvas tote they've autographed. One of the kids gave me a chain saw made from bits of wood, tempera paint and a glue gun. Others painted pictures of me. Most had a few words to say: "I love you, Teacher Tom," "I like your stories," "I'll come back to see you."

This boy, the one who has always been in motion, handed me his card. He had dictated a poem:

I love you, Teacher Tom.

Teacher Tom, happy day.

The sun rise is good.

Watch the water flow.

I'm about to break from the beauty of what I get to do and with whom I get to do it.

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

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This Community That Will Always Be A Part Of Who They Are

Every other year, we would be done with our school year by now, but Seattle, like much of the rest of the country experienced more snow than usual over the winter, so we tacked on three more class days. Many of our families had already made plans, however, so attendance was low yesterday, making it a quiet, lazy day, one that makes a nice transition into summer.

Our two-year-olds are mostly three-year-olds now, and as they tend to do, they have begun to turn increasingly toward one another, connecting over simple things like running from one place to another, digging the same hole, or tossing wood chips into the air. When I sang a familiar song yesterday, one with a by now well-known punch line, they waited together in complete silence, anticipating it together, agreeing without words passing between them to remain utterly silent during the extra long pause, then scream-laughing when I finally delivered the goods: laughing not at me, the performer, like audiences normally do, but into one another's faces, their ritualistic laugh bonding them, a celebration of this community that will always be a part of who they are no matter where in the world their lives take them.

Not so long ago, these "babies" did not know that they began and their mother ended. Some of them still don't know this for certain. It's the place we all begin and it's a place we spend much of our lives trying to recreate: not seeking a return to the womb exactly, although there may be a part of that as well, but rather expanding the womb, bringing what we are born knowing about the interconnectedness of humankind out there with us, learning that it's not just mommy, not just daddy, not just brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles, but all of these other people as well who make us whole. This is something the children teach one another. Or maybe it's more like they remind or confirm for one another, just as they remind we adults who too often live as if we've forgotten, even if we still find in reflective moments that this wisdom is still a piece of who we are.

Away we'll go now, off on our own, never to reconvene in exactly this way again, taking the us we've created along however, where it will re-kindle wherever we find people of goodwill playing together, singings songs, and telling stories.

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

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

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