A Creative Space Opens

Yesterday, I posted about how our 3-5 class played with a collection of oddball parts and pieces, starting by exploring the parts individually, then working toward experiments that involved connecting the disparate parts. We ran with the same materials in yesterday's Pre-3 class.

It's always more of a challenge when 2's and young 3's are playing with collections of small parts because many of them are still very much learning what they need to learn from simply dumping things out onto the floor (or scattering, as I called it in a previous post about this phenomenon). The older kids, while still liable to dump boxes, baskets, and bowls, have for the most part moved beyond this behavior, and even when they do dump something it's usually a part of a bigger plan, like hunting for a specific Lego piece or setting the stage for actually using all the parts in some master construction.

For instance, this rather impressive and precarious wall of yoghurt drink bottles by an older 4-year-old started with a dump and a (perhaps pedagogically inappropriate) comment from me, "I don't want you to just dump things unless you're planning to use them all." I'm glad he took it as a challenge and not an admonishment, which is sort of how it felt when I said it.

This approach does not work in the Pre-3 class, which is why I cut the amount of materials in half, anticipating all the dumping that would take place. I've found that with preschoolers, whatever age, once the floor is totally bestrewn, pretty much the only activity that takes place until it's tidied up again is to kick through the area, which inevitably leads to wilder kicking until, finally, we start inadvertently kicking our friends. This is why I generally advise our parent-teachers to spend their "down time," meaning the time when the ebb and flow of kids has taken them elsewhere, to do a quick tidy so that it invites play other than simply kicking through the mess.

This isn't always true, of course. A dumped container of toilet paper rolls lead to this game.

Someone else had dumped the tubes, and while I considered what to say about it, Simone quickly got busy arranging them in a cluster, then fitting a practice golf ball into each one. The older kids had been frustrated that the balls were slightly too big to roll through most of the tubes (although they did discover that a few of the tubes were of a slightly greater diameter, allowing the balls to freely roll), but Simone found the tight fit satisfying for her game.

Once she'd used up all the balls, she then impishly scattered them before setting them up again to repeat the game, this time having attracted Lucy and Luella to play with her.

These girls expanded the game by adding yoghurt drink bottles and wine corks to the game.

But Simone still took the prerogative of scattering the whole thing when they were done. After three rounds of this game, it was given up in favor of one in which the kids carefully picked the remnants of paper from the tubes, dropping it on the floor.

At one point, a boy motored through the area, systematically dumping the balls, the tubes, the yoghurt drink bottles, and the corks, all of which I'd only moments before tidied up during a "down time." It's a Sisyphean task, sometimes, keeping up with the Pre-3 class, and as I was mentally scrambling to come up with a pedagogically acceptable way to steer his energies toward something that I, at least, thought of as more "productive," he came to the box of foam packing material. 

It's a box more than half his height, but lightweight by virtue of it's contents. When he tried to dump it, however, the materials were packed tightly enough that they didn't react to gravity the way he'd anticipated. He dragged the box across the rug, shaking it, still trying to get the stuff to budge to no avail.  This was something unprecedented, worthy of further investigation. After trying to dump it several more times, he wrestled the box onto its side and finally succeeded in emptying it with his hands, one piece at a time. That accomplished, he moved on. Before I could start my tidying, however, just as Simone had done with the tubes, Calder got busy using the pieces to make letters.

By the time I'd figured out what he was doing and got my camera ready, he'd worked through A-D and was assembling an E, saying each letter aloud as he went. Here's his F . . .

. . . I . . .

. . . and K . . .

As adults, we shape much of the children's play by what we say and how we say it, and that's a big part of our job. And it's a big responsibility, one worthy of careful thought. I got lucky in the first instance, that the words I blurted out were taken up as a challenge to build something magnificent, but more often than not those first words kill play rather than stimulate it. In the second two instances, with the tubes and foam, it was during the time that I paused while wading through all the admonishments and instructions that I could have spoken, that a creative space opened up, free from my adult words, for discoveries to happen.

I'm still going to tidy up during the down times, refreshing things for the next kids on the scene, but to paraphrase mom, "If you can't say something informative, don't say anything at all."

How To Play

I more or less put in regular work hours last week during our spring break, digging around in the corners of our storage spaces, purging a little, but mostly being reminded of all the stuff I have "some of," but not quite enough to make a project out of it.

For instance, the area I think of as "collage materials" was housing about 20 of those little white triangle table looking thingies that prevent delivery pizza box lids from dropping down into the hot cheese, the last vestiges of a birthday party from 3-4 years ago. In one container I found about two cups' worth of broken beaded necklaces, and in another about the same quantity of screws and other miscellaneous small machine parts. There was a box containing two fists' full of tiny plastic pegs left over from some game or other from which the rest of the pieces had gone missing over a decade ago.

In fact there were lots of collections of puzzle and game parts: not "enough" of anything, but too much of everything to just throw out. 

Since we were coming off spring break, I figured our short and medium range "play arcs" (I don't know what else to call them, but I suspect anyone with experience in a play-based curriculum will know what I mean) had abruptly ended with the time off and we'd be starting new ones anyway. So without having anything from the kids to give me my lead, what better time to cut up some cardboard, break out the glue, and let them do what they need to do?

I uncovered other things in the storage room as well, like several bars of Ivory Soap (a mild, natural soap that floats on water for those of you reading this from distant shores). I don't recall having bought them. In fact, they're just one of those things that have always been in there, too potentially useful to throw out, but not enough to really do anything . . . But, what the heck am I doing here, curating the stuff? I was thinking of just dumping them in the box I'd labeled "free" to set out for the families to search through on Monday, when I came across a stash of old children's clothing, much of it my daughter's old things, that I'd brought in several years ago to add to our "mess emergency clothing change" stash, but never got around to it.

Perfect, that could be in our sensory table, a kind of old fashioned hand washing, clothes washing station.

Right away, one of the parents said, "I don't think my kids have ever seen a bar of soap." We got to introduce words like "wringing," and teach skills like hanging the clothes up to dry.

It wasn't the most popular thing we've ever done in the sensory table, but, you know, it's not an entirely unpleasant thing to have the classroom smell of soap for a morning. I hope the clothes really are dry enough this morning because I suspect this is the kind of thing for which the Pre-3 class will go nuts.

And then there were several pockets of larger things squirreled away and not exactly forgotten, but having waited far too long for their "time to come." A partial road and track play set for instance, missing it's vehicles and, I think, a few pieces because I'd never been able to get it to go together as a complete circuit.

Or these yoghurt drink containers a grandmother washed and donated several years ago . . .

. . . or this foam packing material, with it's odd cut-out shapes . . .

. . . or the collection of picture frame corner samples I'd scored from a framing shop that was throwing them out to make room for this season's selection.

And then there were things of which we had an over-abundance.

This would be what we played with in the block area, these disconnected things that I labeled a "new play set" as the kids walked into the room.

When they started playing with all this junk, it was mostly with one thing at a time. They weren't fooled by my "framing." Like trying to build the track . . .

. . . or building with just the containers . . .

. . . or sticking with just the foam . . .

. . . but once that was exhausted, they started making connections . . .

Notice not just the invented construction technique, but also the

 "love rats" peeking through their foam windows and the balls

arranged in the egg container.

. . . moving beyond the frustration of things being apparently "incomplete" and completing them, learning from one another, and starting whole new play arcs.

That, my friends, is how to play.

Playing With Matches

When we were 6-years-old, Jeff Short and I took a book of matches into a place we called "the woods," an undeveloped lot a few houses down from his own on Winston Street, lit leaves and pine cones on fire, then stomped them out, hidden from the rest of the world by a stand of pines hung with Spanish Moss. We did it over and over, going through all the matches. We did it again the next day and the next day too, until one day our fire spread beyond where we'd set it, running wildly across the dried pine needles that covered the ground.

We stomped furiously. I knew, and Jeff must have known too, that this was a moment all our own. No adult could save us. It was either stomp out this fire right now or it would race through the undergrowth and up the trees and through the neighborhood. We knew this and we stomped furiously, not speaking, knowing the only thing we could do was stomp.

We stood there afterwards, still not speaking, watching the ground where the fire had been, where it might still be, kicking at it with our toes, suddenly older, stomping some more, making sure, sure, sure it was out. Even when we got on our bikes to ride to our individual homes, I don't remember speaking, at least not about the catastrophe we'd nearly caused and luckily averted. In fact, I don't recall ever speaking about it, not with Jeff, or anyone, until now.

I hate that moment. Hate it. By the time this happened, Smokey Bear had spoken to us through the TV dozens, if not hundreds of times. Our parents had taught us the mantra never play with matches and we knew it like we knew to not let strangers touch us or to look both ways before crossing the street. I hate how much I grew up that day, painfully, a scar I still feel as a stinging, panicky guilt every time it comes up for me, and that's more often than I care to admit. It was a terrible thing for a 6-year-old boy to experience, that glimpse into the reality of being in the world with no one to save him.

I suppose I should be sharing this story with a moral like: from that day forward I never again played with matches. But it wouldn't be true. My father, brother and I still took turns passing our fingers through the flame of the candles on the dinner table. It wasn't too many years later that gangs of us would pool our pocket money in order to afford a quantity of firecrackers and bottle rockets to set off in the street in front of our house. (Finally, the neighbors complained, but not about the noise or the matches, but rather about all the litter we left blowing about on the asphalt, which mom made us sweep up, and which was the real reason we never did it again.) We still stuck sticks into the barbecue coals until they ignited, then drew pictures with them in the air at night.

What I did learn that day, although I wasn't fully aware of it at the time, was that if I was going to try something risky, it shouldn't be while hiding behind pines and Spanish Moss. If I was going to dance with danger, I should first make sure to be surrounded with other people, especially those I know and trust, as many as possible. We'd hidden our experiments because we wanted to know more about fire, but felt it was forbidden knowledge and almost burned the neighborhood because of it. It wasn't the fire, it was the hiding that made the risk unbearable.

It's a tricky line to walk as responsible adults, wanting to support risk-taking without letting kids kill themselves. We all forbid certain things that our children want to do, but we also need to understand it is a human imperative that forbidden knowledge must be pursued, and more often than not it will be done under cover of pine trees and Spanish Moss, making the risk infinitely greater. Children will take risks, so isn't it better that it happen at the dinner table, in front of the house, or around the grill where we can help them evaluate the risk, then help them stomp out the fire when and if it gets out of hand?

I'm the parent of a young teenager now and while the specific risks are different, the dynamics are the same. I remember what it's like. There are so many dangers, ones that could alter her life at least as much as burning down a neighborhood. Oh, how I want to forbid her knowledge of the cruelty of others, of drinking, of drugs, of sex, of leaving her toys and dolls behind and growing up too fast. Despite my feelings, I know that she will take risks. And I don't want her to hide. I'm not naive enough to believe that she won't keep things from me, her parent, so my greatest counsel to her is to stick with her friends, know who they are, listen to their warnings, and count on them to help her should the fire start spreading wildly across the ground. I give her other counsel as well, but this, I feel, is perhaps the most important.

We need the other people to help us stamp out the fires and to lift us up when we inevitably fall. They can't do that when we hide our risk-taking because it has been strictly forbidden.

A couple weeks ago, our daughter's middle school held one of it's twice yearly "open mics" in which the students perform for one another, their teachers, and parents. Josephine is by now a seasoned veteran of the stage, both as an actress and musical performer. There was a time when I would sit in the audience with my heart in my throat, praying that she didn't forget her line or miss her cue or do something else to embarrass herself, but she's now had enough success under her belt that she can laugh off her flubs. It's really not so risky for her any more.

This isn't true, however, for most of the performers. When they take to the stage it is at great personal risk to their middle school psyche, rife with the potential for grave peril. It takes a lot of courage to get up there and perform.

A younger boy stepped up to the microphone, the recorded beat of hip hop bravado behind him. He swaggered like he's seen the guys do on YouTube, roaring through the first verse, getting the audience clapping through the chorus. Then he lost it. The lyrics fled, leaving him there on the stage, a little boy, humiliated in front of all his friends, his teachers, and the parents of his friends. He sort of staggered around the stage as if lost for a bit before starting to clap, hopefully it seemed, while faintly chanting the main line of the chorus over and over. We all clapped and chanted with him: his friends, his teachers, and parents. Cheers erupted spontaneously from the back rows, his friends stomped on the bleachers as if stomping out a fire that could have very easily burned down his entire emotional neighborhood. He was on that stage alone, but we were with him, stomping.

Finally, the recorded beat, which had never stopped, rolled around to a part he recognized and the words miraculously came back to him. We went wild, especially his classmates, still stomping on that fire to make sure it was really out, celebrating our survival and the risk he took with us.

It is a moment he will hate forever, but hopefully he'll always also remember it with a little less vehemence when he recalls how his friends helped him stamp out that fire.

We tell our children to not play with matches because the risk is too great, yet it is exactly that risk that attracts them. There are all kinds of risks, most of which don't threaten our lives or those of others, but some do. It's impossible to know in advance to what risks children will be attracted, but we do know that forbidden knowledge bears with it the imperative that it must be pursued. It's why we stupidly play with matches or knives or guns if we can get them into our hands. And it's why, as we get older, the draw of sex and drugs is such a strong one. Taking risks sometimes rewards us, but just has often we get burned, and that's when it's important to have not taken that risk alone.

I Have This. I Don't Know What To Do.

Tom Drummond, recently retired instructor at North Seattle Community College, has a video of himself interacting with preschoolers by putting a can of house paint on the center of a table and saying something like, "I have this."

One of the children identifies it as paint.

Tom answers that it looks like a can to him. We then watch the kids over about 15 minutes guide Tom through to the point that he uses a screw driver to pry the can open where, sure enough, they find not just paint, but the color and type they predicted. Throughout this, Tom more or less plays dumb (or maybe he's playing innocent), sticking to simple, informative statements, and I'll never forget how right near the end of the video, at just the perfect moment, he introduced the word "pry" into the conversation, which really expedited things.

Viewing this had a big impact on me as a cooperative parent-teacher and continues to influence me to this day. It gave me an opening into a new understanding of what it meant to be a teacher, having up to then essentially understood the profession as one in which the teacher conveys knowledge to children by telling or showing them things and then expecting them to remember it. Here I saw a teacher guiding a group of children toward understanding, using language to prompt exploration and conversation, letting them construct meaning and purpose from their own experiences, collaborating with their peers, arriving at the point where a traditional teacher would have started, prying the can open.

I find myself taking this approach daily in the classroom, be it putting on bandages, building with blocks, or making art; playing innocent, not taking the role of authority or the possessor of superior knowledge. When the Easter Bunny comes up, for instance, as it did last week, my response is to simply wonder if that's their pet bunny and we're off. It's fascinating to facilitate a discussion like that, as they share what they "know," adding new parts to the story, deciding if EB is a boy or girl, debating if he's big or regular sized, wondering amongst themselves if she lays eggs or just brings them, and speculating on how he gets into their houses. I've found that as long as the adults refrain from attaching a right or wrong label to their responses, the discussions might get heated, but at the end of the day, everyone gets to go home with their own story intact, but enriched with new things to think about.

There is a debate raging in the US right now about how teachers ought to teach, with one side, the one at the podium right now, insisting upon a "direct instruction" approach, one in which the teacher shows or tells students the answers, while the other side, the one generally advocated on these pages, favoring an exploratory approach in which the teacher encourages students to find the answers on their own.

Teaching is a notoriously hard thing to measure, of course, because so many things play into it both inside and outside the classroom. Direct teaching may well be a superior approach if the goal is simply to teach specific facts or skills, the kinds of things that can be measured on standardized tests, but doesn't really do much for curiosity and creativity, attributes far more important to becoming lifelong learners.

In a recent article over at Slate by developmental scientist Alison Gopnick, she discusses the findings of two recent studies:

. . . (w)hile learning from a teacher may help children get to a specific answer more quickly, it also makes the less likely to discover new information about a problem and to create a new and unexpected solution."

(The studies) provide scientific support for the intuitions many teachers have had all along: Direct instruction really can limit young children's learning. Teaching is a very effective way to get children to learn something specific . . . But it also makes children less likely to discover unexpected information and to draw unexpected conclusions.

I urge you to click over there and read about how the studies were conducted. I don't think anyone who has spent any amount of time in a preschool classroom will find the results surprising.

The thing that struck me the most, however, was that in both studies, the researcher playing the role of teacher in the exploratory approach essentially played "dumb," much in the way Tom did in his video, and the way many of us naturally do in the classroom.

Also fascinating is where Gopnick takes us at the end of her article, looking at scientists who work on designing "computers that learn about the world as effectively as young children do." Which, as it turns out, was the real motivation for engaging in these studies in the first place.

These experts in machine learning argue that learning from teachers first requires you to learn about teachers. For example, if you know how teachers work, you tend to assume that they are trying to be informative . . . (T)he learner unconsciously thinks: "She's a teacher. If there were something interesting in there, she would have showed it to me." These assumptions lead children to narrow in, and to consider just the specific information a teacher provides. Without a teacher present, children look for a much wider range of information and consider a greater range of options.

This is a little mind blowing for me. Of course it's true that an authoritative adult can narrow the world for young minds, but it never occurred to me that the very definition of "teacher" comes into play in how children learn. The kids who come to Woodland Park arrive as 2-year-olds and as such, for most of them, I am the only teacher they've ever known. And for many of them, three years later as they head off to kindergarden, the "playing innocent" approach forms the basis of their understanding of what a teacher does.

Nearly all of them then head off into a world of schools in which teachers are mandated to teach them a certain core curriculum of specific, standardized knowledge and skills organized grade-by-grade, year-by-year, much of which is conveyed by direct instruction. I assume, this changes their definition of "teacher." I know that most teachers in the early years strive to create a balance between direct instruction and exploratory learning, so I hope this new experience simply adds to the definition the children already have, making teaching a bigger idea. But I also worry that this new definition comes to completely overshadow the old one by the time they've made their way through high school, where the amount and specificity of knowledge they are mandated to learned leaves little room for exploration.

Personally, I'd like to see more of a focus on exploratory learning in our schools, especially in our upper grades, even if that's difficult to measure, because curiosity and creativity are the only traits we know our children will need as they come of age in our rapidly changing world. This is a position I've largely come to through experience and intuition, one I'm now pleased to see supported by scientists through well constructed experiments. While the education debate rages, it's interesting to note that no one -- from parents and teachers to politicians and business people -- disagrees that the future belongs to the curious and creative.

I have this. I don't know what to do.