Zen And A Visit To The Fire Station

We recently took a field trip to our local Fire Station 9. Every year we either visit a fire station or fire fighters bring an engine and visit us. 

Apparently, it's quite common for young children to run away, or even hide, from fire fighters when called to their homes in emergency situations. So as far as the fire department is concerned, the primary reason for entertaining groups of preschoolers is to familiarize the children with the reality of fire fighters, and to help them understand that even if they look frightening in their turn-out suits, helmets, and oxygen masks, they are, in fact, just regular folks underneath it all.

Usually, one of the fire fighters dons the full suit while the children watch, talking his way through putting on each piece, winding up a fully outfitted fire fighter right before their very eyes, then sort of just hanging out with the kids for a few minutes, letting them touch and talk. This year, however, they wanted an adult volunteer from our group and that turned out to be me. I was fine with it until we got to the oxygen mask. I've never experienced the sensations associated with claustrophobia before, but this gave me some of them. I felt as if I couldn't take a full breath, a fear made worse when fire fighter Joe put is palm over the intake nozzle to make sure we "have a good seal." I held myself together, trusting they knew what they were doing. Things got better when they turned on the oxygen, but needless to say I was eager to be back on the outside.

Because of the size of our group, we visited in two shifts, a second group playing in a nearby playground, then trading places with us. Knowing what was coming, as I lead the second group to the fire house, I made sure to secure a parent volunteer commitment in advance. One of the moms fell for it.

Actually she seemed fine inside the suit, joking around, making Darth Vader sounds through the built-in speaker, but it was instructional for me to see that even though it was his own mom inside that suit, even her own son was clearly frightened by the prospect, not wanting to touch even her gloved hand when she offered it. This is good stuff the fire department is doing.

Before entertaining us, we are expected to run through a bit of curricula that includes a few games and circle time activities focused on fire safety. After a decade of running through the materials, I've adapted it to suit the way our class operates, focusing mainly on what to do in case of a fire ("Crawl under the smoke," "Go outside."), what to do if your clothes catch fire ("Stop, drop, and roll."), what to do if you see a fire fighter in your house ("Go to him."), and a run down of various tools that could start a fire or burn you if used as toys (matches, lighters, stoves, candles, etc.)

We then spent last week trying to reinforce what we'd learned through dramatic play by breaking out our fire fighter toys, which mostly means the fire engine collection.

It's mostly boys who fall on these things and I'm not telling you anything you don't already know when I point out that some of these vehicles are more popular than others. This one, in particular, is regularly fought over:

It's desirability was enhanced this year when one of the kids discovered a tiny button that activates the flashing lights, something we'd never known about before. Every now and then a pair of kids would agree to share it, which meant we could have four hands on it at once, but most of the children wanted their own turn. There was a time when I made lists and timed these things, and I still have that tool in the belt should it come to that, but I've found that most of the time it's unnecessary. It usually goes something like this:

Child 1: "I want to use that truck."

Child 2: "I'm using it."

Child 1: "Teacher Tom, he's not sharing."

Teacher Tom: "He's using it. Maybe you can use it when he's finished." 

My goal is to try to get the kids discussing this idea, usually with the result of Child 1 agreeing to turn it over when he's finished. Sometimes that's a long wait, but more often than not, I find the truck (or whatever) in the hands of Child 2 within 5 minutes. It doesn't always go this smoothly, and the conversation-process is usually longer and more involved, but turning responsibility for turn taking over the kids works more often than not. They understand, I think, the inherent fairness of taking turns, but tend to push back when they feel they're being strong-armed into it.

Of course, this is a talking process and for many young children the cure is far worse than the disease, so they find work-arounds that often warm my heart. Luca, for instance, is not a big fan of talking things out. He likes to speak is mind, then get back to work, not typically making a big deal out of not getting what he thought he wanted. After an early in the week go-around about the big engine, he decided to go another way, instead adopting this "pumper truck" as his own:

It is an objectively low-appeal vehicle, frankly. It long ago lost all it's parts, including even the roof over the cab. It has no ladder, no equipment, just six wheels and a few stickers to indicate what it once was. It's appeal, however, the charm that Luca found in it, was that when he wanted to play fire fighter, it was always available. By the end of the week he was making a beeline for it the moment he walked in the room. Several times he brought it to me to tell me how cool it was: often saying it just like that, "This pumper truck is cool." 

At one point I pointed out to him that he was the only kid playing with the fire trucks and that he could "drive all of them" if he wanted. He surveyed them as if considering my words, then said, "This pumper truck is just like the one at the fire station," then drove it away to put out a fire in a block building.

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Doodling

One of the defining characteristics of our cooperative preschool is that each class has an evening parent meeting once a month. The first hour is parent education while the second hour is our business meeting. For those of us on the board (as a paid employee, I'm a non-voting member) there is typically another hour of meeting thrown in there. I've written before about how much I struggle, perhaps now more than when I was a boy, with sitting in chairs for long periods of time, so for me these meetings can be challenging. It has nothing to do with the subject matter or the people; it has everything to do with working through an agenda not of my own making.

If you're sitting beside me, you're probably aware of my discomfort as I shift and fidget, cross and re-cross my legs, sit up, lean forward, tap my toes, and doodle. I do a lot of doodling during meetings.

As a boy I loved to draw, usually taking myself into my bedroom when I needed time alone or to re-set myself emotionally, working on detailed drawings that told some sort of story, often war scenes in which I drew the trajectory of each individual bullet with a dotted line as it travelled through space, ricocheting several times before reaching its target. As a younger boy, preschool aged, I spent several solitary drawing sessions attempting to work out the problem of drawing an accurate human figure, one that was more than a face with arms and legs. It was a real ah-hah moment when I realized I'd been neglecting to include a torso (or "tummy" as I then phrased it). It was a discovery that came out of that urge to doodle.

As all our Pre-K classes have for the past decade, this current one is working on a play that will be performed as a treat for our younger classmates, siblings, and parents at the end of the year. With only 3 classroom sessions left before the actual production and still a lot to do, we enter a difficult phase for me as an educator in a play-based curriculum. The children have been creating their vision since January, thinking through every detail of their play, always with the luxury of all the time in the world in front of us, but no longer. Now is crunch time. I don't want to stress them out, but at the same time an agenda has emerged from their efforts and I'm responsible for helping them carry it out. The problem is that this agenda, the children's agenda, has now become my agenda at least insofar has executing it. There are things we want to get done by a certain time. Pretty much everything we've done together for the last few weeks has been about the play: from costume designing and rehearsals to constructing sets and props. The kids, however, lacking my grown-up sense of urgency, aren't always so gung-ho about getting the stuff done when we have the time to do it.

Last Tuesday, for instance, I was performing one-on-one "costume workshops" with each of the kids, trying to get them to commit to details of what they were going to wear in the play. In the meantime Sylvia's mom Toby was working with the kids on making a "fire," while Sena's mom Ann was managing an activity that involved attaching dozens of wax paper butterflies to one of our large set pieces. My head was down during most of this time, but when I did look up, there were kids milling around the room, chatting, twirling, being silly, being kids, and with only a few exceptions not at all tending to the tasks at hand. Toby and Ann were doing much of the work themselves, role modeling like crazy, but it was that whole agenda thing taking over.

The butterfly project, one way or another, did get finished, so I said to Ann, "Now we need to make a building backdrop so the Panther has a target for the webs he shoots out of his mouth." (We all know what that means!) She rolled a long sheet of butcher paper out on the floor, drew a rectangular border around the whole thing, then invited the kids to finish the "doors and windows" of the building with Sharpies.

I went back to my one-on-one "workshops." When I looked up, I no longer saw kids milling around the room. For a moment I thought that a bunch of them must have gone together to the bathroom, but when I stood up for a better view, there they all were, on the floor around that piece of butcher paper. Ann asked me, "Is it okay if they're not drawing doors and windows?"

I could hear them down there in that little world of their own, their heads together, chattering amongst themselves, telling each other about what they were drawing, telling stories about what they were drawing, stories that twined and intertwined, stories with dotted lines connecting this thing with that, including all the ricochets. It was like a gigantic, group doodle, a reaction, I think, to too much time being expected to adhere to an agenda that was no longer their own.

I said to Ann, "Oh sure, whatever they do. It's their play."

It felt good to get back to that place.

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What We Do In School

Today I want to write about this photograph.

It was a picture I took by accident the other day. It shows a segment of our outdoor classroom in action from the perspective of our workbench. In the foreground you see a couple of girls riding their stick ponies. Those stick ponies are outdoors every day, mainstays of our school, abused by the weather, their fabric heads probably damp from the last rain storm. The girls are engaged in an adventure story they are spinning together, probably about princesses. You see they're moving from one level to the next, I'm guessing they're on their way up into the lilacs, perhaps to the top of the concrete slide.

Behind them is a boy, digging through a tub that is perched on the edge of the sand pit. He's holding a piece of pipe insulation in one hand, which the kids mostly use as fire hoses. There are some toy fire fighter helmets in that box as well, which is probably what he's looking for. Unlike the stick ponies, the box has only been out there for a few days, ever since our field trip to the local fire station. There is another group of boys you can't see in this picture. They're already wearing helmets and holding hose. This boy is preparing himself to enter their game.

Up behind the trees there at the top of the hill, you'll see two children at the cast iron water pump. One is holding a bucket in which he's been collecting "jewels" (florist marbles). The other is pumping water. They appear to be engaged in a conversation. I know that washing the jewels has been a self-selected activity lately, so it might be about that. One of our parent-teachers is making her way up there, perhaps anticipating some sort of conflict and so putting herself in a position to help them through it, but probably just heading to where the children are to be nearby.

There on the left edge of the photo, you'll see a couple boys testing themselves on some of the planks we've placed as bridges to create a more challenging way to move between the upper to the lower levels of the classroom. One of them appears to be approaching cautiously while the other seems to have already completed his traverse, perhaps having inspired his friend to give it a try.

There are more than a dozen other kids and 5-6 other adults you don't see in this snapshot of what we do in school.

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The Gift Of Motivation

When my wife Jennifer and I were kindergarten shopping one of the schools we looked at required an I.Q. test. I recoiled at the idea, phoning a child psychiatrist friend, looking for support for my knee-jerk response. Of course, testing the intelligence of a 5-year-old is a bad idea.

Richard responded by saying he’d spent his entire career around these tests and had never seen them damage a child in any way. In fact, the kids he tested usually enjoyed taking them. “But,” he added, “I’ve see a lot of parents use the tests to hurt their kids.”

He explained that parents who have their children tested also tend toward being of the high strung, hovering variety, and that these tests just give them one more way to pass their anxiety on to their kids. That’s kind of what I’d expected him to say, but then he went on to add that these tests are just snapshots of a period in time and not predictors of the future. “I try really hard to make sure parents hear me say that I.Q. test results for a 5-year-old are only valid for 6 months." If they get a high score, he said, some parents stick the genius label on their kids as if it’s a badge they get to wear for the rest of their lives. "Then they burden them with praise."

Praise is a tricky thing, especially when it comes to our children.

A 10-year study of New York City 5th graders conducted by Carol Dweck while a professor of psychology at Columbia University, found that praising kids for their intelligence might actually be causing them to underperform academically. It seems that children who have been praised for their innate intellectual gifts tend to give up more easily when challenged, suffer more emotionally when they fail, and avoid taking risks when they perceive there is a chance their genius could fail them.

As Dweck puts it:

Teachers should focus on students' efforts and not on their abilities. When students succeed, teachers should praise their efforts or their strategies, not their intelligence.

I would assert that this is not only true for intelligence, but also for anything that could be construed as “innate,” like beauty, athleticism, or artistic ability. Effort is where praise is best applied because unlike inherent traits, it is something a child can actually control. In Dweck’s study, the children who were praised for their effort rather than intelligence were far more likely to persevere, try new things, and be less hard on themselves when they failed.

But what about self-esteem? How do we help our children build that without praising them?

Researchers at Florida State University concluded:

. . . it is more likely that good performance leads to high self-esteem rather than the other way around . . . (T)he researchers found that efforts to boost self-esteem have not been shown to improve academic performance and may sometimes be counterproductive.

In other words, self-esteem is not built though hollow praise, but rather from mastering skills, which can only be done through experience and hard work. We help our children build confidence by giving them the opportunities to try, try, try again. Encouragement, not praise is our greatest tool.

Retired North Seattle Community College Instructor Tom Drummond takes it one step further. He recommends avoiding praise altogether unless it's spontaneous and genuine, claiming that children, even very young ones, know the difference between sincere and insincere praise. He asserts that an endless barrage of “Good jobs!” teaches children to seek external validation rather than looking into themselves for motivation. Instead, he advises teachers and parents to concentrate on observable facts about a child’s activities.

Instead of, “What a beautiful red circle!” one might simply say, “You used a red crayon to draw a circle.”

Instead of, “You’re a terrific jumper!” one might say, “You’re jumping up.”

Instead of, “You’re so smart!” one might say, “You worked hard at that.”

In the end, it seems to me that this is the gift of motivation: the capacity to continue to strive even when things are difficult. And ultimately that can only come from within.

So now you’re at the end of this post. “Good job! You’re so smart!”

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What Arrogance It Would Take

I receive quite a bit of communication from businesses that want to sell us educational products, the key part of their pitch being a long lists of what children will learn. I know that school districts, like the Seattle School district, purchase math, literacy, and other curricula from businesses that sell such things, and I'm quite certain that the sales people are very specific about what it is the children will learn, probably on a month by month, chapter by chapter, step by step basis.

I'm kind of baffled by this. How do they know what the kids will learn? And if they really somehow can know what another person will learn, how do they know that this specific knowledge-product is what they really ought to have in their heads and on that particular schedule? What about all the other stuff they could be learning instead? It seems like such a gamble to me; a huge opportunity cost. I mean, what if they're wrong? How can anyone know what specific knowledge will be important in a future that none of us can predict 5 years down the road, let alone 20 or 30 when these kids are out there in the middle of the world?

I think this piece of art, and I'm not exaggerating, is a work of genius.

There seems to be a kind of hubris in this way of approaching education, the idea that the grown-ups get to decide what children will learn. Adults have never been particularly good at predicting the future, especially those of use over 40. And while there is something to be said for the wisdom that comes from experience, if that experience has taught me anything at all, it's that I better be prepared to keep right on learning because the specific set of things I need to know changes year by year, month by month and even day by day. What I needed to know yesterday is obsolete today.

As a teacher, I never (or rarely) pretend to know what the kids will learn, but I do know that they are learning. I know this because what we are about within our four walls is building a community, and in that process, every day, children bump up against their limits, find that there is something they do not know, something they need to know, want to know, and so set about learning it. A progressive, play-based curriculum never needs to be updated, we never need to download a version 2.1 or 2.2. It's always cutting edge because the children are always learning exactly what they need to know to answer the questions they have, to fulfill their self-selected role in our community, to scaffold their way to the next step in their ongoing inquiry about themselves and how to work with the other people.

Our role as experienced adults is not to package up and spoon feed them whatever it is that we, in our own unique process of living for decades in this world, have found useful, but rather to observe carefully and then to make our best guesses about not what they ought to learn, but what they are learning right now, then to be there with vocabulary, a hand, an observation, or, if we are very careful, perhaps a question that will support their inquiry.

When I do something as simple as putting pinking shears, scissors, construction paper, and glue sticks on a table, I don't need a list of what the children will learn. In fact, what arrogance it would take to assume I could make such a list before they have even begun their exploration of these materials.

The object of education is not to fill heads with our predictions about what we think they will need to know, but rather to create a clear field in which children can practice the lifelong habit of learning.

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"And Then A Spider Eats The Mean Witch"

I haven't shared any of these for awhile. This batch of stories is from waaay back at the beginning of the school year. We've become quite a bit more sophisticated since then. If you want to learn about our storytelling process, click here.

It's just plain silly. Once upon a time there was a princess that lived with an eyeball. The eyeball kept jumping all around the castle and then it was the princess' birthday. And the eyeball was jumping around the castle too much because it was excited. And then the princess said, "Oh, please would you stop jumping around because I have my first guest." And then the eyeball said, "Sorry, this trampoline is so springy that I can't stop jumping up an down on it." And then the eyeball said, "Woo hoo! It was also my birthday present because don't we have our birthday on the same day?" And the eyeball said, "My family is coming for my birthday." The princess turned 11-years-old.   ~Sylvia

"Eyeball" has become an automatic "laugh line" in our stories this year.

It's about a eyeball and a princess. And the princess' name was my name. And I had a pet chameleon dressed as the eyeball. And then he loved to bounce around. And the princess didn't mind because she liked to bounce around too. And then -- this is the part when it gets really nice -- I need a bunny and a chameleon. Only the Bunny and the eyeball knew what was in store, except for the princess who was doing what she did the last day. And they just did reminded the princess that she did it the last day.  ~Sienna

The word "toilet" is, of course, another way to make sure your audience will enjoy your story.

My story is about Monster. Then a monster creeped into town. Then Jody bumped into the monster. Then the real Jody fell into the book. And he didn't know he was actually in there. And then a eyeball bumped into the wall. And then he bumped into a piece of glass. And then he bumped into toilet! And then he bumped into the words. Then he bumped into a bear. Then he bumped into the wall again. And then he bumped into the ground. And then he bumped into eye glasses. Then he bumped into the ground again. Then he bumped into the letter "J." Then the letter "O." Then the letter "D." And then he bumped into the letter "Y."  ~Jody

Some of our stories are non-fiction. I particularly love how this one seems to capture the emotional content of the experience.

Play with Henry, Henry, Henry. Even longer than him. We play and play and play. And then he goes home. And then Calder does the solar system puzzle.  ~Calder

A elephant comes and tries to eat a giraffe. Yes, and a monkey comes in and tries to eat a elephant. A monkey comes and tries to eat a whole jungle. Yes, and what is it down there?  ~Lily

Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess that was named Aurora. The princess had a crown, even the fairies. And the fairies came and said, "Why don't you fly?" The princess said, "Because my wings are broken." They went out to the pond and they got their bathing suits on. One was sparkly and one had butterflies on it.  ~Sadie

When our real life friends are included in the stories, we always have to ask permission first.

My story is about me and Sadie going to pick cranberries. And then we went home to make cranberry shortcake. And then we both ate it and we both kept doing it again and again and again. And then a mean witch come. And then a spider eats the mean witch. And then there was a mean prince kitty. And then the spider ate the kitty's eye. And then the wicked witch ate the sparkles off my dress. And then she just ate you!  ~Elena

Someone named Strawberry. And someone ate the strawberry. And someone ate poisonous. And they decided to paint a picture for their mom. And that's not the end. Then Calder took the strawberry. And they tried to look for a worm, but they couldn't. And then they builded a block tower. And then they painted a wall. And then they took a pen they were not supposed to have. And then they pick a flower for their mom and dad. And then Sasha came and took the strawberries.  ~Simone

Sometimes you can tell what the kids did on the weekends . . . And how their parents felt about it.

Redskins beat the Seahawks. Game stole.  ~Luca

And here's one with a surprise ending!

Once upon a time there was one unicorn bunny, one horse and one unicorn and pegasus. And they went everywhere they could, but each once of them got trapped in some kind of trap. The trap was too small for them all so they just stretched out.  And then they got free.  Then the BlahBlahBlahBlah came and said, "You can't get out of my next trap!"  And they got the next trap and he opened up the bottle and they growed small and got trapped. The second trap was their home. The BlahBlahBlahBlah got the keys that they had and locked them all up. So they had a different idea and they got a golden car. And they drove to their house. And then the kitty went jumping and flipped on each of their heads. And then a big gigantic drum came and drummed them really loud. So they put their ear plugs in. And then a truck came and put them in the zoo. And a truck came and bumped them in the head. Then then end . . . Wait! There's still more. And they got free and played and played, but they never went anywhere but home again. And then they travelled again.   ~Violet

If you want to read more of our stories from our 3-5's class, here are the links:

And Now The Children Tell Their Stories

And Now The Children Tell Their Stories 2

"There Was A Bad Dream In My Bed" 

Where The Wild Things Are

Stories From The Edge

Short, Smart, Sweet And Silly

A Muddy Puddle Of Morality

Wearing His Cape Every Day

One Thing At A Time

And Now For Something Completely Silly

"I'm Thinking Something To Ella"

"Then A Monster Truck Came"

Inspirations And Influences

Squirrel Stories (So Far)

Preschool Poets

"I Eat A Dragon"

"Then He Weared The Whale As His Hat"

"I'm Going To Tell A Submarine Story"

"There Was A Pig Jumping On Your Head"

"She Feeled About Sad"

"Mommy Went To Somewhere Really Dangerous"

"It's A Little Bit Scary"

"And Then Some Great Birds Helped Her Get Her Voice Back"

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"I Was Always Kidding You"

I recently inherited a box of costume jewelry, mostly earrings and broaches. When I offered them up to the Pre-K class to consider as additions to their costumes for our Pre-K play, they were mostly only interested in declaring various pieces "dangerous." I understood the pins on the backs of the broaches -- no one likes to be pricked -- but earring posts? 

"These are dangerous?" I asked, trying to sound incredulous.

"Yeah," answered Jody, "Somebody could poke it through their skin." The others nodded.

Our outdoor classroom is bestrewn with "loose parts." When educators use that term,

they're usually referring to rocks and sticks and pine cones, natural things, but at

 Woodland Park we stretch the definition to include all kinds of things, including

 discarded costume jewelry.

"Really?" I was genuinely irritated by this development. This wasn't supposed to take up much time. I just wanted to let the kids take what they wanted, then we would add the rest to the outdoor classroom. I thought they'd make cool loose parts, but the kids were finding danger in my plan. I made a show of poking my finger with an earring post. "It doesn't even hurt. See?"

Several of the kids offered up their own fingers. "Did it poke through anyone's skin?" No, it hadn't. I figured we were now ready to move on. I'd leave the broaches at the workbench with a pair of pliers with which the kids could break off the pins, but at least we wouldn't have to do anything with the earrings.

Jody said, "They didn't poke through our skin because we're big kids. But the little kids might poke themselves . . . because they're little." His friends agreed and since we didn't have any little kids around on which to test Jody's thoughtful theory. I was thwarted.

So we divided everything into two piles: a very small "safe" pile and a very large "dangerous" pile. We believe at Woodland Park in involving children in their own risk assessments, but just as they sometimes create draconian rules when left to make their own rules, they sometimes find danger behind every tree when left to assess their own risks. It's part of the pendulum process of figuring out how to be responsible for oneself, I know, so I took a deep breath and went with the swing, knowing full well that it wouldn't be long before one of them careened from being hyper-cautious into trying something that caused my heart to leap into my throat.

As it turns out, the children were either not capable or not interested in removing the dangerous bits on their own, and so it was that I found myself yesterday morning sitting in the outdoor classroom, using a pair of pliers to render the costume jewelry "safe." We were later going to visit our neighborhood fire station, but in the meantime we were waiting, and Jody was one of the first kids there.

"What're you doing, Teacher Tom?"

"Breaking off the dangerous parts."

"Those are sooooo dangerous."

"Not any more," I said, tossing a post-less earring into the sand pit. I was long over my irritation. I sometimes babble. "Oh, I shouldn't have done that. It's already so messy out here. Maybe we should make a rule: no making things messy."

Jody thought about it for a moment. "No, that's not a good rule. Making things messy is how kids have fun."

"Really? Then I guess that would be a bad rule."

"Yeah, it would be a bad rule."

I tossed a pin-less broach into the sand pit. "What happens when everything is just totally messy?"

"Then we'll have to build it all back up, then mess it up again."

"And that's how to have fun?"

"Yeah."

"Do you want to help me mess this jewelry around the playground?"

"That's not fun."

"Okay, I'll do it myself."

"It's soooo dangerous."

"Are you kidding me?"

"I was always kidding you, Teacher Tom."

I don't always know if the kids know what they're saying, but as I painstakingly broke yet another tiny post off an earring I kind of suspected Jody knew exactly what he was saying.

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