What To Say Instead Of "Good Job"

"Teacher Tom! Look!"

"Look, Teacher Tom! Look what I can do!"

"I didn't know you could flip your tummy up on the table and balance with your legs up in the air."

"Look what I figured out, Teacher Tom! I can pop the bubbles by tearing my finger through them. Watch."

"You did that. You figured out how to pop it by tearing your finger through it."

"Teacher Tom, I'm popping them by jumping!" 

"I heard it pop! And I heard it again! You're jumping high and coming down hard to make them pop."

"Did you see what I can do? I'm making shapes! Let me show you."

"You're using your finger to hold the plastic circle in place and drawing around it! It looks like you're really concentrating."

"I can do it with other shapes too."

"I have something I want to show you, Teacher Tom. When I pull out these plugs the cars don't race any more and when I plug them back in they work again."

"Hey, you broke the circuit when you unplugged it, and you closed the circuit again when you plugged them in"

"Teacher Tom, Teacher Tom, we made this house."

"Who said that?"

"We did! We're inside here."

"Now I see you. You made a house with a sheet and clothes pins. You must have worked together."

"We did."

"Look what I made."

"You cut out all those shapes with pinking shears and used a glue stick to stick it all together. That was a lot of work. It looks like the two shapes are looking in a mirror."

"A crazy mirror!"

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Naming Ourselves

I know a lot of teachers have foregone circle time in the name of giving children "choice." Not me; not us. 

These community meetings are vital to how we function as a community. This is the one opportunity during the day for us to come together to discuss matters of consequence to all of us, such as making agreements about how we want to treat one another, or planning what we're going to do together. It's when we get to share important news with one another, such as the name of our new baby or that we've decided to be a ghost for Halloween this year. Without these meetings in which we listen to one another, it's hard for me to imagine how we become the kind of community that fosters the sense fairness, compassion, and cohesion necessary for any good democracy to function.

I've heard teachers say that the children get bored or that they'd rather be doing something else. Certainly, a child will occasionally wander off in search of "greener pastures," but it's quite rare for any of them to get out of earshot because what we're discussing is just too important. A couple years ago River and Connor got in the habit of stealing off to the loft during circle time where they flipped through the pages of books, but it was quite clear they were listening intently from afar because the moment matters turned to subjects of significance, they were back in a flash to get in their two cents. A couple weeks ago, one of our three year olds thought he had a better idea only to find himself lured back by a debate over a proposed rule to which he had objections.

I've simply never found that most kids on most days would rather be doing something else. And I think that's simply because our circle time is, by-and-large, a child lead activity, or perhaps more precisely, a community lead activity. As the facilitator of these meetings, I rarely have any sort of plan when we sit down together. I usually start vamping a little, making jokes, singing silly songs, looking for a theme to get things going. Last week, for instance, the first child who entered the room from outdoors was wearing a Seattle Seahawks shirt. I shouted, "Go Seahawks!" to which the reply was, "Go Seahawks!" When the next child scampered in we did it again, "Go Seahawks!" adding a voice to our cheer with each subsequent child, until some asked, "What about the Mariners?"

So we started cheering, "Go Mariners!" until someone mentioned the Sounders. "Go Sounders!"

Then we added the Storm. "Go Storm!"

Someone asked if we had a hockey team. We're not an NHL city, but after some discussion, we remembered our junior team is called the Thunderbirds. "Go Thunderbirds!"

Then we got into the rich vein of university mascots. "What about the Huskies?" "Go Huskies!"

"Go Cougars!"

"Go Ducks!"

"Go Beavers!"

I said, "Those are the mascots of schools."

"We're a school."

"Do we have a mascot?" 

"We should." And we were off, with nearly every child offering up a suggestion:

Stadiums

Sneaky Beans

Medium Sneakies

Awesome Sneakies

Flower Princess Disneys

Flowers

Orcas

Katillidians

Police Stations

Tornados

Five Feet

Rocket Ships

18 Feet

People Grown-Ups

Super Awesome Sneakies

Catapults

Shark Fire Rockets

600 Feet

As you can see, we inspired each another with regard to things like "sneakies" and "feet." And I'm pretty sure that Abigail was attempting to say an actual word, but I couldn't understand her attempt, so I did what parent educator Dawn Carlson suggests, simply repeating exactly what I thought I heard her say in the hopes of either understanding or being corrected, but she laughingly agreed that "Katillidians" was better than what she was trying to say.

"Those are a lot of ideas," I said, "How are we going to just choose one?"

"Voting!" So we undertook a method with the ones receiving zero or only one vote were eliminated in the first round, which pared our list down to a manageable handful of finalists. To my relief, Flower Princess Disneys barely lost out to Tornados.

This was a meaningful, community process that took the better part of a half hour. The 4-5's class has now named itself: we're the Woodland Park Tornados. And as usual, not a single child felt compelled to get up and walk away. Circle time is just too important.

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Fire!

Just as we were convening for our afternoon class a couple of Tuesday's back, a fire broke out at a local metal processing plant just down the hill from our school. We heard sirens, of course, but those are pretty commonplace sounds in the city, so it wasn't until parents who had already dropped their kids off at school began returning to tell us, "There's a big fire in Fremont," that we took notice.

Standing on the sidewalk in front of the Fremont Baptist Church where we're located, we could see a huge, black tower of smoke that appeared to be coming from just across the street. We stood there for a time, all of us, kids, parents and siblings, speculating. Yuri's dad Bill suggested we might get a better view from the third story of the building so we migrated together up the stairs into a part of the church most of us had never been before where we could get a better idea of what was burning, even catching a glimpse of the flames.

Lost in the commotion was the fact that we had, only moments before the excitement started, introduced one of our brand new, super tough, waterproof, shockproof, freeze proof digital cameras to the kids. Unbeknownst to any of us, one of the kids -- I don't know who -- was carrying the camera throughout our adventure, snapping the shots illustrating this post, documenting our adventure together as a community.

Most of us had never been in these hallways before, which can seem a bit maze-like.

As it turned out, it was a fire of the 5-alarm variety, involving a total of 30 fire vehicles and over 100 firefighters, including our friends at the local Station #9.

After a time, we decided to try to go about our day, returning to the classroom and our regular activities. As we played, parents used their phones to update us on the situation, letting us know when the fire was out. Just before it was time to go outdoors, I slipped away and jogged down the hill to check out the scene, speaking with a police officer and one of the firefighters who happened to be standing on the public side of the caution tape, both of whom felt it would be a sort of cruelty to not bring a class of local preschoolers for a quick tour of the dramatic scene. 

Back at the school, the parent-teachers agreed, so we took an impromptu field trip, where we stood in awe of the display of public servants at work. Not only that, but as we paused at the feet of our neighborhood's Soviet-era statue of Vladimir Lenin, one of the firefighters, in full gear, came over to talk with us, filling us in and answering questions, before sending us on our way because "smoke is poisonous." There wasn't any smoke evident, but it seemed like a good idea.

Later, after the kids went home, I discovered these photos and their amazing documentation of our dramatic afternoon.

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"You Win!"

A handful of kids have continued to experiment with using our planks as "diving boards" since coming up with the idea last week. As you may recall we broke one plank in the process. Well, we broke another this week, prompting us to agree that this probably wasn't the best use for our planks, but in the meantime, this happened . . . 

D and G were taking turns on the diving board when Y arrived on the scene, picking up a bench and calling out, "Okay guys, who wants to play my game?"

D and G said they would, so he placed the bench, upside down, several feet away in the diving board landing zone. "The game is you have to jump onto this bench."

From where I stood, both literally and figuratively, I could see that this was a manifestly risky proposition. The bench was placed at the farthest point I'd seen any of the kids jump. It would require a supreme effort for anyone to launch themselves that far, making it nearly impossible to stick that particular landing, not to mention the fact that the bench, being upside down, was likely to tip over with the merest touch. It didn't take a catastrophic imagination to know that the first kid to try this was going to wind up landing hard on his or her back. 

So here's the classic adult dilemma: could I trust the kids to make a similar assessment of the situation or should I step in with warnings, substituting my thought process for theirs? I've known D for a long time and he was the first one queued up for an attempt. He's physically competent, but no daredevil, and since thinking for ourselves is what school is all about, I decided to keep my mouth shut and give him the chance to noodle this through on his own.

D lined himself up for the attempt with G behind him, watching, awaiting her turn. He leapt high, but not far enough, landing solidly on the ground in front of the bench, which he slapped with the palm of his hand.

There was a moment of silence before Y, the games master, announced, "You win! You touched the bench. That means you get to go again."

G followed suit, also slapping the bench, also winning a second turn.

On a dime, without a word of disagreement, these three children had altered the game to fit the realities they discovered before them, an unspoken adjustment based upon their on-the-fly calculations about their capabilities, accommodating the realities of their risk assessments, and with a sharp regard for the feelings of one another. There was no debate. There was no attempt to urge anyone to go against their own best judgement. There was no shaming. There were no losers.

D and G took several more turns, each time being told, "You win!"

Then D tried something new. He again stuck his landing directly in front of the bench, but this time without slapping it. He stood for a moment staring at Y, not in a challenging way, but rather as if asking a question about the nature of their game. There was a pause as Y thought about his response, then he announced, "You still won! You could have touched the bench. That means you get to go again."

This is one of the primal driving forces behind free play, that is, play untainted by adult interference: the urge to keep the game going, bending and shaping the rules to suit the players, their judgements and their capabilities. This is what happens when the goal of the game isn't winning or losing, but rather playing the game. When left to their own devices, when left to think for themselves, these are the games children play.

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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The Only Teacher There Is

Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.  ~John Dewey

These are the hands of a child fully engaged in life.

Sometimes we call it "hands-on learning," an expression coined by the great John Dewey, the godfather of progressive education.

When I see these hands, I feel proud of being an early childhood educator. Not long ago, they were the hands of a baby, but here they are quite manifestly those of a confident, competent child, engaging the real world in personally meaningful ways.

Humans are tool users: it's how we engage the world. We have being alone, talking with others, and for everything else we use tools. These hands are not doing this today because they suddenly matured into competency, but rather because they have been doing it since they were the hands of a baby, using these very tools with which he's now expert.

I said to these girls, "When you're talking, that glue gun is getting close to her arm." 

They paused a moment to consider what I'd said, but neither changed their position or behavior before going right back to their conversation. They judged, reflecting upon the experience of their years and practice, that the danger was minimal, trusting themselves and one another.

These are the hands of adults I see here, ones that will care for babies, create art, build skyscrapers, and otherwise shape life itself. They are the hands of experience, the only teacher there is.

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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The Truth About Play

Here is some sobering information: there has been a steady, continuous increase in anxiety and depression in young people in America since the 1950's such that the rates of what we would now diagnose as generalized depression disorder and major depression are five to eight times higher today. The suicide rate for children under 15 has quadrupled. During a similar timeframe, researchers have recorded a decline in children's ability to empathize and a rise in narcissism.

Let that sink in for a second. This is not the result of us simply identifying previously overlooked mental illness: the same clinical questionnaires have been used, virtually unchanged, for the past half century, giving us the ability to genuinely measure these trends over time. According to Boston College psychologist and research professor Peter Gray, it is not a coincidence that we have also seen during that same timeframe a steady, continuous decrease in the opportunity for children to enjoy the freedom of play.

Before you respond with the doubter's easy cliche, "Correlation does not equal causation," please take a moment to read Gray's piece on Aeon, which is a kind of summary of his book Free To Learn (2013), a well-documented investigation of the centrality of play in human learning, and in which he convincingly argues that this rise in mental disorders in our children is a direct result of a dearth of unstructured play, or as Gray puts it "the decline in children's freedom." It's a great piece exploring the benefits of free play and the dangers of a lack of it.

Even today, the world of American children is becoming increasingly curtailed and restricted, with longer school days, and more homework, testing, and standardization. Even when not engaged in school, we are shuttling them off to other adult directed activities like sports teams, swimming lessons, and dance classes, leaving precious little time for the kind of free play that is the foundation of a real education, and a healthy psyche.

During the Victorian Era, the leading theory on the purpose of play was that it emerged merely as a result of excess energy, but by the turn of the century, researchers lead by the German philosopher and naturalist Karl Goos, began to study play, first in animals, then in humans, concluding that play is, in fact, "practice" for the skills most necessary for survival: in other words, real education comes through play. As a teacher at a school with a play-based curriculum, I see this every day, children, through their play, practicing such vital skills as negotiation, building relationships, and working together toward common goals, practicing the skills they will need to live productive, satisfying, creative lives. In contrast, our nation's schools, lead from the top by our president and his secretary of education, are implementing longer school days, shorter vacations, and more homework, the very things that compromise mental health.

Gray often writes about democratic free schools, holding them up as a model we should seek to emulate, but acknowledges that it's not going to happen in the short-run. The idea that play is the opposite of learning is just too well embedded in our collective psyche.

I don't expect to convince most people, any time soon, that we should abolish schools as we know them today and replace them with centres for self-directed play and exploration. But I do think there is a chance of convincing most people that play outside of school is important. We have already taken too much of that away; we must not take away any more.

I know that many of you who read my posts are homeschoolers and un-schoolers, parents who have seen the truth about self-directed play. I hear you, support you, and understand why you've made your choices, but this is simply not a choice for most people, even those who understand the centrality of play in a high-quality childhood. Last week I sat with a mother who cried over the inadequacy of the kindergarten her son attends, how he struggles with the lack of freedom, made worse by the recognition that economic realities put options like homeschooling or private schools out of her family's reach. She's not the first, nor will she be the last parent faced with that reality: most of us don't have the financial or constitutional resources to make an alternative education happen, at least not without the support of a community.

This is why we continue to need schools and why we must, as a society, stay engaged. There is an important school board election coming up here in Seattle -- there is an important one coming up in your city as well. And it's important even if you don't have a child in the public schools. But it can't stop at the ballot box. Not everyone is ready for the kinds of schools imagined by Gray, but we can have better schools if we stay engaged, not just with the school but with one another. A case in point is the B.F. Day Elementary School just up the hill from Woodland Park, where many of our alumni are enrolled. Three of our former parents are now on staff there, hired by a principal who shares many of our values. No, we're are not going to turn it into a democratic free school, but we are working together, all of us, parents, teachers, and the administration to make it a better public school, even an excellent one, despite pressures from outside our community. And always in the backs of our minds are the ideals of free play.

I will continue to work for the day when this is common knowledge, when we all know as a matter of course the truth that play is the core of how children learn, that we can trust them to learn what they need to learn, that they must have freedom in order to become their best selves, the mentally and emotionally healthy selves we all need them to be if humanity is to survive and thrive. In the meantime, I will stay engaged. I will not throw up my hands and retreat, leaving the field to those who will have kids spend their childhoods with their noses being worn down against the grindstone of tests, homework, rote memorization, and being expected to sit still and silent. We will never achieve perfection, of course, but I have no doubt that we can prevent things from getting worse, which is at least something. I have as much faith that we can actually make things better. I see it happening right up the hill from where I work every day.

To finish, I invite you to take a look at this short, simple, yet thought-provoking video. Imagine for a moment talking to your child this way. Imagine asking these questions of the children you teach. Imagine a world in which we were all free to live our lives according to our answers.

Imagine this world exists right here and now despite the doubts and objections running through your head. This describes the world of our greatest aspirations and highest human potential. It is not a world free from want, worry, or work: it is, however, the world of freedom. It's the world in which we will live when we finally accept the truth about play.

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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It Doesn't Appear To Be Going Away

For the third year running, the children in our 4-5's class have instituted show-and-tell. As in the past, it's a child-initiated, child-lead activity, in a classroom of 20+ kids.

This is not something that I would ever seek to impose on kids. Indeed, when the idea was first floated by my friend Elena three years ago, I balked. I'd heard too many stories from other teachers who had found show-and-tell to be a miserable process involving a series of overly enthusiastic presenters and a couple dozen bored to tears audience members. But Elena was persistent and she rallied her classmates. As she sold it to them, the idea was that anyone could bring anything at any time and "show and tell it to everyone else."

Within a week, the bored audience predictions were coming true, not necessarily because the kids weren't interested in one another's show-and-tell items, but because many of the kids arrived with choreographed performances to go with their items. Even the adults were losing focus by the third such of a dozen, some of which stretched out to five minutes long. I made a minimal effort to keep the peace, however, in the spirit of allowing the natural consequences (boredom) of show-and-tell to emerge. I figured after a couple painful days, we could easily put an end to it. During one particularly unruly session, I said, "I've noticed that most of you aren't even paying attention to show-and-tell," to which the reply was, "There are too many."

I expected the discussion to then lead to a scuttling of the entire project, but the upshot was that the kids instead agreed that show-and-tell would continue, but with people only bringing show-and-tell items on "your parent's work day," reducing the daily number of items down to a maximum of 4-5. This was better, especially once Diego introduced the complaint, "You're losing your audience," which had the effect of speeding things up. We started getting bogged down again, however, when kids began bringing, literally, entire backpacks full of show-and-tell items on their day, with the plan to talk about each and every one of them. Again, instead of ending show-and-tell, the group simply amended their rules to limit each presenter to "one or two" items and, for better or worse, that's how we finished the year.

I've tried to more or less stay out of it, leaving show-and-tell almost entirely up to the kids. I do provide a box by the door each day for collecting show-and-tell items, but expect the kids to remember to bring the box into the classroom, a project that is more often than not handled by a team of at least a half dozen kids. I usually ignore the box until reminded about it by the children. Once reminded, I simply pull items from the box one at a time and hold them up, asking few questions beyond, "What would you like to tell us about this object?" I strive to maintain an attitude of ambivalence about the whole procedure. Show-and-tell continues despite my minimal involvement.

I thought it would die off after that first year, but it came up again the following year with similar results.

And now, in our new year, show-and-tell is back, but this time, so far, it's going differently than in years past. We're still in the stage during which anyone can bring anything at any time. After three weeks, we're enjoying a manageable trickle of 2-5 items a day. The kids are presenting fast, telling us what they brought, perhaps one or two pertinent facts, then sitting down. The result is that in many cases they're actually leaving their audience wanting more, with classmates extending show-and-tell by asking questions or requesting the opportunity to play with, or get a closer look at, items that were too briefly displayed.

As a result they've innovated the concept of the "sharing item." Should the child choose, she can declare her show-and-tell item to be a "sharing item." We've taken to setting aside a table each day (or at least a corner of the room) which we're calling the "sharing item station," where these items are available to one and all at the conclusion of circle time.

I don't know where this is going, of course, but the Woodland Park 4-5's class once again has show-and-tell and it doesn't appear to be going away.

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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