Knowing The Full Story

As a boy, my brother and I owned a game called Rebound. It's a tabletop version of shuffle board that one plays using small plastic disks with ball bearings in the center, rolling them to bounce off a pair of rubber bands before they scoot into the scoring zone. It has survived to find a second life in our classroom. Despite hundreds of children having played with it over the years not only has it remained intact, but we still have all 16 of the small game pieces.

I suppose some might consider it a kind of miracle that nothing has been lost or broken, but it's not magic. Whenever I make the game available to the kids, I tell it's story, the one about how it's my old toy, how my brother and I used to play with it, how it is 40 years old, and special to me. I ask them to treat it gently and to try to not lose the pieces. They then play with it, sometimes rowdily, sometimes until all the pieces are on the floor, but at the end of the day, for going on two decades now, all the pieces have always been there.

Yesterday, I forgot to tell the story of the game. Within minutes, I heard the sound of the Rebound board crashing to the floor. Fortunately, it didn't break, and I used it as an opportunity to inform a few of the kids of its background. Not long later, however, I discovered that several of the game pieces were missing. We looked everywhere for them, but no luck. I began to suspect that one of the children had snatched a fistful to use elsewhere in the classroom, not maliciously, but rather in the spirit of loose parts. I imagined I'd find them later, perhaps years later, in a container somewhere or squirreled away in a nook. Still, I was feeling a bit melancholy, even as I attempted to be philosophical. After all, I wasn't going to get to keep those things forever.

We still didn't find the pieces when we tidied up, so when we re-gathered on the checkerboard rug to de-brief before going outside, I told the game's story, hoping that one of them would recall what he or she had done with the lost pieces. I strived to tell the story in a matter-of-fact manner without suggesting any sort of suspicion or blame. I just wanted them to know that I missed those pieces and why. The children listened, several offered theories about where the lost ones might be, some offered to make me some new ones, but none offered any clues to the mystery.

Several minutes later, however, as we gathered in the mud room to gear up for the weather, one girl presented me with the lost pieces, saying, "Here they are." She had indeed squirreled them away, not in the classroom, but in her own cubby, intending, I suppose, to take them home as treasures. She had admired them, had wanted them, had secured them for herself. Children often take things home in their jacket pockets, small things, usually of little value like bottle caps or florist marbles. I'm sure she had considered these game pieces in that light, small, plentiful, insignificant things that no one would miss. When she heard my story, however, she readily returned them, knowing that they meant more to me than they ever would to her.

People often describe young children as selfish, forever putting their own needs and desires above those of others, but it's not, on balance, true. Usually, what we label as self-centered is really just a result of them not knowing (or not being developmentally capable of understanding) the full story, which is, I think, probably true of most humans most of the time.

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The Most Necessary People

I'm not the boss of these people I teach. I don't have the right, or even the ability, to tell them what to do.

I am responsible for them: for their safety; for inviting them to play with things, with me, and with one another; for answering their questions as honestly as I can; for listening to what they are telling me with their mouths and bodies; for helping them understand their emotions, their successes and failures, and how to get along with the other people; and for getting out of their way so that they can get about the business of learning.

In Leo Tolstoy's short story Three Questions, a king searches his kingdom for answers to his three important questions:

(H)e had it proclaimed throughout his kingdom that he would give a great reward to anyone who would teach him what was the right time for every action, and who were the most necessary people, and how he might know what was the most important thing to do.

And in the end, a hermit helped him to his answers:

Remember then: there is only one time that is important -- Now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power. The most necessary man is he with whom you are . . . and the most important affair is to do him good, because for that purpose alone was man sent into this life!"

If a teacher rightly has any power at all, it is the power of Now. It isn't the power of hierarchy, of being right, of being in charge. Now is the ultimate power of seizing an opportunity. The children with whom I work already understand this power much more fully than do I; they are, in fact, in a process of un-learning it so that, in the usual turnings of life, newer children can one day re-teach them. Now is the natural habitat of the very young and it is where a teacher must go if we are to be any good at all. That is where the power is.

And once we are there in the Now, that's where we find the children, the most necessary people; not miniature or incomplete adults, but fully formed human beings for whom we are responsible, not because they are little and we are big, but because they are the ones with whom we are.

And what do we do with these most necessary people? How do we exert our power? We help them with what we find them doing. And what they are already doing is playing, learning, figuring things out. Those are the garden beds they are digging. It's with that a teacher helps. It is for that purpose alone that man is sent into this life.

I'm not the boss of these people I teach. I don't have the right, or even the power, to tell them what to do even if I'm the king.

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Moldy, Rotten, Broken

We currently have several retired jack-o-lanterns rotting on the playground. It's been too cold so far for them to begin growing their grey beards of mold, but they will soon, then after a month or so they will be gone. The children aren't playing with them any longer. We dropped a few from high places and some of the parts are in the worm bin, but otherwise they are just out there keeping our memories of the holiday alive while slowly returning to the earth.

There was once a wooden row boat in the sandpit. It moved with us from our former location to our current home in Fremont. As wooden things do in our damp climate, it had begun to fall apart so we tracked down a larger metal one as a replacement, not removing the old one, but just dropping the new one partially atop it. Over the next couple years then, the old wooden boat slowly "sunk" into the sand. Occasionally, kids would band together dig it out, discovering the remaining shape of its stern or bow, but then in the course of their play it would become buried again.

Today, none of the children remember that boat and while it likely exists down there deep in the form of rotted scrapes and rusty nails, no one digs after it. I think about that boat down there quite often and was reminded again last week when we received a surprise visit from one of our alumni, a boy who is now 9. He asked about that boat and when I told him its story he went to stand in the spot, looking into the sand as if he could see it again.

Our playground is big enough, but not so big that we can't afford to use every square inch. I'm generally a big fan of moving things along once the children stop playing with them to make room for something else, but not everything goes -- even when it begins to get moldy. Perhaps especially when it gets moldy. It's important, I think, that certain things stay around past their prime, that they slowly disappear rather than vanish in an act of spring cleaning. Aging, deteriorating, rotting, decomposing: newness is a mere moment in time, but decomposition is life itself, a process of things becoming something else. We do children no service when we whisk things away just because they are no longer a popular plaything or because they are moldy, rotting, or broken.

As that older boy kicked around in the sand, he was not looking for that boat as much as reliving it, an experience more profound than simply remembering. Indeed, the boat he knew wasn't even a boat when he knew it, but something that had once been a boat on its way to becoming something else down there beneath the sand. It's a sentimental idea, I know, but sentiment has its place in preschool.

Thrice a year, the parents come together on a Saturday for what we call a "cleaning" under my direction. Each time I pick a parent who has been with us for at least three years to take on the job of patrolling the playground for what needs to go to the dumpster. My instructions are usually something like, "Throw away anything that is either hazardous or that is clearly garbage," then leave them to their own devices. I once made the mistake of assigning it to a new parent and we simply lost too much. Since then I've always picked someone who has lived a few cycles out there with the children and knows at least our most recent stories, who has developed sentimental attachments. Often they pause in the midst of their work to reminisce with me over something they uncovered. I've found I can trust these veteran parents to know just how much moldy, rotting stuff to keep around.

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I Worry About "Loose Parts"

I suppose I'm happy that the concept of "loose parts" play has taken the early childhood world by storm these past few years. It seems like not a day goes by that I don't discover a website dedicated to loose parts play, or a loose parts workshop for teachers, or a new book that will help us better understand it. Of course, it's an idea that's been around since the advent of children, one that was once just implied in the standard understanding of play: when left to their own devices kids tend to pick up whatever is at hand and goof around with it. Then, over the course of modernization and commercialization, we came to understand the idea of "toys" manufactured specifically for children's play, and many of us adopted those things as the hub around which play necessarily revolved.

Children, of course, still continued to play with loose parts, some of which were these toys, broken, modified, or otherwise, but we adults lost sight of that amidst the bright colors, flashing lights, and annoying noises of those objects that came from toy stores. And as toys became cheaper and more prevalent and better marketed our homes and classrooms have come to be overwhelmed with them. But even then, children continued their loose parts play. Who among us, for instance, hasn't joked that our kids prefer the boxes the toys came in over the toys themselves?

So yes, I'm please that there is a renewed focus on the open-endedness of things like rocks and sticks and pinecones, of toilet paper tubes and mint tins and yoghurt containers, of old tires and planks of wood and house gutters, but I worry that we are on the edge of turning those into just another commodity to be bought and sold. I worry that in our embrace of loose parts play we are concentrating far too much on the loose parts and not enough on the play. I worry when I hear teachers fussing about their "loose parts" collection, hovering over the children lest they damage or misuse or lose their precious loose parts.

The children at Woodland Park have been engaged in loose parts play for as long as I've been the teacher there, but you'll rarely hear me use the term. I usually just call it "junk," or in the case of items that come from nature like leaves or sticks, I might refer to it as "debris." Whatever it's called, the key element is that we didn't pay for it and I have no concerns that it will  be damaged, misused, or lost. Most of what you'll find on our playground came either from the earth itself or from the garages, attics, and recycling bins of the families who have enrolled their children. I often say that one of the functions of preschools isn't to use stuff, but to finish using it. We still have toys around, but most of them are broken in some way -- the cars have lost wheels, the dolls have lost their heads, and the balls have lost their shape. When we do spend money it's not on toys or loose parts, but rather on tools and furniture, things that need to be sturdy.

So while I'm pleased that more and more of us are discussing the value of loose parts play, I guess my caution is that we don't lose sight of the fact that you don't need to go shopping for these things and you don't need to "teach" the children how to play with them. Your world is already abundant with loose parts. Your recycling bin is full of them, your cellar is choc-a-bloc, and a broken toy is often much better than a new one. Our main job is simply make junk available and to step out of the way. The kids, as they always have, know what to do with it.

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Breaking Glass

It was Gever Tulley and his book 50 Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do) that first got me thinking about giving children an opportunity to break glass, something that is typically forbidden, yet endlessly fascinating.

Our set-up is a little different than Tulley's, but just as effective and fun. We wrap bottles or jars in a thick towel, then try to smash them one-by-one with a rubber mallet. We start by talking about broken glass. Most of the kids already know that it is sharp and will cut their fingers and they all have already experienced broken glass in their day-to-day lives, so it usually only takes a few minutes to get everyone up to speed. Yesterday's key cautionary tale was from a girl who's mother had recently cut her foot when she walked into the kitchen while her father was sweeping up the remnants of a drinking glass he had dropped.

As we do with all potentially injurious things we work with at the workbench, like hot glue guns, we spend a lot of time both up front and while engaged in the project discussing the potential hazards and how to avoid them.

The children are generally impressed with how difficult it is to break a jar or bottle using our method. They have all been sufficiently warned about the fragility of glass, so they are expecting that it will break easily, but these containers were designed not to break too easily, so for most kids it takes all their might to succeed. Yesterday, we formed a sort of cheering section for each child as they took their whacks, shouting advice like, "Harder!" and "Swing the mallet over your head!"

When a child succeeds, usually after a dozen or more whacks, she knows it. We then carefully open the towel to study the results, looking with our eyes and not our hands. We noted yesterday that the bottoms of the containers typically survive our blows, because the "glass is thicker." We study how small the bits of glass can be. "It's as small as sand," one boy remarked. Sometimes the labels held a section of shattered glass together which we found surprising given that we didn't expect paper to be "stronger" than glass. We put a leaf in a jelly jar and marveled at how it survived with only a "tiny hole" even as the jar was reduced to smithereens.

We discovered that the weakest point of most containers is the open end, a discovery that the children then used to increase their success rate. One boy offered a very detail theory for this in which he surmised that the open end "is full of air and so is easier to break," whereas the bottom didn't have any air so it is harder to break.

Our biggest discovery yesterday, however, was that under certain conditions, glass can be stronger than wood. After a dozen or more whacks of progressively greater impact, the handle of one of our mallets snapped in two, an accident that startled and amazed us all.

Breaking glass is something that most of us spend our lives avoiding, even as it is all around us, especially in urban environments where shards can show up pretty much anywhere outdoors. And like anything else that is plentiful, it's worthy of our closer study, cautiously.

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

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

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Our Recipe For Poopy-Butt Stew

Several kids were making "poopy-butt stew," filling their cauldron with pretty much anything that wasn't anchored down. It wasn't until the container was nearly full that someone said, "We need to put water in it." They carried the stew to our cast iron pump where they filled it with water, rendering it too heavy for just one child.

One girl, however, attempted to manage it on her own. When the others saw her struggling they didn't wait to be asked, they didn't ask if she wanted help, they simply gathered around and took a share of the load. They shuffled along together, bearing that weight, saying, "Poopy-butt stew" as often as possible. It wasn't the weight as much as the awkwardness of so many of them trying to work together in a small space that caused them to drop it. Luckily, the cauldron landed without spilling a drop.

Their unspoken goal was to move the stew back to where they had started which was on the other side of the swings at the base of a couple cedars, not far away, but farther than they collectively felt they could carry it. Someone suggested they use the wagon, an idea that was readily accepted. They worked together to wrestle the wagon into the sandpit, then to put their cauldron into the wagon bed. One girl grabbed the handle and began to pull, but was stopped by a boy, "Oh no, what about the step?" He was pointing at the one-foot drop they would need to navigate.

"Oh yeah," she answered, "We'll spill the poopy-butt stew." They decided that their alternative route was to take the wagon the long way around, where there was a short concrete slope leading to the lower level of the sandpit. By now most of the other children had moved on to other things, but this boy and girl stuck to their project. It took a great deal of effort to get the wagon turned around in the tight space, but working together they did it. It took a great deal of effort to get the wagon around the tree trunks and to the top of the slope, but working together they did it.

I considered intervening at this point. The slope is short, but rather steep. Their plan was for one to pull and the other to push and I saw the potential for the downhill child to get run down by a wagon made run-a-way by the pull of gravity. Before I could say or do anything, however, they achieved the critical point and as I'd feared, the wagon took off, knocking the girl to the ground. She came up laughing, then they were both laughing, then they began playing a game of falling down while saying "poopy-butt stew," making one another laugh as they fell into the sand over and over.

I kind of figured that this was the end of one project and the beginning of another. They had already been working to transport their stew for the better part of 15 minutes, they were now farther away than when they had started, most of their friends had abandoned them, and I saw multiple obstacles they still had to overcome. I was wrong, however, when after a few minutes of silliness they returned to their task, saying they needed to finish cooking their "poopy-butt stew."

In one direction they saw the same dilemma they had perceived from the top of the sandpit: there was a drop-off that they worried would cause them to spill the stew, not a drop of which had been lost to this point. They decided to take the long way around our aluminum row boat, a plan that looked even more fraught to me, but it wasn't my project so I kept my mouth shut. What had convinced them to take this route was that the sand in this area is piled up to the top of the tree rounds that contain the pit. They used this accident of play and erosion to wrestle the wagon atop the tree rounds, which they intended to use as a kind of roadway. Sadly, the wagon was a bit to wide and with every step a wheel got stuck, which meant they had to essentially carry the wagon in fits and starts.

They were now going uphill and they stopped saying "poopy-butt stew" to concentrate their efforts, one pushing, one pulling, to get the wagon back up the slope to the upper level of the playground. They were now back to the point near the cast-iron pump where they had first decided they had needed to detour, a rigorous and circuitous route that had consumed nearly a half hour. The shortest route to their destination at the base of the cedars was through the swing set, but as kids were swinging, they cheerfully opted to go the long way around, finally maneuvering the wagon into place.

They then, as if no time had passed when indeed it was 45 minutes later, called the rest of the "poopy-butt stew" crew back together and they lifted together to get the cauldron on the ground.

They spent the rest of the afternoon plotting to get their hands on some real dog poop to add to their concoction to make it "extra delicious." It was then that I finally intervened, telling them that I didn't have any dog poop, but there was some chicken manure in the greenhouse if they wanted some of that. They did, so I fetched a cup of the stuff and their stew was finally ready for the table.

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

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

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Protecting A Child's Right To Childhood

What would you think if you saw a mother hovering over her two month old infant drilling her on vowel sounds? Or how about a father coaching that same baby on the finer points to walking? I expect you would think they were at best wasting their time: two month olds can't talk and five month olds can't walk, let alone be taught. Talking and walking are things children just learn. Now imagine that when these babies failed to acquire these capabilities that are clearly beyond their developmental grasp, these parents began to fret that their child was "falling behind." You would think they were crazy. If a doctor told these parents their child was "falling behind" we would think he was either incompetent or cruel.

Sadly, there are actually people out there doing things like this. I've written before about hucksters who assert that babies can be taught to read and there are devices on the market that purport to help babies learn to walk. The good news is that while there are some naive parents who fall for such gimmickry in the misguided attempt to somehow one-up nature's long, successful history of "teaching" talking and walking according to well-established developmental timelines, most of us know better than to worry about these things that virtually every child stressless-ly learns without any special interventions.

My own daughter spoke her first word at three months old, consistently saying "Papa" when I played and cared for her: she was putting together full sentences before six months. This same "advanced" child didn't crawl until her first birthday and wasn't walking until close to 20 months, a full lifetime "behind" some of her peers. Today, as you might expect, she talks and walks like the rest of the teenagers: if she was ever behind she caught up, and if she was ever ahead, the others caught up with her.

This unsavory practice of taking advantage of new parent insecurities in the name of profit is one that deserves to be called out wherever it rears its nasty head, and it's borderline criminal when they play the "falling behind" card, which is why I'm writing today.

I've had the opportunity these past few years to travel around the world to talk to teachers and parents from Australia to Greece, from China to Iceland. Every place I go I find myself discussing this bizarre notion of "school readiness." Often translated in the US as "kindergarten readiness," it is essentially code for reading. It seems that the powers that be in our respective nations have decided to sell parents on the snake oil that if your child isn't starting to read by five-years-old she is "falling behind." They are doing this despite the fact that every single legitimate study ever done on the subject recommends that formal literacy education (if we ever even need it) not begin until a child is seven or eight years old. They are telling parents and teachers that children are "falling behind" despite the fact that every single legitimate study ever done finds that there are no long term advantages to being an early reader, just as there are no long term advantages to being early talkers or walkers or mathematicians or belly dancers. In fact, many studies have found that when formal literacy instruction begins too early, like at five, children grow up to be less motivated readers and less capable of comprehending what they've read. That's right, if anything, this "school readiness" fear-mongering is damaging our children's future prospects.

This is fear-mongering and snake-oil salesmanship is no accident. Corporate education "reformers" are intentionally playing upon our fears, going so far as to create the false narrative that our schools are failing and that our children are falling behind. They point to international standardized tests of 15-year-olds as their evidence, a dubious measuring stick, but even if we stipulate to it, any honest evaluation of those test results finds that where we are really falling behind is childhood poverty. When adjusted for that, our 15-year-olds match up with their 15-year-olds. I'm not saying our public schools are perfect, indeed, a lot can be done to improve them, but doubling down on the drill-and-kill education that the money-grubbers are selling is not among them. Indeed, it is going backwards.

One of the ways the corporate "reform" movement is winning is by employing the principles of what Naomi Klein labeled "disaster capitalism" in her book The Shock Doctrine, the basic idea being that great change can only take place through crisis. Or as the godfather of free-market radicalism, Milton Friedman put it, "Only a crisis, real or perceived, produces real change." If you're unfamiliar with this idea, here is a brief video in which Ms. Klein explains it. She's talking here about different issues, but it's not difficult to see the connection to what is going on in education:

It is not an accident that the pell-mell push for neoliberal school reform is being lead by these very free-market radicals who have been working for the past couple decades, at least, to figure out how they can tap into the billions we spend each year on public education. The way they've done this, successfully so far, is to manufacture a crisis ("Our schools are failing!") and sell a solution, which is this test-driven corporate curriculum which is not designed to educate kids, but rather to help corporations like Pearson Education and Microsoft turn a profit. And part of this crisis is to claim it is so bad, so pressing, so tragic that we don't have time to be thoughtful, we don't have time to look at research, and we certainly can't be hindered by consulting with actual education professionals. No, we must shock the system in order to save it! Now! Ignore that man behind the curtain!

If you've been reading here for any length of time, you already know all of this. I and others have been writing about the tragic course we've been tricked into for the better part of the last decade even though it's been happening for longer than that. We've pulled out the data, statistics, and research that clearly show that we are hurting children, that we are robbing them of their childhood. Children spend less time at play, at self-directed learning, than ever before and they are suffering for it psychologically, emotionally, and physically. Their school days are longer, their recesses have dwindled to almost nothing, their evenings and weekends are consumed with make-work homework, none of which has done a damn thing to improve those precious test scores, but they have done wonders for the pocketbooks of these education dilettantes and charlatans. We've brought our rational argument to an emotional fight, they are kicking our butts, and the losers are our children who are laboring in their test score coal mines. The corporate "reformers" have the ears of our policy-makers and deep, deep pockets and they are using that to beat us.

I'm sick of it.

Children have a right to their childhood. I wrote a post last week in which I suggested that we must learn to fight fire with fire, to craft emotional messages of our own because that's the only way to fight back against their fear-mongering. What they are doing to our kids is the moral equivalent of child abuse, they are stealing childhood from children, they are sending them into the coal mines to earn a greasy buck on their small bent backs. We must learn to fight back with our own emotional messages, backed, of course, by real data rather than the guess-work behind what the corporate guys are offering.

More importantly, it seems to me, is to come together as concerned educators and parents around specific education policy demands, ones that are supported by the research about how children actually learn, demands that teachers, parents, and other concerned citizens around the globe can support. Specific demands that we can take to our policy makers, be they governmental officials, school boards, or individual educators, and force them to consider them against the failed and soul crushing policies of the fear-mongers. We must create a movement, one committed to returning childhood to the children from whom it has been stolen.

I and a team of others from Australia, the UK, Europe, and the US have begun work on a first-first draft of these demands. Perhaps this is just another effort doomed to failure, but we must try. Our plan is to come up with a list of specific policies designed to root the corporate education "reformers" from out children's lives, to expose the fear-mongering for what it is, and to return childhood to children. We will be demanding, among other things, a roll-back of formalized education until at least seven-years-old, the banning of homework, and a childhood right to a healthy amount of unstructured outdoor play.

When we have a document with which we are satisfied, we will publish it and invite your input. We will then re-write it and publish it again, once more inviting input, widening our circle until we have a document that we can all support. The dream is a world-wide alliance of educators and parents committed to returning an authentic childhood to our children, because, no matter how deep their pockets, no one can stand before teachers and parents united. And our children will be the winners.

We don't know exactly how this will play out, we're taking it one step at a time, but we must try. I invited you to join us. In the meantime, watch this space. We don't know how long it will take, but once we have our first-first draft ready, we will be asking for your input, and and then your active support. Thank you!

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

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

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