How An Emergent Curriculum Works: "That's Why They Have To Be Burglars"

(For the past 4 days, I've been using examples from our classroom by way of trying to define what we mean at Woodland Park when we call what we do an "emergent curriculum." In one case our "project" emerged as if by some sort of wordless magic. In the second post, I described a "project" that emerged from my own agenda. In the third, post I discussed a full day of learning about spiders that the children constructed from their own collective knowledge and experience. Yesterday's post was about a dramatic play project sparked by the driving interest of a single student. Today is a look at how real life events lead to real life solutions.) 

A couple weeks ago, upon arriving at school, I unlocked the storage room to find stuff scattered all over the floor. It took me a few minutes to figure out what had happened, but finally realized that someone had broken a window and apparently knocked things down while climbing in. We lease our space from the Fremont Baptist Church. When I told Pastor Judy, she knew what had likely happened. Neighbors had complained the night before about some guys who had been sleeping in the alleyway behind the church and she'd had to call to police. "They were mad at me." We later found vulgarities written on the alley side of the church as well.

The window faces onto our outdoor classroom, so as our 5's assembled out there, we began to talk of the "burglar." No one seemed particularly worried, but several of them were quite excited, concocting all kinds of ideas about what we ought to do. Finally, one of the kids joked that we should have The Troll come protect our school, which lead someone else to suggest that we ask The Troll what to do. There was a lot of enthusiasm for this idea so we marched ourselves one block to where our street intersects with Troll Way and climbed up on The Troll's hand, where we closed our eyes and silently asked The Troll what to do. I believe it was Duncan who informed us that The Troll told him that we should use "sharp needles," then amazingly we learned that he'd given pretty much the same advice to all of us, in addition to such other ideas as nailing a piece of wood over the broken window, devising a trap, somehow employing "invisible broken glass," and using poison.

Back at school we continued our discussion, making a list of what we ought to do about the "burglar." There was some debate about the poison. "We don't want to kill him!" 

"No, it'll just be sleeping poison. Then when he wakes up we can tell him we don't want him to break the window again."

That settled, we surveyed our list. Cooper raised his hand, "I know! We could just put that list on the door, then when the burglar comes again, he'll just be scared!"

It was a good discussion about a real world event. By the time we returned to the outdoor classroom later in the day, Wally, the church's building maintenance guy, had already knocked off the first thing on our list: nailing wood over the broken window. The kids later checked out his handiwork and found it good. Still, I went home feeling like we'd only looked at the situation from our own point-of-view, a natural thing, but one that only gives us part of the story, limiting our pool of potential solutions to fortifications and traps, even if we didn't want to kill him.

So the following day, I shared what Pastor Judy and the police had said about the likely culprits. After talking about how we all sometimes do things we regret when we're angry, I asked the next logical question, "Why do you suppose those guys had to sleep behind the church?"

These are urban children. They know the answer. "Because they don't have a home."

"They don't have money."

"They don't have jobs."

"They don't even have toilets."

"They don't have food."

"That's why they have to be burglars."

The children knew all the answers. There was no lecturing required by me. I asked, "Do you think that's why the burglar broke our window?"

"He was trying to get food."

"We should give him food!"

"We could build him a house!"

The children already knew all the answers. We've scheduled a visit to a local food bank for our next field trip. We'll get on the bus with food in our hands and put it on the shelves. We'll keep talking about why people don't have enough food and about why they don't have a place to live and about why some feel they have no choice but to turn to a life of crime. We'll think some more about how to solve the problem to which we, as children, already know the answers, but too often forget as we grow up.

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How An Emergent Curriculum Works: Following A Leader

(For the past 3 days, I've been using examples from our classroom by way of trying to define what we mean at Woodland Park when we call what we do an "emergent curriculum." In one case our "project" emerged as if by some sort of wordless magic. In the second post, I described a "project" that emerged from my own agenda. In yesterday's, post I discussed a full day of learning about spiders that the children constructed from their own collective knowledge and experience. Today's example is about how a dramatic play project continues to emerge, sparked by the driving interest of a single student, complicated by the fact that we are dealing with the challenges of working with "intellectual property.")

Addison arrived in class on the first day this year talking about something called "Creativity." Given that last I'd seen him in the Spring he'd been a huge Harry Potter fan (the books, not the movie), I figured it was a new book series he was into or maybe some sort of role-playing video game. 

He worked hard to "sell" the idea, whatever it was, to his friends, once even taking the microphone (we have an old karaoke machine) to lecture us at some length about the mystery and danger and adventure of Creativity, but it was met with blank stares. I was feeling sorry for him, his excitement not getting through to the others, especially once I found out from his mom Jen that Creativity was, in fact, an entire world he had invented on his own, that it had "consumed most of his summer play" and was "very important to him."

That bit of knowledge in mind, I decided that I'd try playing along a little, since it didn't appear the kids were getting it.

I'd heard him talking about "portals" at some point, so as we hung out together in the outdoor classroom, I pointed up into our cedars and said, "I'm pretty sure I saw a portal into Creativity up in that tree."

He took it up, "Are you sure? They move around."

"I'm pretty sure it was a portal into Creativity."

"It looks like a swirling mass. Was it a swirling mass?"

"Yes. That must have been it. Maybe we should get the ladder and climb up there." I figured lecturing alone wasn't going to work to get the masses engaged, but I did know that anything involving moving our homemade ladder always draws a crowd.

I waited for his go-ahead and got it, "Good idea, Teacher Tom!"

Together we put out a call, "We need the ladder! We need the ladder!"

As the kids rallied to the cry, Addison filled them in on the portal we'd spotted in the trees: the portal that leads to Creativity. As the adult, the one ultimately responsible for safety, I wasn't particularly keen on how the ladder wound up positioned against the trees -- it was wobbly, there were a lot of kids jostling around for a turn -- so in the interest of not letting the excitement dissipate, I took responsibility for re-positioning the ladder, finally deciding, with Addison's agreement, that the portal had moved, and that the best place for the ladder would be against the fence.

Addison went first, climbing to the top then peering over the fence at the common, everyday world outside it. He pointed up into the branches of the large cedar that stands near our gate and said, "There it is, the swirling mass. I feel it pulling me in." Since he had been speaking directly to me where I'd positioned my body near the top of the ladder so as to catch anyone who slipped, I amplified his words to the line of children waiting their turn below: "Addison sees the portal in the tree. It looks like a swirling mass. He feels himself being pulled in." He then climbed back down the ground, throwing himself into the wood chips, shouting, "I've been pulled in! I'm in Creativity!"

It took a long time for each of his classmates to climb to the top of the ladder, to peer over the fence, and to "find" the portal. Some saw it in the tree like Addison did. Others, however, spotted the portal disguised as the garage door across the street, others spied it up in the clouds, and some couldn't find it at all, proving Addison's point that the portal into Creativity has a tendency to move around. I repeated each child's comments to the other kids below, then as they prepared to climb back down, I asked, "Do you feel it pulling you in?" Those that answered "yes" then threw themselves down on the ground in imitation of Addison.

Then an interesting thing happened, something with which I've never before had to deal as a preschool teacher. We gathered on our blue rug for circle time, the kids buzzing about Creativity. Several of the kids let us know that they'd seen the portal, the swirling mass, and had been pulled in, then Cooper, who was sitting directly beside Addison, said, "There's a magical forest in Creativity."

Addison suddenly looked ashen, "No there's not!"

Cooper looked at him wide-eyed, "Yes there is. I saw it!"

"There's not a magical forest in Creativity! There are beasts! You have to watch out for the beasts!"

Cooper responded and the boys went a couple rounds of "Yes there is!"/"No there's not!" before I interrupted and managed to get us moved on. Normally, in such a clear, well-mannered debate, I'd have tried to use it as an opportunity to help guide the boys to some sort of resolution, but frankly, I lost my nerve in the moment, knowing that Creativity was a precious thing to Addison and I wanted more information before proceeding to do anything that might damage his own, personal dramatic play creation.

The following day, Friday, Addison stayed home ill, and I figured that was probably the end of it, at least for awhile: a day without him and a weekend would wash things away, but I was wrong. The children arrived at school and immediately launched into playing Creativity, this time without any of the "constraints" placed on us by its creator. Fairies and skeletons and airplanes and super heros and sharks began to appear. The kids positioned the ladder in a new location, organizing themselves to take turns looking for the portal, using the term "swirling mass," but also giving it colors and other characteristics not supported by the "original text."

Still, I thought the weekend would take care of things until we sat down for show-and-tell. Cooper had written and illustrated a 5 page book about Creativity, filled with an impressive amount of detail. This wasn't going away. Addison had succeeded in attracting other children to play is game, but now they were making it their own. Normal stuff for preschool, I suppose, but in this case it felt like we were dealing with a kind of "intellectual property." Certainly, he maintained certain "rights" to his invention, yet certainly the rest of the kids maintained their rights to go where their own imaginations took them.

I wrote to Jen about how things were developing, suggesting that if all of this bothered Addison, I could work to at least convince the kids to change the name of our school's magical place to something else: reserving Addison's right to the name "Creativity." She had a discussion with him, and while he was excited and impressed that his friends were still interested in Creativity, he wanted to maintain some control. Together they came up with the idea that each of his classmates would have their own "property" within Creativity that they alone could control. She let me know that Addison wanted to make the pitch himself and was prepared to talk about it at circle time on Monday.

When we convened on the blue rug, I goofed around a little, then mentioned Creativity, before turning the floor over Addison. He did a very precise job of describing the plan, saying, "I control Creativity, but everybody has their own property that they control themselves."

Cooper didn't wait to raise his hand, "In my property there's a magical forest and a red airplane that flies the portal around!"

Addison answered, "That's great. But remember, Creativity is huge and everybody's property is miniscule."

There was silence. I was not going to define this word for the kids if I didn't have to, in the interest of avoiding an argument about "property size."

Then he continued, "In Creativity 'miniscule' means 'huge.'"

This "project" continues to emerge.

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How An Emergent Curriculum Works: Constructing It Ourselves

(For the past couple days I've been trying to illustrate how an emergent curriculum works at our school by providing examples from the classroom. In one instance our project emerged as if by magic. The second example emerged from me, the teacher, having an agenda. In this case, the kids took my attempts to introduce a mathematical concept with Halloween decorations and turned it into a rich, full day of learning about spiders.)

I have a couple boxes in our storage room into which, at the end of each Halloween season, I dump everything orange, black or otherwise related to the holiday. This year when I pulled out the box I found a package of that artificial spider webbing folks use to spooky-fy their homes. On the package it said, "Covers 300 Square Feet!"

I discovered it as our 5's class was assembling outside, so I took it with me. I announced, "I have this fake spider web. It says it covers 300 square feet."

Kids gathered around, telling each other about how they have spider webs decorating their houses and yards. They had all seen this stuff before.

Diego said, "Let's use it to decorate!" And his friends agreed.

I tried again, "I want to see how big 300 square feet is." We opened the package and kids started pulling. Within minutes we had a web that covered what I assume is approximately 300 square feet of our outdoor classroom, going up the concrete slope into the laurels, extending to the windmill, and nearly to the workbench. One long strand made it all the way to the upper level of the sand pit where an adult attached it to the nail protruding from a cedar that we sometimes use to hook up a pulley system.

The kids had left it a couple feet off the ground, which allowed them to crawl under it and into it, where they started by pretending to be caught, then found that they were, in fact, tangled in it and had to wrestle their way out. After about 15 minutes we convened indoors on our blue rug.

Almost instantly, Cooper said, "I have a book about spiders. There's a kind called a Tarantula. It's huge and poisonous."

I'm not a spider expert. I suppose if I were a teacher in a conventional school in which "direct instruction" was the standard, I would have either tried to force the kids back into thinking about 300 square feet or else I would have prepared myself by reading a book of my own, then attempted to convey to the children the parts I thought they ought to know. Instead, I discovered an old Halloween decoration in the storage room and let the kids play with it, so I was forced to rely on my own actual knowledge rather than the stuff I'd crammed into my head the night before (or worse, relied on a video or app to deliver pre-packaged information to the kids via a screen). One thing I did know was that spiders are venomous, not poisonous. I said, "Did you know that all spiders are venomous? That's how they subdue their food. Most of them are so tiny that when they bite you, you don't feel it. Tarantulas are huge so, yeah, you feel the venom when one of those bites you." And with this I had pretty much exhausted my own spider information.

Cooper added, "Tarantulas don't live around here."

Things happened quickly after that, so I can't recall who said what, but after a few minutes of shouting out spider "information," we got ourselves organized to take turns by raising hands.

"We found a big spider in our basement."

"We found one at our house and daddy caught in my cup and let it go outside."

"Spiders have eight legs."

"My mommy is scared of spiders. I'm not scared of spiders."

"I'm a little bit scared of spiders."

"They make webs to catch bugs. Bugs are their prey."

"Daddy long legs are spiders."

As I called on each kid, I said, "Elena has spider information," "William has spider information." This is my technique for trying to keep us on topic: not commanding them to talk about spiders, but rather simply making a verbal assumption. Not everyone stuck strictly to spiders, but most did.

Our "spiders" preyed upon all kinds of meat.

"Spiders eat other bugs."

"They catch them in their web, then inject them with their poison to make them sleep, then wrap them up, then eat them."

"I've seen a spider eat a bug before -- I put a bug in a spider web and watched it!"

"We have Giant House spiders at our house."

"Black Widows are dangerous spiders."

"Good thing we don't have them around here."

"We do have them around here! They live in wood piles."

In this case, there's a green fairy wrapped up in the web.

Some kids seemed to doubt this bit of information, so I added, "It's true. Black widows often live in piles of wood -- you know like fire wood. They like to mostly stay outside, but if you're helping bring in wood for the fireplace, it's a good idea to wear gloves. Their venom is very dangerous -- it could kill a baby, so don't let your babies get the firewood."

"There are also Hobo spiders."

"Those are really dangerous."

The conversation went on like this for a good 10-15 minutes, kids offering up what they know about spiders, constructing a very complete, age-appropriate scientific exploration of the spider, one driven by their own interests and curiosities. At one point Henry asked, "Why don't spiders get stuck in their own webs."

I didn't know, but in an emergent curriculum I don't need to know. Instead, I threw it back to the kids, "Henry wants to know why spiders don't get stuck in their own webs."

Wyatt guessed that it was because spiders have "oil on their legs," a brilliant theory.  Cooper thought it might have to do with their "hairy legs." Wyatt's dad raised his hand (it's rare when adults raise their hands at circle time, so I always call them, knowing we'll be getting on-topic information) "I just learned this: spiders don't get stuck in their own webs because they spin two different kids of webs. One kind is sticky and catches bugs. The other kind isn't sticky and that's what they walk on."

Here we caught a poodle.

As we went around our circle, sharing everything we knew about spiders, sharing everything we needed to know about spiders, making jokes about spiders, telling our personal stories about spiders, expressing our feelings about spiders, I couldn't help but compare this to my experiences in high school and college. There we always had authoritative teachers who "owned" the knowledge which they then conveyed to us. We were then expected to compete against one another (being graded on a curve, you know) to determine which of us remembered the most. By the time I was at the university I would have no more "shared" my information with my classmates than I would have let them cheat off me during a test. Instead of being resources to me, my fellow students were my rivals for grades.

When we went back outside, the kids went immediately to the 300 square foot spider web where they pretended to be Giant House spiders, Black Widows, Hobos, Tarantulas, and Daddy Long Legs, crawling in, out, and around the web. They began to gather up prey from among our "loose parts," injecting them with venom (and yes, many of them were now using the word "venom"), then wrapping them up to eat later.

I thought I was just using up some left over Halloween decoration, but what emerged was a complete lesson on spiders, one constructed on the spot by children and their own interests.

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How An Emergent Curriculum Works: When The Teacher Has An Agenda

(Yesterday I promised to share examples of some of Woodland Park's recent "emergent" projects by way of trying to "define" what an emergent curriculum is all about, at least the way we try to do it. Yesterday's was what I called the "gold standard," one that emerged entirely from the children. This is an example of one that was more teacher guided than most, but I think still fits the definition of emergent and will perhaps provide some insight into what I see as the teacher's role in an emergent classroom.)

We have a two-level sand pit in the outdoor classroom, with a cast iron water pump installed on the top level and an old wooden row boat in the bulls eye of the larger lower level. The adults have always known that sooner or later we would need to deal with erosion as water, either from the pump or in the form of rain, combined with gravity would tend to empty out the upper level in favor of the lower.

When the 5's  were done digging out the boat, I left the wagon in the sand pit. On the following day I explained to the 3-5's class what the 5's had done the day before. They thought it sounded like a good idea and went to work taking loads of sand back up to the top of the sand pit. All of these pictures are from that digging session.

The advent of our 5's program, with it's 18 older kids playing out there on a daily basis has accelerated what had been a slow process. Part of how this class has come together here at the beginning of the year has been to create large, complex systems of canals, often all of them working together, digging, pumping, planning, and arguing. I can hardly call this something that has "emerged," because it's been there since our first day of class, the result, I think of good playground design. Every group of kids who plays out there, from young 2-year-olds on up, including older siblings who visit us from time to time, get a kick out of "flowing" the water down hill and some form of this play emerges every day we're out there.

Before September was out, however, I noticed that our row boat, which had once sat mostly on top of the sand, was now almost entirely buried. I made this observation as a group of our 5's had used gutters and shovels to create a river that flowed directly into the boat and were now standing at the top of the sand pit, shoveling sand into the gutters to be carried downhill by the water.

I said to no one in particular, "The boat is almost buried."

A couple kids paused to take note, but went back to their business. Not only was the boat filling with sand, but water was collecting there as well, despite the holes we've drilled in the bottom. I said, "And it's full of water." Of all the people out there at that moment, I, being the adult, was the only one who was aware that, at a minimum, we would need to deal with the standing water issue. 

"We're making a swimming pool, Teacher Tom." 

This is what had emerged from our emergent curriculum, a logical, classic, engaging, and educational project, one that included at one time or another every kid in the class. The problem was that it was costing us the use of our boat, not a big loss for these older kids, but for many of the younger children in other classes the boat is one of the main draws of our outdoor classroom. 

I took a seat in the sand beside the boat. I had an agenda, which was at odds with the current agenda of the kids. As I watched the boat continue to fill, I said, again to no one in particular, "I wonder how the little kids are going to play in here if the boat's full of sand and water?"

There was silence for several minutes as we watched the boat slowly fill with sand and water. Marit finally said, "We could dig the sand out." She's particularly sensitive to the needs of the younger kids, given that her brother is in our Pre-3 class.

Addison suggested, "They could just swim in it."

Marit answered, "My brother can't swim."

I said, "I like your idea, Marit, I'm getting my shovel." We store the adult tools in a shed some ways away. When I returned, there was already a team of kids in the boat, shoveling. I jammed my shovel in the sand and watched.

After awhile I asked, "I wonder why you guys put all that sand in there anyway."

Wyatt answered after a bit of thought, "We didn't put it there, it came down the hill in the water."

I said, "I wonder if all the sand is going to come down here." Several kids stopped digging to peer at the upper level. I figured now was the time for a vocabulary word, "I wonder if the whole top part of the sand pit is going to erode into the bottom."

Wyatt said, "We should take the sand back up there." With this he climbed out of the boat and carried his shovel load up to the top level where he dumped it. A few of his friends followed suit.

I don't know if my fellow teachers would consider all of this emergent or not, but I certainly do. Yes, I had an agenda and I was guiding, but I was expecting, all along, that the kids do the thinking. By sharing the problem as I saw it, "wondering" aloud, and making informative statements, I was hoping the kids would take up the challenge.

I can't remember who suggested that we us a wagon, but soon we were filling a wagon. We quickly found, however, that the weight of the wagon, the steepness of the hill, the narrowness of the gaps between the trees, and the slipperiness of the sand made it impossible for the kids to wrangle it to the top of the sand pit on their own, so I helped with that, although the kids got to dump it themselves. We probably hauled 5-6 loads back to the top in our counter-erosion efforts.

A few kids even took on bailing the standing water. Soon Duncan declared, "I found the bottom of the boat."

Moments later, however, someone was back at the top of the hill, pumping away, sending more water and sand down toward our now nearly empty boat. As the water washed over the sides and into the vessel there were both cheers and shouted objections: "Yay!" and "Hey!"

Cooper, one of our chief canal builders watched for a moment, then said, "I know, let's dig around the boat. He started by digging a hole in the sand to catch the water, then began to divert the water by digging a channel around the boat. Once his friends saw what he was doing, several joined in, digging like mad until they had water flowing all around, but not into, the boat. Someone said, "A boat with a moat." Not bad.

As we cleaned up at the end of the day, Elena reminded me to put away my adult shovel which was still where I left it, stuck in the sand.

My agenda had been fulfilled through this emergent project, one that the kids engaged in for several days afterwards. I had guided the kids, for sure, but it was important to me that I not "command" them, "coax" them, "get" them, or even "let" them fulfill my agenda, but rather tried to simply share my agenda with them and tried to stand out of the way as a solution emerged. The boat is slowly getting refilled, as is inevitable, but nearly every day now I spot a kid or two in there emptying it out as well, "for the little kids."

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How An Emergent Curriculum Works: Hardwired Into Our DNA

Contrary to the traditional popular ideas about how social animals organize themselves, researchers Tim Roper and Larissa Conradt have found that it's in fact not the sexually dominant alpha males who make decisions for the group, but rather that important decisions are actually made via a natural democratic process.

Barring clear and present danger, members of red deer herds, gorilla bands, African buffalo herds and other close-knit animal societies vote their readiness to move by standing up and pointing themselves in the direction they want to go. When a significant majority have stood and/or pointed themselves in the chosen direction, the group moves on in the direction they've chosen together. In a statement that until recently the scientific community would have considered unorthodox or heretical, Roper and Conradt concluded that "democratic behavior is not unique to humans."

And from researchers Anna Dornhaus and Nigel R. Franks who have found that some varieties of bees and ants engage in information pooling and consensus decision making:

Democracy is not something that humanity invented.

Or as author and radio personality Thom Hartmann puts it:

Without exception the natural state of group-living animals is to cooperate, not dominate. Democracy, it turns out, is hardwired into the DNA of species from ants to zebras. And it includes all of the hominids from the great apes to Homo sapiens.

Even amoeba show evidence of democratic behavior. (Read the full article here, although I don't necessarily think, as the author does, that the scientific findings about animals can or should be applied directly to American politics.)

A few days ago I wrote a post about a group of Woodland Park children engaged in moving a ladder from one place to another:

. . . it was a kind of magical occurrence, one that I could see happening before my very eyes, but even though I was right there bearing witness, I'm still not quite sure how it happened. "We" decided to move the ladder, everyone was their own boss. Decisions were made, not through a deliberative or negotiated process, but the way a flock of flying birds or a swarm of bees decides to turn this way or that. The longer it took, the more kids joined in bringing ropes, turning shovels into levers, pushing, pulling, bracing as they saw fit. It was a "hive mind" project.

I was actually thinking about Roper and Conradt's red deer studies as I wrote that, but hadn't the time to dig up a link. Without any adult intervention other than to keep an eye out for their safety, the kids engaged in exactly the kind of democratic process found right across nature, the kind of small group democratic process most of us engage in every day, whether it's making a decision about where to meet friends for drinks after work, organizing ourselves to clean up a neighborhood park, or working out childcare arrangements among a group of busy moms, all without "sexually dominant alpha males" (or females) bossing everyone around. In the context of nature, hierarchy is the anomaly, while democracy is the norm.

A few days ago in a forum for preschool bloggers in which I participate, a teacher asked for a definition of an "emergent curriculum." As I watched the comment section fill up, I found myself agreeing and disagreeing with what folks were writing. I kept wanting to chime in, but then stopped myself, feeling like any answer I gave would be incomplete, contradictory, or even unnecessarily combative.

At bottom, the term "emergent curriculum" refers to learning that bubbles up from the interests of the children themselves. Where it gets complicated is how this process happens. With varying degrees of success, pedagogues and others have attempted to codify this, to package it up, to create philosophies, methods, techniques and guidelines to stimulate and manage the process by which learning becomes child-lead. Reggio Emilia, Montessori and Waldorf are examples, all of which are, at heart, child-lead learning.

Having now spent the better part of a week reflecting on how I would answer that teacher's question, a teacher who without knowing it, judging from the blog she writes, is already an "emergent teacher," I've come to the conclusion that it's impossible without resorting to examples. In the case of moving the ladder, for instance, it was a purely democratic process, one in which the teacher only played the role of keeping children safe. The entire cooperative process from beginning to end, from idea to execution, emerged from the children themselves, a "magical occurrence." 

I suppose at one level, this ladder moving project represents a kind of "ideal" of emergent curriculum, one in which it is child-directed from conception through completion. People might ask, "But what did they learn?" And I could answer they learned the lessons they were ready to learn about social skills like cooperation, team work, negotiation and agreement. I could talk about physical and mathematical concepts like leverage, gravity, weight, and angles. I could mention the language skills they practiced as they explained themselves or voiced their opinions and ideas. Not to mention what they learned about using their own bodies as they climbed, pulled, pushed, and braced. And everything they learned was spot on developmentally.  I, the teacher, didn't have to know any of this in advance. There was no need for me to direct. My role was to simply do what I needed to do to create a safe space in which they could explore and experiment while solving a "problem" they collectively and individually sought to solve. And I, as the teacher, need not now stand in judgement, testing to determine what they learned, the proof is indeed in the pudding, with each child taking from the process what he or she needed or wanted to know.

This is but one example of how learning emerges in an emergent curriculum. You never know where it's going to come from. Sometimes it is the teacher who does or says something that sparks the flame. Sometimes the wider society thrusts itself into your preschool world, like the celebration of holidays or a fire in the building next door. Sometimes learning emerges suddenly, in a flash and then gone, and other times it builds slowly over the course of days, weeks and even months. Sometimes "success" can be measured by having a ladder finally wrestled into the place we wanted it. Sometimes "success" is merely having made the attempt. Sometimes the thing that you think is emerging morphs into something entirely unforeseen. And as you might expect, the role of the teacher emerges right along with the rest of the learning, taking whatever form the project or activity demands. I feel like I'm at my best as a teacher when I'm running alongside the children, not out in front, not pushing from behind, but right there with them, keeping them safe, chattering, answering questions, maybe providing a little vocabulary or appropriate "trivia," but mostly just learning right along with them -- not learning the same things they're learning, but rather using the process to construct my own learning as an adult and teacher, just as the kids construct their own learning.

Over the course of the next few posts, I'm going to provide examples of what an emergent curriculum looks like at Woodland Park. They won't all fit the gold standard of the ladder moving project, but I think you'll find that they all take advantage of the democracy that's hardwired into our DNA.

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 Numbness Spreads To Your Brain

This morning I'm off early to re-new my first aid certification, something I spend a Saturday doing once every 2 years. Since time is short, I thought I'd share with you the post I wrote last time I got re-certified, complete with photos from the old place. Somehow I suspect I'll still wind up with a numb butt.

I spent all day yesterday renewing my first aid and CPR certification. It's been a long time since I've sat in a chair, facing the front of a room, paying attention. We got a one hour break for lunch and we did spend about an hour practicing on the CPR dummies, but otherwise we pretty much sat for 6 hours, alternating between watching a video and listening to our instructor Michelle talk.

Man that was hard. I'd planned enough in advance to bring along a small pad of paper and a pen, not for note taking, but rather for doodling. It wasn't enough. I don't remember having a particularly hard time sitting through class as a boy, I must have been better conditioned for just sitting, but yesterday was brutal. I tried to sit still, I really did, but 5 minutes was about as long as I could manage any one position before my butt or my back or my legs started barking at me to fidget. I leaned forward, I leaned backward, I slouched, I sat bolt straight, I twisted around sideways, I tucked a leg under me, I bounced my leg up and down, I propped my chin in my hands, I sat on my hands, I put my hands in my pockets, and I doodled. As my doodle page became more crowded with tiny pictures, I challenged myself to stick with only one sheet of  4"X3" paper.

Here is the product of my 6 hours of effort:

It looks a lot like my notebook covers looked in high school. In first grade I made a single piece of doodle paper last the entire school year. 

Yes, I did refresh my knowledge of CPR and first aid. They've made it all simpler than it used to be, because as Michelle explained, the simpler they make the instructions, the more lives get saved. Apparently, the Seattle area has the highest rate of CPR/first aid training in the world, with survival rates to prove its worth doing.

I didn't notice any of my 30 or so classmates fidgeting like I was. But I did catch some dozing, especially when the lights were turned off for watching the video. And the teacher and parent educator (who shall remain unnamed, Matt and Elizabeth) sitting behind me, lured me into a bit of under-the-breath wise cracking. And as the session rolled on, more and more people raised their hands to ask questions, often running far afield of the subject at hand. It was a lot like the classes I remember growing up, sitting at desks, trying our best to be "good," doing whatever we could to stay awake, stay focused, and stay one step ahead of our barking body parts.

I've been taking these classes every 2 years for 12 years. We used to spend a lot of time practicing things like splinting, bandaging, and properly moving injured people. That was fun. I got so I would choose who I would sit beside based upon my desire to pretend they had blood gushing from a head injury. There was always a lot of laughing and silliness, but also a heaping helping of hands-on learning.

But apparently, according to Michelle who I spoke with after class, they've discovered that they were over-training we lay people. It seems that if we can just re-start the breathing and stop the bleeding, we've done pretty much all we need to do in the Seattle metropolitan area before the EMTs arrive to take over. So instead of an 8 hour course crammed with details of what to do in every emergency, it was 8 hours of repeating the same things over and over. I like that the training is now more effective than in the past, and I like that the stuff we need to know is so straight forward and simple that I now feel like I could teach the course myself.

Oh, but it was a painful learning process. I couldn't wait to walk the dogs, listen to the radio, and breath in the cool, damp fall air awaiting me outside.

There were 6 of us there from Woodland Park. On our Pre-K days we will now have 4 CPR/first aid certified adults in the room with our 9 boys. Holy cow!

It was such a welcome change of pace to walk out of that classroom at North Seattle Community College to find a wet, cold, windy afternoon, where Jarin and Isak, there with their dad Craig, were waiting for their mom Leslie. The boys were grinning and flushed, Jarin's 6-year-old smile missing all four of his upper center teeth. "Dad let us ride the elevators by ourselves!" They were alive and excited and while Leslie admitted that she didn't think she would have let them have that adventure, she suddenly looked alive and excited too.

We'd emerged from a one-dimensional classroom into an infinitely rich, impromptu learning environment, on our feet, all our senses engaged. There was no fidgeting, no struggle to stay awake, no wise cracking in the back row, no talking just to hear ourselves talk. I have no doubt that those boys with their father had learned as much in their 15 minutes of waiting in the rain as we had in 8 hours of sitting.

During our lunch break I picked up a copy of the Sunday edition of The Seattle Times because I'd noticed the Parade magazine section contained an interview with Bill Gates entitled, "What I've Learned About Great Teachers." Like most Parade pieces it turned out to be so fluffy that there was no there there, but I did sit up and take note when Bill was asked, "You and Melinda have three school-aged kids. Are you involved in their education?"

This unquestionably intelligent man, this famous college drop-out, this man whose foundation has spent over $4 billion on various education projects, answered, "Last year our family traveled for three months, and we did some homeschooling . . . We went to the Large Hadron Collider, the giant particle accelerator in Switzerland. We went to a toilet-paper factory, a garbage dump, an aircraft carrier, and a coal plant . . ."

Most of us can't travel for 3 months and a giant particle accelerator may not be on the agenda, but I happen to know that the Gates family travels with their own security team. His kids can't ride the elevators by themselves at NSCC on a rainy weekend. It's all education. It's not about who has more money, it's about seeking out experiences in the real world, while never forgetting that a numb butt makes a numb mind. 

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