When People Stop Telling You What To Do

At one point during his 5-year-old year at Woodland Park, Isak started thinking about construction paper. "Why is it called construction paper? We never construct anything with it. We just use it like regular paper." He then proceeded to experiment at home, arriving in class with a crude construction paper cube or pyramid or other shape manufactured with scissors and tape. He made his point with me, although not necessarily with his friends, who admired his handiwork and even watched patiently as he demonstrated his techniques, but afterwords went right back to using construction paper to make 2-dimensional objects.

One of the bedrock principles of how I work in the classroom is that I strive to not boss kids around, "strive" being one of the key operative words here, because it's a really hard thing to do. And when I say "boss around," I mean that I try very hard, every day, to avoid directional statements like, "Do this" or "Don't do that." And, yes, I still consider it a personal and professional failure when I desperately tack a sweet "please" on the end of it, as if the command isn't already out of my mouth.

I've written quite a bit on why this is important, but at bottom, I suppose, is that I've found that children, even very young children, especially while attending a school with a play-based curriculum, don't need to be told what to do. Practicing the skills of independent exploration, thinking for oneself, making one's own decisions, and operating autonomously in the world is what we're here to do. Commands from adults prevent that from happening by highjacking the kids' thought process, replacing their agenda with ours. No, the only way to practice these independent thinking skills is through free play, and as a 5-year-old child once succinctly put it, "Play is what you do when people stop telling you what to do."

Okay then, so how about when I come across a really cool idea like this one from Roopa over on the delightful Putti's World blog? Could this be a way to achieve Isak's dream of a classroom of preschoolers using construction paper to make 3-dimensional objects? 

Her basic idea is for kids to roll strips of paper around pencils, then make a colorful collage from the resulting coils. When her daughter did it, it made an attractive finished piece of art, but right away I knew that while I might be able to inspire a child or two to do it the "right way" without directional statements, there was no way I'd be getting an entire classroom full of independent explorers, thinkers, decision-makers, and players to do it any way other than their way.

This is how I try to approach all of our activities, thinking first about how it will go without someone there to boss the kids around. In this case, I imagined what might happen if we provided strips of colored construction paper, pencils, a large piece of mat board, and some sort of adhesive. Even if an art parent was there role modeling the coiling technique, I knew that this would be only one of a million different ways the kids would find to use the materials, and while it would still be an art exploration, I was interested in the children experiencing something different than the usual flat glue collage project. If nothing else, I was hoping to provide them with some experience with the 3-dimensional constructive properties of this kind of paper we call "construction paper," but rarely, as Isak noted, use in that way.

I started with the idea of a community art project, because if we weren't going to tell kids what to do, we'd want to try to inspire them, and no one is more inspiring to a young child than another young child. I figured that if only a couple kids got into the coiling technique, that might lead to others giving it a try, which could snowball into something exciting.

Secondly, I ruled out pencils and glue: they are such open-ended tools that I knew they would likely take kids off into all kinds of tangents.

Finally, I settled on a single piece of gold mat board in honor of the holidays, on which I made a grid of double-sided transparent tape (a technique inspired by this project). Instead of pencils, I provided chopsticks. And, of course, I cut lots of strips of construction paper. I then finished the set up by making one coil which I stuck to the center of the mat board and another bent paper shape. When the art parent arrived, I showed her how I'd made the coil, encouraging her to role model it. I told her I was hoping the kids would get some experience in constructing 3-diminsionally, although it was their project to do with as they saw fit. And, because there always needs to be a back up plan, I pointed out that the scissors were available should the whole thing be a flop, another open-ended tool, just in case, that can pretty much save any day.

I know it sounds like a lot of detailed planning on my part for what could have been, in a different kind of school, a straight-forward craft project, but that's one of the consequences of the teacher having an agenda in a classroom where it really ought always to be about the children exploring on their own, thinking for themselves, making their own decisions, and operating autonomously in the world. It was an agenda I was curious about, but one I knew I had to be ready to give up if it got in the way of the kids.

The kids, as their project snowballed, started referring to it as a water park: a little mid-winter anticipation of the warmer months to come, which explains all the swoops, loops, and curls. The sharply bent parts, I was told, are the stairs.

Did we make a rolled paper collage like the one on Roopa's blog? Not exactly. Did we achieve Isak's goal of using construction paper to actually construct? Not exactly. Did we achieve the ideal of not bossing kids around while still inviting them to experiment with 3-dimensions? You know, I think maybe we did.

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