Smooth And Magical

I enjoy teaching our summer sessions, but it's not like teaching regular school. It's challenging, I suppose, in that most of the kids who show up are children I didn't previously know, or who I only see during the summer, but at the risk of sounding cocky, that's one of my strengths: getting kids on my bandwagon (or maybe it's the other way around). What makes it most unlike the regular school year is that the enrollment turns over every couple of weeks, leaving us with an entirely different mix of kids. It's like the first weeks of school, over and over again.

Parents use the word "magical" a lot when talking about our summer sessions, enthusing about how "smoothly" things are going, how well everyone seems to get along, how few tears there are. And all of this is true, but not because of anything I do, although I continue to get credit which people won't let me deflect, so I've stopped trying. You see, we never really get to the hard part of being together, the part where agendas and personalities and expectations start clashing, and maybe that's what summer ought to be about, but a key part of what makes our school our school is missing during these lazier months.

Yesterday, I posted a piece on teaching individual children, on meeting them where they are, meeting them as who they are, and how we, as teachers, try to connect with them. That's the stuff I've been up to this last month, but since 2 week sessions are hardly long enough to build a real community, it all gets to feel smooth and magical because no one really get comfortable enough for the icky stuff to come up.

Community is always forged through conflict, or rather by working through those conflicts and coming to agreements about how we're going to live together. Two weeks, six 2-1/2 hour sessions really, is simply not enough time to create conventions, a culture, a common history, and the bonds that motivate us to work through the tears and pain, to make it not just a place for us, but for all of us. It takes that long just to get your sea legs under you, to get to figure out this silly man named Teacher Tom, to learn a few of the other kid's names, to understand what we do when the drum sounds or someone calls, "Last call for snack!" Sure, we bump up against the other people, or they use the things we want to use, or they stand or sit where we want to sit, but without a community it's just conflict, something to handle, then from which to move on.

Coming off of our very first slate of summer sessions four years ago, a project that was largely run by a core group of committed parents, we entered the regular school year on a kind of high. It had all been so smooth and magical that we, I think, assumed we'd turned some sort of corner as a community, that from now on  things were going to be smooth and magical. Then we ran smack into reality. Our October parent meeting was tense as it was becoming clear that divisions had arisen between the "summer parents" and another group who, at bottom, I think, felt left out. It took us a lot of hard work, tears, the rest of the school year to pull our parent community back together. Since then, we've made a point of taking a little break between the end of our summer sessions and the regular school year to give the summer parents a chance to slow down a little because the process of building a community -- be it adults or children or both -- is one that takes the kind of time that we don't have in the summer.

So yes, I'm enjoying this summer so far, engaging children, playing with them, maybe helping with a little separation anxiety, then sending them off a few days later to other things. I'm not complaining about things being smooth and magical, of course, but I know it's a vacation from the real work that begins again next fall.

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Whispers Of The Angel

From across the room I heard the wailing cry go up and in the midst of it was a boy who struggled all year with being physical in dealing with conflicts. They were in the loft, a venue frequently visited by conflict. I didn't see what happened. My notice was drawn by the sound: it could have been caused by a fist or a word or simply by accident. As the crying child turned to remove himself from the loft, the other boy said, "I'm sorry," calling him by name.

The crying immediately stopped. The offended child accepted the apology by turning to re-climb the short flight of stairs to rejoin his friends. For a brief moment the "offender" attempted to block the stairs, using his knee to physically impede his friend, almost as if by habit, then suddenly he stopped himself and stepped aside, saying, "Come up," again calling his friend by name.

This is an important thing to remember when you're an adult who works with young children: just because something was easy for you to learn, or for your child, or even for most children, that doesn't mean it's an easy thing for everyone. We've all struggled to learn something important and this was a boy who was challenged by the urge to use his superior strength or assertiveness or what some might call aggressiveness to impose his will on other children. The fact that he so quickly offered his apology, that he stopped himself from physically blocking his friend, that he pointedly and repeatedly used his friend's name, in those behaviors I saw that he was listening to the whispers of the angel on the shoulder opposite the one upon which was perched his devil.

We had been working together all year, often in tears, sometimes physically, not commanding him, but rather trying to give that angel a louder voice. We had talked often, for instance, in both good and bad moments about his desire to have lots of friends and about how no one, not even he, would play with someone who hurt or scared the other people. We strategized in both good times and bad moments about other ways to let his friends know about his frustrations, his wants, his sadness.

Things were more or less settled by the time I was amongst them. As the other three boys dropped back into their game, our struggling friend stood silently, standing over them, separate, watching. I like to think he was still thinking about what had happened, reviewing not only how things at first went wrong, but also how they then again went right.

I tried to imagine myself saying something, but I had nothing to add to his imagined internal dialog, so I just stood nearby, not certain any of them even noticed my presence.

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Intelligence Is Not Enough

We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character -- that is the goal of true education.  The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate. The broad education will, therefore, transmit to one not only the accumulated knowledge of the race but also the accumulated experience of social living.

If we are not careful, our colleagues will produce a group of closed-minded, unscientific, illogical propagandists, consumed with immoral acts. Be careful, brethren! Be careful, teachers!  ~MLK

It's a small wonder, a miracle indeed, when they discover an aspect of "we," often at first stumbling across it like over a super cool toy left in the middle of the living room floor.

Even if it's as simple as saying, "We are going up here now." Even that gives me confidence about our future.

The ones with siblings just a little bit older tend to learn it first, the joy of connecting with another child, and find their classmates a little slow sometimes. These are the ones who might take the lead, practicing the sentences that begin with the invitation of "Let's . . .," working their human power to bring themselves together with those other suns around whom the universe so recently revolved.

This is the work we're here to do: to make me into we, because otherwise it makes no sense. 

There are things, so many things, over which to disagree. It's hard enough learning how to do that without having to also overcome closed minds that reject the universal language of objective "scientific" truth in favor of illogical propaganda. The same is to be said for that set of moral values we must share if we're to make this democracy work, let alone our day-to-day lives: non-violence, equal opportunity, fairness, the values without which the promises of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness simply cannot be fulfilled.

It's true we attempt in school to transmit our "accumulated knowledge," but without also working diligently to transmit the "accumulated experience of social living," we risk creating sociopathic monsters, people rendered less than human by their inability to join us in our work of making me into we, instead seeking to exploit, to use up, to devour their fellow man in a dangerously misguided attempt to fill up that abyss that opens inside each of us when we stand all alone in the world. If we don't fill it with love, it becomes a vacuum for wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony.

When a boy and a girl and a tiger find themselves together and one of them says, "Let's go up there," and then they all pick up, still together, and go up there, sitting once more together I see the work of we being done and I don't worry about our world so much.

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Girls V. Boys

We recently experienced an outbreak of girl v. boy rivalry in our 3-5's class. There's always a little testing out of exclusionary play of the "no boys" or "no girls" variety, but this was on another level involving a group of boys collecting at the top of the concrete slide chanting, "Boy Scouts! Boy Scouts!" while a group of girls gathered in our playhouse answering back, "Girl Scouts! Girl Scouts!" The game included the girls making occasional forays up into the boy's area while being verbally pummeled by the chant, followed by the boys braving the playhouse to the same effect.

The game featured intense expressions and taut body language, so I kept an eye on things, checking in with the kids. I said things like, "You look angry. It makes me think you don't like this game," but was more or less shooed away while being assured the game was "fun," so I stepped back, staying close in case things turned physical or verbally abusive. These are kids who have known one another for a long time, played well together, even visited one another's homes. As I watched this game that was so unsavory to me play out, however, I was impressed by how responsible they were. I mean, they weren't hurling insults, just chanting statements of gender solidarity. There was all kinds of aggressive posturing from both sides, but no pushing, hitting, or even impeding going on. I would have appreciated a smile every now and then, some evidence they were actually having the fun they insisted they were having, but none of them broke character, just as none of them seemed inclined to leave the game.

I'm pretty sure there were times in my past as a teacher when I would have barged in to scuttle the game, letting my adult judgement of things rule the day, probably pushing it underground, sending the message that certain thoughts and themes are "bad." I'm glad I've learned to be slow to react, to dig in first and try to see events though the eyes of the kids, which, after all is the perspective that matters most. It's their play. It's their experience. It's their education. After a couple of days, they moved on to other things, apparently having learned what they needed to learn, the girls and boys remixing as usual. 

Adult knowledge and understanding is a great thing, but it's not the only way to view the world, let alone the correct way.

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Kids In The House: Discipline and Conflict in Preschool

It was almost exactly one year ago that I winged down to Santa Monica to take part in a project called Kids In The House, which launched last week. The idea is a comprehensive collection of short parenting videos from a wide variety of perspectives, dealing with just about everything under the sun. Eighteen of those videos are from yours truly, one of which I've embedded below.

Leana Greene and her team have now assembled some 8000 two-minute (or so) videos from over 400 parent educators, authors, psychiatrists, doctors, parents, and teachers. I was impressed with their dedication and professionalism from the moment they first made contact with me and am quite proud to be a part of it. As Leana explained to me at the time, this is just the beginning: the idea is to continually add to their library.

And this just isn't early childhood. I've been having a look this weekend at many terrific videos on parenting a teen. I find myself nodding to some and disagreeing with others, but that's kind of the beauty: it's like getting a dozen experts in a room with you to give you their elevator spiel on a given topic. You can then pick the ones that seem right for you and your situation and go deeper.

This first video I'm sharing here is my thumbnail sketch on how the kids make their own rules in our preschool. If you decide you want to go deeper, here are links to some other posts on the topic: A Community of Their Own Creation, "You and Your Friends Agreed . . .", and Without Talking There Are No Solutions. If you even want to go deeper, just click on the "rules" tag under the "Teacher Tom's topics" heading in the right hand column of the blog.

So for those of you who haven't seen this one yet, it might come as a shock that I'm not dressed in cape and spandex. And this is the sacrifice I've made for Kids In The House: the world now knows my secret identity.

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Angry Ship Builders

Charlotte said, "I'm going to build a ship," and got to work arranging the blocks.

Ships have been a popular way for the 3-5's class to use our large wooden blocks this year. It's a simple build which normally involves arranging the blocks into a deck, flat on the floor. Each time Charlotte would place a block, however, one of her classmates would step on it, which frustrated her. "Hey, I'm building a ship!"

There was a lot of action in the block area and it got so she was chasing someone off her ship every few seconds, to which she responded by upping the intensity of her objections.

It didn't seem like anyone was intentionally provoking Charlotte. The situation was more a function of attempting to work on a solo project in a crowded, active area. After having been reprimanded several times by Charlotte, Henry paused for a moment to survey this corner of the rug, and in doing so he seemed to suddenly see the world from Charlotte's perspective. "I'm going to help build the ship." And with that he began arranging blocks.

Without directly acknowledging Henry, Charlotte began to chase the other kids off, still angrily, "Hey, we're building a ship!"

And Henry took on the tone as well, "Hey, we're building a ship!" Now we had two intense ship builders. 

Soon Audrey joined them, pushing large blocks into place. She said nothing, but wore a fierce, tight-jawed expression as she worked.

"Hey, we're building a ship!" "Hey, that's our ship!"

As the three angry builders made their herky jerky progress, Lilyanna, who had been dancing about the block area to the beat of some internal rhythm, and therefore largely oblivious to the builders, had as a consequence been chased off the burgeoning ship more times than I could count. As she turned a sort of pirouette on the ship deck, the builders said once more, loudly, "Hey, we're building a ship!"

Lilyanna was offended, putting her hands on her hips defiantly, commanding, "Stop!" Saying "stop" forcefully is a technique we teach the children for when someone is hurting them, frightening them, or taking their things. Some kids, however, find it so powerful that they try it out in any circumstance in which they find themselves at odds with others.

This lead to a silent stand-off, with the three builders standing face-to-face with Lilyanna, angry faces all around. Finally, Charlotte said, as if castigating the world, "This is our ship! Mine, Henry's, Audrey's and Lilyanna's!"

Then the four angry ship builders got back to work.

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Turning On Our Own Light

You can't have a light without a dark to stick it in. ~Arlo Guthrie 

Before we've even convened our Pre-3 class for the first time each year, our parent educator Dawn and I have already told the parents during our fall orientation meeting to expect that children will hit, kick, push, scratch, and bite, and that their child is likely to be involved one way or another. Then, after the first month of school, at our first parent meeting, with parents abuzz about all the hitting, kicking, pushing, scratching, and biting they've witnessed in class, Dawn's parent ed topic is "normal" development, including the inevitable experiments in hitting, kicking, pushing, scratching, and biting, and what we can do about it.

For the purposes of this post, I'm also going to add such behaviors as taking, spitting, screaming, destroying the work of others, bossing, hoarding, and just about anything else that can fall into the category of "socially unacceptable."

Dawn goes through the research, pointing out that all of this is well within the range of normal, and that we should strive to seize these obvious teaching moments. (For further discussion about how we try to do this at Woodland Park, you might want to click here and here.)

But it does raise for me the deeper question: why is this typical behavior?

Some of it is mere oblivion. Children this age are notoriously suns around which the universe revolves and one of the reasons we bring them together in the first place, is to give them the chance to experience bumping up against all those other suns and figuring out how to live in a constellation with them. It's not uncommon at all, for instance, for a child to run right through another on their way somewhere else or to simply push someone when they're in their way. It's not rudeness: they are really just so absorbed in their pursuits that they don't notice the other people. Experience and development will bring them around in time.

Another part of the answer is that young children are essentially mad scientists running around this laboratory of life poking at buttons, throwing switches, and tugging on levers, sometimes over and over, driven to understand what they do. This is why, for instance, you don't want to have your nuclear launch button in the same room as a 2-year-old. 

But that's not entirely fair. It's certainly more complex than either of these summations suggest. From an evolutionary perspective, children are born with only one tool for survival: crying. The species produces a next generation only because enough adults instinctively respond to crying. For adults that cry is something that pierces our hearts, calling us to action, pumping our blood, making us feel as if something is wrong, while for the baby that cry is merely the tool for connecting with the world outside herself, with none of the emotional baggage we bring to it.

We've evolved into an animal with great big brains and relatively fragile bodies, with so much to learn before it can survive on its own that we must go through years, even decades of dependency on others, if we are ever truly able to be independent. From the moment we are born, however, we begin to play, reaching out first with our crying voices, then ears and eyes. As we combine natural development with experience, our hands and feet come into play, until our whole bodies are engaged in the playful process of learning about our world. And it's the other people who engage us the most intensely.

(T)he children who "take" the most are invariably the ones who give the most. ~Janet Lansbury

Development might dictate when we are ready for things, but it's play that determines what and how we actually learn. If you watch babies play, as parent educator Janet Lansbury spends her days doing, you'll see how, when allowed to freely explore, they manipulate objects, turning them over and over, studying them from all sides, banging them on the floor, sticking them in their mouths, and generally putting them through their paces as they teach themselves the important things to know about these objects. And when that "object" is another person with whom they are allowed to freely explore, they seek to manipulate him, turn him over and over, study him from all sides, bang him on the floor, stick him in their mouths, and generally put him through his paces. This is done, of course, without malice or intention other than that urge to engage and learn through play.

As Janet points out, we grown-ups are inclined to intervene, and we should when someone is getting hurt, but too often in our efforts to somehow manage the interaction, we try to teach them things rather than allow them the freedom to actually learn the way humans are designed to learn, thereby discouraging play. "Our interruptions put the brakes on valuable social exchanges and leave toddlers with the message that they're incapable of interacting with their peers."

An example she uses is the concept of "sharing" or "ownership," ideas that are simply beyond the developmental abilities of babies. When one baby takes something from another and we jump in by insisting, no matter how gently, that it must be returned, we are attempting to "teach" an idea that they are incapable of understanding, thus putting an end to a playful, social interaction. In other words, we prevent them from manipulating the world before them, as is their natural inclination, not letting them, in fact study this situation from all sides, bang it on the floor, stick it their mouth, or generally put it through its paces. It's no wonder that Janet has found that the babies in her classes, where they are given this opportunity, who are most likely to "take" are also the ones most likely to give: they've been allowed to learn about the entire interaction, understand it, and understand the light.

I will love the light because it shows me the way. Yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars. ~Og Mandino

How can one understand light without exploring dark? How can one understand up without exploring down? How can one understand gentleness without exploring roughness?

As children get older and begin to find their way to people like me who work with them, it's no less important that we give them the opportunity to freely explore their social world. Of course, as with Janet's babies, we intervene when someone is getting hurt or scared, but that doesn't mean that even these behaviors aren't an important part of their learning. I've seen Janet's take-give phenomenon at work in our own school over the years. The 2-year-old child with the larger, stronger body who so often runs right through his peers will invariably become the 4-year-old skilled in the art of gentleness. The toddler who is most likely to destroy another's block tower will invariably be the first to understand the importance of helping rebuild it. The child who blunders by attempting to show affection for another by biting, will invariably be the one who later touches us with his ability to show his friends how much he loves them.

Again, I must emphasize that I do not want children to be pushed, hit or bitten, but I am a realist and know that short of simply keeping young children apart from one another, these things are a part of how humans learn. We must study the dark before we can understand the light.

It's not always easy and I fail often, but ideally we adults seek to remain calm, to intervene when necessary without judgement, to role model compassion and gentleness toward the injured, and to help children think their way through to alternatives, knowing all the while that as long as we are there loving them with consistency and compassion, experience and development will bring them around in time, invariably to a fuller understanding of the light.

We all walk in the dark and each of us must learn to turn on his or her own light. ~Earl Nightingale

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"I'm Sorry, Finn V."

A few years ago, we had two Finn's in class: Finn V. and Finn P. The adults only used the initial when there was cause for ambiguity, but the children, even the Finns themselves, usually included the initials.

We were outside and I was watching Finn V. carefully using chalk to color bricks on our wall.

He had done two in the center of the wall and had moved over to work on one near the edge. Isak took a paint brush from the water bucket and unknowingly started painting over the two bricks Finn had previously colored.

Finn shouted, "Hey!" threw down his chalk and began to stomp off. I was on the verge of intervening but luckily I waited an extra beat. Isak turned from his painting and said, "I'm sorry. Finn V."

Finn paused in mid-stomp, looking at Isak from the corners of his eyes.

Isak said, "Finn V., I'm sorry."

Finn pivoted, and instead of storming off, sat heavily on a bench, wearing a glowering face. Isak walked over to him, still carrying his paint brush, got right in his face, and said, "I'm SO sorry, Finn V."

Finn, still wearing his sour face, grumbled, "That's okay."

Again, "I'm SO sorry, Finn V."

"That's okay."

Isak went back to painting, carefully choosing a spot where the bricks had not been colored. Finn sulked for a minute longer, then went off on his way.

Human beings simply cannot have a more mature emotional exchange than that. Isak's honest mistake and sincere apology could only be matched by Finn's ability to forgive even while in a fit of justified anger.

I have no fear for our future.

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Arguing From Friendship And Integrity

The children make their own classroom rules, one of the first of which is always, "No taking things from other people."

By this point in the year, most of the kids in our 3-5's class, most of time, remember to not just snatch things they want from the hands of their friends. If you watch carefully it's not hard to find evidence of children fighting down the urge in almost every interaction. Most endearing, I think, are those children who reach out for, and even go so far as to longingly touch the object of their heart's desire, but manage, perhaps with all their willpower, to not grab. I believe, and faith is what we rely upon since it's impossible to ever truly know what's in another person's heart, that at least some of it is the result of the practice we've had together so far this year; that these day-to-day acts of self-regulation are evidence that the children both collectively and individually are developing their understanding of fairness, that they are experiencing empathy, that they see themselves reflected in others, that it is truly important to them to live in harmony with their fellow humans.

I know, of course, that much of where we are now emerges from mere habit, from being reminded over and over that, "You and your friends agreed, No taking things from other people." Habit is not the same thing as understanding, but it is the material with which we pave the pathway that leads up to the house of values.

And I do know that for some of the kids, at least part of their self-control is simply that they know they're unlikely to get away with it. The rightful possessor will object, adults will step in to remind everyone of the agreements we've made together, with the result being what you by now know it was to have been all along: you'll get a turn when your friend is finished.

So what we are left with is patience or persuasion. 

We had our toy tools out last week, the ones we use for dramatic play as opposed to actually making or doing things. One of the older boys is particularly fond of a plastic pipe wrench, a one-of-a-kind classroom object. He's made a beeline for it each morning this week, possessing it and not releasing it until clean-up time. Fair enough, although on Thursday, for a brief time, he got busy with something else and let the wrench fall by the wayside long enough for a younger boy to become attached to it.

When this new circumstance became clear to everyone, the younger boy was sitting in a box of blocks, clutching a collection of tools on his lap.

Said the older boy, "Hey, that's my wrench. I want it!" 

The younger boy sat silently.

Trying to be more precise, "That one right there. I was using it."

When the younger boy again didn't respond, he picked up another wrench from the ground and held it out to him, "You can use this one. And I can use that one." Still nothing.

"Hey, you know, you're not even using it. You're just holding it. You're not doing anything."

The younger boy finally responded, "I'm driving a crane."

"What?" He made a show of widening his eyes, affecting an expression of disbelief, gesturing persuasively with his hands, "That's not a crane! You're just sitting on a box with blocks around you. It's just in your imagination."

In the silence, I could hear the younger boy making faint motor sounds from deep in his chest, sounds I assumed where those of a crane.

"It's just in your imagination, you know. You should just give me that wrench because it's mine and it's just your imagination."

It went on like this for several minutes, this attempt to find an argument, or negotiation point, that would sway the crane operator into giving up that wrench. He seemed to think the "it's just your imagination line" was a winner because he kept coming back to it. He offered specified incentives (e.g., "I'll give you $20," "I'll let you see my race car") but to no avail. I was impressed by the younger boy's resistance to persuasion, but even more by the fact that the older boy never once made a threat of any kind, not even to take away his friendship, not even of the "I'll be mad at you" emotional blackmail variety. He pestered the younger boy for sure, but stuck to arguing from a place of friendship and integrity, offering incentives and reason, but not threats.

He didn't get that wrench until much later, but what he achieved was magnificent nevertheless.

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Beyond MLK's Dream

On this Martin Luther King Day most of us will listen to snippets, perhaps all, of his great "I Have A Dream" speech, but civil rights was not the only cause this great American championed, and it is not the only reason we celebrate his life today. He was also a great advocate for the poor and in 1967 he spoke out against the war in Vietnam.

Time magazine called his "Beyond Vietnam" speech at the Riverside Church "demigogic slander." The editorial page of the supposedly liberal Washington Post stated, "King has diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people."

When I listen to this rarely heard speech, I am shocked by how applicable it is to the wars we are fighting today. I'm reminded that when the powerful are against you, you are probably on the right side of history. And as a teacher, I'm motivated by the knowledge that children do not start wars, adults do, but we send our children to die in them.

Here is the speech:

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The Problem Solving Team

I was down at the workbench working with three kids on adding the gold and silver stripes to our birthday throne as we'd democratically decided a few days before, when one of our parent-teachers let me know that they needed my help in dealing with a conflict. A quick glance let me know that no one was currently getting hurt, so we finished what we were doing, then I said to the kids, "Come on, let's be the problem solving team."

We have this set of wooden shelves up at the top of the outdoor classroom on which we store wooden blocks. For the past few weeks, the kids have been clearing off the top shelf, making room for two kids, then using it as their castle. R, in the role of usurper, had commandeered one of the two spots as the other kids tried to talk him into moving. As the problem solving team arrived on the scene, he was standing there powerfully, making himself immovable.

I started with the boy who appeared the most upset, "We're the problem solving team. What's happening?"

"We were here first! R won't move." There was more, but that's the gist of it.

I turned to R, "What's happening?" He continued to stand powerfully with a fierce look on his face, but didn't reply. I gave him another chance to state his side of the case, but he remained silent.

I said, "Okay, problem solving team. If I understand it correctly, these guys were playing here first and R won't move." I asked the involved parties, "Does that sound right?" When neither objected, I asked each of the members of our impromptu problem solving team if they had any ideas.

The first problem solver suggested that R could get down and say he's sorry.

The second thought they could, in some unspecified manner, make the castle bigger.

The third suggested that R could use our small climber as his own castle.

I turned to R., "So the problem solving team has offered you three choices. Which one do you chose?"

Still without speaking, R. pointed at the climber. 

"Are you choosing to make that your castle?"

He nodded. It took him a few minutes before he actually acted, but finally he cleared out and assumed a powerful stance for a time in his own castle.

I said, "Thank you problem solving team. Now, I'm going back to work on the throne."

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The Single Most Dangerous Thing We Do

I've written before about our giant foam blocks:

I suppose if you asked me what I "expect" the kids to do with these blocks, I would say, "Build," but from the moment I saw them in the catalog, I knew there was another side to them: a wild side, a dangerous side, the side that would have appealed to me as a boy. I usually tell the parent-teacher responsible for the block area that I consider playing with these blocks to be the single most dangerous thing we do at Woodland Park. Heads collide. Smaller children have blocks, along with bodies, fall on them. Structures that look both soft and stable, topple over when we try to climb on them . . . Their greatest danger, however, lies in their apparent safety. They're soft and light, right? There are no sharp corners, no hard parts. Inexperienced children and adults alike tend to "let down" when they see them, as if these pillow-like qualities reduce their own responsibility to be cautious, to assess risk, and consider others. I once made the mistake of laying gym mats down under them: never had we had more tears than on that day as caution was thrown to the wind . . . I'll admit there are times when I wonder why I trot these out 2-3 times a year. They're exhausting for all of us, and they occupy a great deal of my precious storage space when not in use, but then I think of how it's an environment in which we hone those aforementioned negotiating and risk assessment skills, how we get to practice studying our friend's faces and bodies for how they might be feeling, how we find ourselves on both ends of the play if we put any time into it at all. As the teacher, I come prepared to work.

We played with them again all last week, and as usual it was a lot of work for everyone; fun, sweaty work, but work nonetheless. In our Pre-3 class we worked primarily on the idea of "knocking down buildings" and "not knocking down buildings." At home, the distinction probably doesn't matter much, with the game of build-it-up-and-knock-it-down being for many two-year-olds the game you play with blocks, but at school, where we share both blocks and space, learning to make a distinction will become increasingly important as classmates begin to erect more and more meaningful constructions. I certainly don't expect children this young to be able to consistently make these judgements or to control those impulses, but I was gratified when, by the end of this week, many of the kids had started experimenting with the idea of "knocking down building" vs. "not knocking down building" on their own, often asking first or even applying their own labels to their work. We've been working on this idea since the beginning of the school year, of course, so it's not as if they've never heard it before, but the giant foam blocks really bring the contrasts out nicely.

With the older children in the 3-5's class, we're still working on the concept, but risk assessment and thinking about our friends was more in the forefront of our work together. For some kids, the temptation to hurl ones body at the ramparts, to pig pile, to wrestle and writhe, is just too much to resist, and we certainly don't forbid this type of play, but there are other people to consider beyond whether or not it's okay to knock things down. We spent a lot more time "planning" our rougher play, making sure we limited the potential for injury or collateral damage, taking a moment to be sure everyone was on board with any destructive plans, and warning those who didn't want to get mixed up in it to get out of the way.

I was well-prepared for all of this, having taught these two classes for a long time, but this week was my first experience in breaking out the giant foam blocks with our 5's class. Yes, there were still some challenges with the whole knocking down business, although most was of the unintentional variety. And the play did tend toward the wild side at times, but what we really had to work on the most was the phenomenon of block hoarding.

There are only about 30-35 individual blocks in all. On Wednesday, the first few builders quickly used up the limited supply, creating "ships" and "castles" and whatnot in separate corners of our blue rug, then essentially spent the rest of the time resenting or defending the various hoards.

Hey, that's was my block!

You can't come in here, this is our castle!

They're using them all!

The natural state of defending a hoard is misery all around (are you listening Wall Street?).

I'd assigned myself the block station specifically so I could see how things evolved with this group. I did my best to assist in the constant, tearful negotiations, but at the end of the day few of them were satisfied. When we were done, I asked the group if they'd had fun playing with them and there was a general agreement that they had, which was followed up by a lot of complaining about individual behavior, most of which centered around the hoarding.

On Thursday, then, our next class session, I initiated a discussion about what we could do to prevent a repeat of Wednesday. The kids quickly coalesced around the ideas that we needed some rules, or agreements, about how we were going to play together with these blocks. We brainstormed a list of 4 ideas, the first being "We all build one big castle together and share it" with the other ideas being some version of creating fiefdoms. After some discussion we narrowed it down to a choice between:

     1)    We all build one big castle

     2)    Each person gets 6 blocks

I can't recall which option actually won the consequent vote, but it was close and even after the hands were counted, the controversy remained. There was some shouting.

All the adults in the room, of course, knew that the math didn't work on the second option. I started by trying to explain it, but it only made matters worse. We were going to have to make the idea concrete.

"Okay, I have an idea. Let's see what it would look like if everyone got six blocks." Normally, these giant foam blocks reside in our storage room, but for the week we've been stashing them, Tetris-style, stacked to the ceiling along one wall. "Let's get out the blocks and divide them into piles of six."

I didn't have to wait for agreement as they turned as one, joyfully pulling the whole thing down on their heads. After the initial hubbub, however, we got to work, and with coaching from the adults in the room, we managed to create something approximating six piles of six. There were some shouts of, "These are mine!" but I kept reminding them, "This is just an experiment," and "We're just practicing," and "I'll decide who gets which pile."

When the process was complete, we got all the kids to stand just off the edge of the rug, looking at their handiwork. I said, "Now, this is just an experiment to figure out if we still like the idea of everyone getting six blocks . . . Elena, let's pretend this pile of blocks is yours. Go stand by it." I then, one at a time, picked kids to stand by a pile, making sure to leave the children who were the most adamant about the six blocks per kid plan without a stash to call their own. I could see the anxiety in their faces as the number of available piles dwindled. When I called the last name, a couple of them burst into tears at the realization that they were the ones left out.

I asked the children left behind, "How do you feel about this solution?"

Bad!

Sad!

I don't like it!

It's not fair!

Then I asked the children who were standing by those piles of six, "How do you feel about the solution?" A few of them indicated they didn't think it was really so bad, but they all agreed, as they looked at their friends standing over there, left out, that it wasn't fair.

We then moved the blocks back off the rug and re-convened our little democratic meeting. "Okay then," referring to the easel upon which I'd been writing down our ideas and tabulating our votes, "We'll vote again since the first one was so close. If you want everyone to get six blocks raise your hand." Crickets. "If you want us to all build one big castle together, raise your hand." Unanimous.

As the kids got to work then, building, they started off in the pattern from before -- This is my ship. This is our castle -- so I reminded them, "We agreed that we were going to build one big castle together." It took awhile, but soon they were saying things like, "This is the castle's ship," and "This is our castle."  I joined the play at first, using stray blocks to "connect" the emerging constructions, saying things like, "This can be the bridge that hooks the ship to the castle." After awhile, the kids started doing it on their own and I backed off. 

After about 15 minutes, every block was in use, and we'd settled into dramatic play in which all the girls were queens and all the boys were kings, except for a couple of "drivers" and a "guard" who marched back and forth outside the castle humming the chant of the witch's guards from the movie Wizard of Oz.

At one point, someone had the idea of building a new castle. Marit took on the job of eliciting agreement from the rest of the kids, then after a frenzy of demolition, they constructed another castle. A similar play pattern emerged on the following day.

Yesterday, I was mostly just sitting on a bench off to the side, watching, listening, relaxing, a new experience for me when it comes to the "single most dangerous thing we do."

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