Junkyard Chic

If you've been reading here a long time, you'll already know this story. Back in 2010, The Woodland Park Cooperative Preschools were located atop Phinney Ridge, near our namesake zoo. Our outdoor space was little more than a small slab of asphalt. We annexed an area we called "the garden" by fencing in a patch of mud and installing a few raised beds, but nothing grew there because it was the only place we had for kids to dig. Several families told me that they'd almost not enrolled in our school because of our meager outdoor facilities; I'm sure many more families actually did walk away without saying a word. During the previous summer, however, inspired by my friend Jenny of Let the Children Play fame, I began to use the internet to explore more naturalistic play spaces, collecting ideas that I then brought to our parent community in the autumn of 2009, which lead to us building our first outdoor classroom, a transformation you can read about here.

In the pictures you see a nice, tidy, newly created space. And in the beginning, as I was learning on the job how to be an outdoor educator, I tried to keep it that way, but that's not how a good educational environment works: it must evolve along with the children and their play. And as I began to let go, that small space did evolve, becoming looser, more adaptable, and yes, to a certain kind of adult eye, junkier. In fact, one parent, as she explained why she would not be returning with her daughter for the following year told me that part of the reason was that she couldn't stand the "junkyard chic." Although she intended it as a pejorative, I've since used that expression in my own internal dialogs about our outdoor spaces.

In 2011, we moved to our current location at The Center of the Universe, where our community, having done it once on a smaller scale, created our current outdoor classroom, which like its predecessor has evolved a personality of its own, looking similar too, but quite different from the nice, tidy, newly created space it was 26 months ago. Periodically, I feel a ghost of my old control freakishness and hear in myself echoes of that dismissive parent as I look around and think in frustration, "damn this junkyard chic," fighting a strong urge to set everything to rights. But on most days I know I'm looking at a place where the children get to make it their own, a place in which we don't use things, but finish using them, a place where children invent, explore, discover, and play as children naturally do, without regard for chic, junkyard or otherwise.

This brings me to the subject of "adventure playgrounds," one of the concepts that has inspired me since the beginning of my own personal journey. I was recently reminded about them by Vermont-based radio producer and documentary filmmaker Erin Davis, who contacted me about her work. She has completed a radio piece and is currently working on a film documentary entitled Of Kith and Kids, focused on an adventure playground in North Wales called "The Land." I wanted to share some of her teasers with you:

An Adventure Play Documentary from Erin Davis on Vimeo.

"We haven't finished yet!" from Erin Davis on Vimeo.

I Am Good At Doing Stuff from Erin Davis on Vimeo.

I'm really looking forward to this film! Click on over to the Of Kith and Kin page to read more about Erin, her projects, The Land, and how you can support her work. And as an added incentive, Erin has included a terrific video from the 1970's about an early adventure playground in Chelsea, featuring one of the most articulate spokespeople for the idea I've ever heard.

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!

-->

Read More

Why We Play Board Games

As a child I was an avid player of board games. I have early memories of Candyland, Chutes & Ladders, and High Ho Cherry-O, all of which are games we play at Woodland Park. I liked the fantasyland of sweets, imaging myself floating, for instance, on the floe of ice cream depicted on the game board. There was something about that long slide of disaster that dissects the center of the Chutes & Ladders board that made me not so upset when forced to ride it to the bottom. And the constant good-natured arguing between my brother and me about whether the cherries should be placed in the trees stem up or stem down bordered on a family tradition. 

But it was the actual playing of the games, according to the rules, or at least according to the rules to which we'd agreed, and the competition and cooperation that came out of those agreements, that made the time spent important. When we break out the board games at school, it's not, of course, with the idea of pitting children against one another, but rather the practice of playing together within the boundaries of our agreements.

Typically, we play our games indoors, set up on a table with an adult nearby, not so much as a supervisor or manager, but more as a playmate and role model. If a child asks how to play, we may walk them through the rules, but there is no obligation to abide abide by them, at least until a classmate seeks to enter into the play. It's then that the agreements come in. 

The point of bringing board games into the classroom isn't to practice following rules or instructions, but rather to practice playing cooperatively. Often for our youngest kids it winds up being something like taking turns with the spinner, ignoring the board part of the game altogether. The older kids are more inclined to want to know what the official instructions have to say, if only as a starting point for a negotiation that becomes, really, the core of their play together.

Our games of Candyland might feature the children taking turns drawing cards, while all of them move their pawns, chosing to take their "adventure" in the company of friends. Our Chutes & Ladders game board stands in as a wild and wooly table top playground. And Hi Ho Cherri-O becomes a farm with repeated cycles of  planting and reaping. 

Some people worry that preschoolers are to young for the winner-take-all kind of competition offered by traditional board games, and indeed, there are sometimes tears. Others figure it's good for them to experience the hard knocks. I think it depends on the kid, but what I have observed time and time again is that when left to their own devices, they chose to play by "rules" that allow everyone to raise their hands over their heads in victory.

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!

-->

Read More

How We Run Our Stations

I often say both to myself as well as aloud, "I don't know how they do it." I'm referring, of course, to all those teachers out there who don't work in cooperative preschools, and especially those with a play-based classroom that operates around the idea of "stations" or "centers."

For those who don't know what I'm talking about, be assured that I had no idea either until the first time I actually set foot in such a school. The set-up made such immediate sense to me, however, that I promptly enrolled my daughter for the following year. I don't know what I expected school to look like for two-year-olds, but the moment I saw how the Latona Pre-3's Cooperative Preschool classroom worked, a room featuring a half dozen stations -- blocks, sensory table, art, table toys, dramatic play, library -- with which the children were able to freely interact, or not, I knew we'd found our home.

Back in April, I wrote more philosophically about this classroom approach, but a reader asked me recently for tips of the "nuts and bolts" variety, especially when it comes to being the adult responsible for guiding or facilitating the "free play" without taking it over and, well, rendering it not so free. I should mention that I'm writing primarily about our indoor stations here, but all the same principles apply to our outdoor stations as well.

Since we're a cooperative, I have the benefit of anywhere from 5-12 assistant teachers, parent-teachers, in the classroom with me on any given day, depending on the age of the kids and the status of maternity leaves. Each of these assistant teachers, then, are assigned specific roles within the classroom on a rotating basis, most of which involve facilitating one of our stations, which I've prepared in advance. As our parent-teachers arrive, I try to give each one a quick briefing about how I imagine the children will choose to engage with the activities, a head's up about any typical behaviors for which to be on the lookout, and a tip or two about how they might want to extend the play should things either get extra exciting or lose momentum. I then try to always finish my instructions with a reminder to, above all else, "Let the kids make it their own."

For many parent-teachers, that's the hardest part: getting out of the way, dropping an adult agenda or fixed idea about how things ought to go. For instance, we all think we know what's going on when we find easels, paper, paint, brushes, and a bowl of fruit on the table. Of course, we're working on "still life" paintings, and that invitation is indeed implied in this particular collection of materials, although it is by no means the only invitation there. This is also an invitation to paint the fruit itself, to use the fruit to apply the paint to paper, to finger paint, to mix colors; it is an invitation to make art, but also to engage in a sensory exploration, scientific experiments, storytelling, or socializing. When we make the mistake of saying, "Oh look! Today we're painting pictures of fruit!" we are, in effect, withdrawing all those other invitations. No, instead I encourage our parent-teachers, if they must say something, to simply list the materials they see before them, giving them names, but not necessarily purposes, and just so long as the children do not endanger, molest, or otherwise inflict themselves on others, they are free to accept any and all invitations that appeal to their curiosity.

This doesn't mean that the teachers role, then, ought to be limited to merely standing back, keeping things tidy, the children safe, and the materials handy, although some of our parent-teachers chose to do it like that, and it's a perfectly fine way to facilitate the play. Some of us, however, are there to play with the kids. Naturally, we need to guard against taking over the play, but there is often a lot to be gained from a teacher who role models active, creative engagement. I like to narrate my own thought process as I perform my own experiments: "I wonder what will happen when I put this block here," "The rice is flowing through the top part of the funnel and coming out of this little hole -- if I put my finger here, it stops," "I'm putting all the red ones together." Usually, my goal is to get things going before stepping away, although many parent-teachers are quite skilled at continuing to play with the children, almost in the role of a slightly older, wiser playmate, not commanding the action, not yanking them out of their flow with questions, but rather being one of the features of the activity.

Others of us approach the task in a more hand's off, yet still fully engaged manner, carefully observing the children, then finding ways to assist or support them in accomplishing or discovering what they seem to be striving to accomplish or discover, often simply by engaging in what's sometimes referred to as "sportscasting" or narrating what you see unfolding before you: "Sally is making holes in the play dough with her thumb," "You are turning that puzzle piece around and around to see if it fits," "I see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 bears in your box." I often find these parents cheek-to-cheek with children, wondering and puzzling together.

Sometimes a parent-teacher finds herself all alone at her station either due to the natural ebb and flow of free play or because the invitation is simply not enticing enough on this particular day. The temptation, often, is to seek to liven things up, perhaps by adding bells and whistles or by becoming more overt in re-issuing said invitation, and that's all well and good. Others, however, recognize that they are now the proprietors of a calm, quiet oasis, a place for a child or two to take a break from the action, a valuable thing sometimes in a bustling place like ours.

There are times, however, when this ebb and flow are anticipated parts of an activity. For example, when we play with ice in the sensory table, there is usually an initial surge, then as fingers grow numb, so does the enthusiasm. That's the moment when the parent-teacher will introduce our box of gloves. As the interest in that dies down, we break out the rock salt to sprinkle on the ice, an activity that accelerates the melting process. As the salt burrows holes in the ice we bring out the pipettes and liquid water color that can then inject into the holes, filling the ice with ribbons of color. As our play time grows short, our sensory table has become a pool of colored liquid, rainbow icebergs, and undissolved rock salt, having passed through, along with the kids, a wide variety of stages and phases.

Most of our stations are of the open-ended variety, although every now and then we'll take on a project with a goal. For instance, last week our workbench station was engaged all week in assembling our new outdoor furniture, which involved following instructions, puzzling things together, and using Allen wrenches to tighten lots of screws. In that case, my instruction to the parent-teacher was, "Just start building the stuff and as kids drop by to see what's going on, include them." I often think of these kinds of stations the way I think of parents including their children in preparing dinner or working on the car out in the garage: real participation in real projects.

I suppose the way non-cooperative teachers handle all this is to either offer fewer stations at any given time or to let some of them sort of "run" themselves, and I'm sure that works out just fine, but I find I've become really quite reliant upon having all those extra adults in the room with me, working to make their station the best it can be. Most of all, I think, I enjoy how these stations, these invitations to play, so often take on part of the personality of the parent-teacher involved. We often leave many of our stations the same for more than a single day. For instance I'll set up the same collection of blocks and toys from one day to the next, or the sensory table will contain coffee beans all week, or we'll continue working on the same glue collage day-after-day. But that hardly means they are the same activities. For one thing, the children have the opportunity to continue building upon what they learned the day before, but an inevitable part of the difference comes from what the parent-teacher brings to their role as facilitator and guide, because there are as many ways to do that as there are teachers.

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!

-->

Read More

I Wish We Could Tell The Truth

I wish we could tell the truth about teaching, that it's really the simplest, most natural thing in the world.

I've had these large pieces of non-slip material you put under rugs to hold them in place for quite some time. I was saving it mostly because I had a lot of it, which is one of my primary criteria for saving anything. I've had a vague idea of using it at the art table, but figured, as I often do, to see if the kids had any better ideas of how to use it.

I wish our profession wasn't in a fight for its life against deep pocket foes with a political or economic agenda, because this simplicity is really its beauty and joy.

Our main idea on the first day was to play under it together, making a kind of tent into which to crowd ourselves.

We've learned to protect ourselves with an armor of jargon like every other profession as a way to sell ourselves in this sell-or-be-sold world.

Cooperating enough to fit all of our bodies under there isn't easy when you're two.

But teaching is not every other profession. I'm not even sure it is a profession as much as a calling. Because when we strip all that "professionalism" away, we see that the core of teaching is to love the children: every one of us knows that. And when you love, you listen. That's what teachers do.

It's especially hard when one of those bodies is that of a grown man, taking up far too much of the space, but we managed.

It's when we listen with our ears and eyes and hearts that we can access not only their genius, but our own.

Teaching greatness is not a rare thing, I don't think, but it's hard for others to see because it takes place in intimate moments when we're down on our knees, face to face with the children, ears, eyes, and heart wide open. And then to try to talk about it after the fact, to try to satisfy the demands to make learning "transparent," we wind up wraping the moments of genius in words that detail techniques and strategies that describe only the surface manifestation of what happened because to say, "We connected," sounds too hippy dippy and namby pamby.

Teaching is not a complicated thing, but it does take practice, lots of it, every day with lots of different kids, and even after ten or twenty years there's still a new thing to learn every day, its profundity often lost in its simplicity.

When we play with children, we engage them as they engage with their passions and curiosities, and when we listen with our whole selves, we notice instantly when that moment comes around, and then it's just a simple matter of making a statement of fact, or asking just the right question, or sitting quietly in the knowledge that that is what this child needs right now. How much better that is than to assume they are all ready for this particular knowledge at this particular time delivered in this particular manner by virtue of being more or less the same age -- what Ken Robinson calls their "manufacture date" -- then bang heads against the wall in frustration that many of them just don't get it.

To be a "gifted" teacher is really just possessing the knowledge that children are people and then proceeding to treat them like people, loving them, and listening.

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!

-->

Read More

Where The Action Is

Several years ago it was the word "dodo" that was the automatic laugh line. Any kid looking for attention or to enter into play with friends knew that all she or he had to do was say the magic word. Everyone within earshot would stop what they were doing to laugh, then you were part of the gang, almost like a password. One class decided that the way we were going to take turns on the swings was that after someone asked you three times for a turn, you had to give up your swing, but it only worked if the request was phrased exactly like this: "Would you please let me have a turn?" If you failed to put the words in exactly that order three times in a row, for instance putting the word "please" at the either end of the sentence rather than in the middle, you had to start all over again. This year, our 5's class, after debates about the propriety of talking about "butts," "bottoms," and "bums," finally settled on the term "slammer" as the socially acceptable way to reference the human derriere. If you made the mistake of saying "butt," someone would be sure to correct you, "You mean slammer."

One of the ways we practice our community building skills is by "playing stories." This usually starts with an invitation: "Let's play a story." Sometimes I say it, sometimes a kid will say it. 

Whenever people come together, a set of community ethics and values emerges, typically complete with short-cut jargon. If the group stays together long enough, some of these become codified as rules, but even if it's nothing as formal as that, every group, if it's going to serve the needs of its members, evolves at least a set of unspoken agreements about how to do things, how to treat one another, and what kinds of things we hold in common as being acceptable, important, and even funny. It's one of the main reasons it's often so challenging to be a new member of an established group. What's so funny about "dodo," what the hell's a "slammer," and why should it matter if I put my "please" in the wrong place? But it does matter, it's part of ethics and values of this community, and the people who are most successful in becoming part of a new group are the ones best able to figure it out, which is one of the most important things we work on in preschool.

We then gather up some loose parts and chose a place to play our story. Usually, I start things off with the convention of, "Once upon a time . . ." then begin telling a story using the loose parts as props and characters.

Of course, there's a dark side to insider-ness, the potential to use it to exclude others, to create a divisive them v. us mentality at the heart of a community. It's a fine and complicated line to negotiate. For instance, earlier this year a couple boys started creating playground games for themselves based upon a video game called "Minecraft Survivor." As a teacher, I was thrilled they had found a way to connect so deeply so early in the year, but of course, the other kids didn't know their "bedrock" from their "diamond pickaxe," which made them outsiders. The Minecraft Survivors played noisily, their games involving lots of action, which naturally made it attractive to outsiders. One or two kids figured it out fairly quickly, persuaded their parents to let them play the video game at home, and were soon Minecraft insiders, equipped with knowledge about zombies and portals and whatnot. 

I try to leave empty places in my narrative for kids to begin inserting their own ideas. In this case, some of the younger, less verbal kids started building the fairies' house as I worked with the older kids on the words. If you look closely, you'll see that our Shakespeare bust has become the king of our fairy land. I like that Shakespeare is playing our stories with us!

Others, however, either didn't understand that this was all based on a video game or had parents who were opposed to them playing it, yet the playground games held obvious appeal to them. It could have become a stark dividing line. I recall those situations as a boy, when the glamorous kids "knew" things I didn't know, wanting to be a part, but feeling inadequate. You don't want to ask stupid questions, you don't want to show up as uncool. The example that comes to mind from my own life was when the novel Jaws (later to put Steven Spielberg on the map in its movie form) was all the rage. I was new in my middle school and it seemed that's all the kids were talking about. So, I asked Mom to buy it for me, which she did with the precaution, "There are some things in this book with which our family disagrees," which I right away discovered as being casual, drunken sex on the beach, a sin for which you apparently paid by being severed in half by a giant shark. Reading about it, however, was no sin; in fact, it turned out to be the key to being admitted to the inside. Soon I could recreate all the grisly and sexy scenes with the best of them.

We frequently have to interrupt our story to come to agreements. In this case, we had to talk about whether or not we were going to have "crashing dinosaurs" in the story (no) and if we wanted a swimming pool (yes, but no dumping water on people). Usually, my goal is to say less and less, as the kids take over. As you can see here, they are moving forward without me.

I suppose my mom, based on our family ethics and values, could have simply attempted to ban the book, but come on; we all know that this would have made me even more eager to read it. It never works to force kids to play together or to attempt to forbid certain types of games. This just tends to push it all underground, making it cancerous. Mind you, no one was overtly excluding anyone in our Minecraft games, but there were definitely kids on the fringe who were feeling left out, so I figured I'd help them decide if they wanted to join the game by role modeling how to get a little sunlight on things. I began interjecting myself into the Minecraft games, often by asserting, "I'm a Minecraft Survivor," then co-opting some of their jargon as my own, boldly misusing it, compelling the insiders to divulge what they knew to all of us who had gathered around.

Just as in our Minecraft Survivor game, much of the dramatic play involves debate and discussion. What the kids begin to learn is that disagreement is only bad if it doesn't lead to agreement, so there is a strong incentive to find common ground, otherwise the story is over.

I would say something like, "I'm using my diamond axe to chop up a portal that I'm going to feed to the zombies."

"No, no, no, Teacher Tom, it's not an axe, it's a pickaxe, and you can't start with a diamond one, you have to earn it by collecting minerals . . ." Then I would start asking clarifying questions about pickaxes and minerals.

"You don't chop up portals, you go through them." Then I would start asking clarifying questions about portals and what you found on the other side.

"You don't feed the zombies, they're trying to eat you!" Then I would start asking clarifying questions about zombies and the other assorted bad guys.

My idea was to try to demonstrate how to get us all on the same page, at least about the playground version of the game, and to take the mystery out of it for the uninitiated, without stealing the authority from the glamorous kids who had invented the cool game that everyone wanted to play.

After several weeks of this, the Minecraft Survivor "team" had become an amoeba-like entity, retaining it's core group, but flexible enough to absorb anyone who was willing and able to say, "I'm a Minecraft Survivor." 

Sometimes I feel that this is my main job as a preschool teacher, helping children enter into play with others. These are important life skills, perhaps the most important. I often wonder how many of us missed our calling in life because we were intimidated by the insiders. I wonder how many geniuses the world has lost because their genius wasn't for working with others. I wonder how many potential best friends were never connected because they were separated by a fence of jargon.

The head of my daughter's school said during a commencement speech, "The hallmark of a great community is how quickly newcomers are brought into the center." I once shared this with another group with which I was involved, a group that was struggling with membership and participation. It shouldn't have surprised me when a longtime member answered, "No, you have to earn your way into the center." No wonder the group was struggling.

Since these were the kids who are moving on to kindergarten next year, I probably will never know the future of our playground Minecraft Survior games. I'm sure that some of them will attempt to recreate them on their new playgrounds. Perhaps they will be the glamorous kids who know how to draw others into the center. Others will be relieved to never have to play those particular games again. Whatever the case, there will be a new game, new ethics, new values, new jargon, because that is the material from which community is built, the specifics of which are largely unimportant. What is important, and what I hope our children carry off into the rest of their lives, is how to build and recognize communities that easily bring newcomers into the center because that's where the action is.

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

-->

Read More

Too Many Babies

(I'd originally planned to combine this girl-boy story with the one of dramatic play gender "conflict" from yesterday, but wasn't clever enough to make it work in the time I'd allotted myself for blogging. The children involved in this story are many of the same kids from yesterday's story.)

"We're Chinese sisters." The girls had dressed themselves up in the Chinese robes from our costume rack and had taken up residence in the top of our loft with all of our everyday babies.

I said, "You have a lot of babies."

"We're waiting for them to find mommies and daddies."

"They don't have mommies and daddies?" I repeated sadly.

"It's okay because we're taking care of them."

"We're taking care of them, but we're only 12-years-old . . . Well, I'm 12-years-old, I'm the big sister, and she's 8-years-old, she's the little sister." They both affected wee and pitiful faces; almost tragic.

I said, "That's awfully young to take care of so many babies."

"That's why we're helping them find mommies and daddies. We're only teenagers."

"We're not teenagers. Teenagers have to be older than us."

There was short debate on the topic of teenagers and whether or not that was old enough to be a mommy or daddy. They finally agreed they were not teenagers, allowing them to set aside their questions about the propriety of teenage parents.

That settled, I asked, "Could I be the daddy of one of those babies?"

"Sure, do you want a boy baby or a girl baby?"

"Hmm, I think I'll take one of each."

The girls looked at one another as if searching for a silent agreement before answering, then, "You can only have one. We have to save some for the other daddies."

"Yeah, you can only have one."

"Okay, well I guess I'd like a girl baby."

The girls began checking our anatomically correct dolls, "This one has a boy bottom. Boy bottom . . . Here's a girl bottom." They handed me my baby.

It was about at this time that a group of boys marched into the lower level of the loft, acting as if their intent was to crowd into the small space where the girls had set up their adoption agency. I wanted them to recognize that there was already a game taking place in the space, so I summarized, "These are Chinese sisters. They have a lot of babies looking for mommies and daddies. This is the baby they gave me. I'm the daddy." Then to the girls, "How do I take care of a baby?"

They looked at one another again, then, "You have to already know how to take care of a baby. You have to feed it and change its diapers and hold it."

"That sounds like a lot of work."

She shrugged, "Babies also cry a lot and you have to give them stuffed animals and rattles."

I said, "But what if I don't have any stuffed animals and rattles?"

At this point, without saying a word to one another or us, the boys climbed back down from the loft, leaving us to continue our conversation about taking care of babies. As we began to come to the realization that perhaps Teacher Tom was not equipped to take care of a baby, the boys returned, this time with their arms full of stuffed animals. "These are for the babies."

Before long, all of our stuffed animals were in the top of the loft. The girls arranged them around the babies.

As I continued talking with the girls, I heard the boys talking behind me:

"There aren't any more stuffed animals."

"The babies need rattles."

"There aren't any rattles."

"We'll have to make them."

That morning, we were playing with the cardboard rings left over from spent masking tape rolls. The boys figured out how to slip one inside another, creating a kind of sphere. These were the rattles.

As I continued talking with the girls, both discovering and helping to create this world of Chinese sisters with too many babies, the boys came and went in a steady stream, delivering rattles to the top of the loft.

When I walked away, the rattles had given way to plastic food from our play kitchen, as the village took on the task of raising all those babies who didn't have mommies or daddies.

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!

-->

Read More

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.

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!

-->

Read More