So That's What We'll Do

From a teacher's perspective, the primary difference between our regular school year programs and our Summer Program is that we are an ever-changing collection of children, most of whom attend other schools during the rest of the year. There are other differences, such as the schedule, a wider age range, and being an entirely outdoor enterprise, but this is the one that makes what I do a bit of a different challenge.

Normally, I like to let things emerge, slowly if necessary, from the children, organically, following their lead, but frankly, the Summer Program simply doesn't allow for that. By the time the kids are really getting comfortable enough to feel their oats, they're off to the rest of their warm and lazy days beyond our outdoor classroom. So, for better or worse, I find myself sometimes forcing things a bit.

One of the challenges we've experienced through these first few weeks is not having enough swings, which is a situation I'll admit to having forced. We normally have two regular sings and a trapeze bar, but by the end of our most recent school year, we'd added a tire swing and a swinging rope ladder to the mix. Before our summer sessions started, I removed the the extra stuff, which is, I think, why we've had a lot of kids waiting around for their turn.

During the second half of our day, we engage in what we quite unimaginatively call "Activities." Essentially, we "close" 3 of our regular stations (art, garden, and workbench) and open 3-4 new stations, from which the children, as always, are free to chose any or all. Yesterday, I introduced one of our stations by saying, "We've had a lot of people complaining about not having enough swings. Today we're going to build a new swing." If you want to work on that project, I said, you should hang out with me, naturally, near the swings.

Five of our 25 or so kids chose this over making baking soda and vinegar bombs or working wooden puzzles.

I said, "We're going to build a new swing. What do we need?"

"Someplace up high to hang it."

"Is our swing set high enough?"

"I don't think so."

There was then a brief discussion about the merits of the swing set. As the children contributed their best thinking, I noted that our crew included one five-year-old, two four-year-olds, and two three-year-olds. Most of the younger kids had chosen puzzles, most of the older ones were working on bombs, while a certain number of all ages had gone back to the games they'd been playing when we took our break for circle time. This is why a play-based curriculum is so powerful: the children get to choose what they wanted to learn.

After examining a few trees, we finally decided that the swing set would have do for hanging our new swing.

"What else do we need?"

"Tools."

"Yes, we'll probably need tools. What else?"

Silence.

So I forced things, "What about chains or ropes or something?"

"Yes! We need chains or ropes."

"And a seat!"

I asked, "Tools, chains or ropes, and a seat . . . Anything else?"

After a moment of silence, "We have to get up high."

"Yes," I said.

"We could stand on a tree."

"Yes, on a tree."

We sat for a moment looking at the row of cedars that divides our space.

"A tree is too high."

We were stumped. During the regular school year, I'd have likely let it stop there, hoping it would come up again on another day, but given the special nature of summer I prompted, "I wonder if there's a tool that would get us up high."

"A ladder."

"Do we have a ladder?" I asked, suddenly realizing that the step ladder we usually lean against the fence was gone.

"This is a ladder," referring to our homemade ladder which has become a sort of semi-permanent installation leading from the wood chips into the sand pit. We decided to try it. It's around 10 feet long so I was a little worried I'd actually have to climb it, but fortunately it didn't quite reach the cross bar.

I said, "It's not long enough. I think there's a ladder down by the work bench." So we all went down to the workbench where we found a tall step stool. "Will this work?"

"If you stand on it, Teacher Tom. I think your body is long enough to stand on it and reach."

We carried the step stool together, then a couple of the older kids figured out how to set it up, which they did several feet away from the swings. I asked, "Shall I try it?"

"Yes," so I climbed to the top step, then reached for the cross bar. "I can't reach it."

"Try stretching."

I strained, but couldn't reach it."

"We need a taller ladder."

"No, a taller grown-up."

"Maybe we could move the ladder closer."

I said, again steering things more than I normally would like, "I think if it was closer, I could reach it."

The kids shifted the ladder into a better position. I climbed to demonstrate I could now reach the cross bar, then said, "Okay, then let's find a rope."

We keep a collection of ropes in the outdoor classroom. Soon we had a half dozen options. I asked, "Which one is best?" The kids started playing small games of tug-o-war to test their strength, ultimately choosing a rope that was probably the most decrepit of the bunch. Fortunately, it is quite short, so when I hung it up, we could all readily see that we needed a longer rope, which turned out to be the very rope we'd used to hang our tire swing during the regular school year: a thick, sturdy length of rock climbing rope.

I hung the rope, which dragged onto the ground. There was some discussion about it being too long, but after taking turns hanging from it to prove it was strong enough to support our weight we decided to try it anyway.

I said, "Now we need a seat."

We started with a log. I tied it to the end of the rope, assuming it would be unworkable. Kind of amazingly, the kids figured out a way to stand on it and sort of spin around. Each of them gave it a go, proclaiming it fun, but it really wasn't a swing.

"Is this a good seat?" I asked.

"No."

The kids then dragged over a long plank. I tied it onto the end of the rope. This was more fun than the log, if only because several kids could climb on it at once. After goofing around on it for a while we discovered that it had a tendency, especially with only one child on it, to lurch about rather wildly which was hazardous to standers by. We decided it made a better teeter totter than a swing.

Our next candidate for a seat was where I was anticipating us winding up, a tire, but after trying it out for a while, the kids wanted to test a couple more ideas.

We tried a small board, which was about the size of a typical swing seat, but had the same challenges as we'd had with the log.

By now we were starting to break up as a group. While we'd been working on our swing, one of the 2-year-olds, inspired I think by all our heavy lifting had arranged several long planks and our homemade ladder into a very precarious, yet at the same time very inviting, climbing structure that sort of cantilevered out from the tree rounds that line our raised sandpit.

Before the work group broke up entirely, however, we tested one last "seat," tying a short wooden ladder to the rope. By now we were really down to two kids. They each took a turn, one feeling like it was a winner, the other convinced that someone would "get hurt very badly" if we left it up.

Before removing the ladder then, I asked, "So which seat was the best?"

There was a kind of shrug.

I forced things one last time, "The tire?"

No response.

I asked, "So nothing?"

"Yeah, nothing! Just leave the rope!"

So that's what we'll do.

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But Then What Would Happen To Summer?

For me, today is the first day of summer. The forecast for this week is sunny skies with mild temperatures and a light breeze. Although the chamber of commerce kind of weather is only secondary to the fact that this is the first day of the 2013 Woodland Park Summer Program.

First of all, let me say that it tickles me that we call it the Woodland Park Summer Program, just as our three other schools are named Woodland Park Pre-3's Cooperative Preschool, Woodland Park 3-5's Cooperative Preschool, and Woodland Park 5's Cooperative Preschool, utilitarian names that came into being as part of the process of filing incorporation papers with the state. We needed names and the people doing the work just stuck these descriptive titles in there as placeholders, I think, with the idea that someday we'd come up with something clever or cute.

We're no longer located near the Woodland Park Zoo, which is our namesake, but rather down the hill in Fremont, The Center of the Universe, home of The Troll. The only time we, as a community, ever talked about our name during my time here, was when we made our move two years ago. Most of us assumed that we were going to relabel ourselves to reflect our new location. I openly lobbied for Center of the Universe Cooperative Preschool, but one family spoke up at a parent meeting for remaining Woodland Park. Two of their children had already spent three years each here and a third had just been born and they asked that we'd consider not changing the name. It was powerful, from the heart testimony that ended the conversation on the spot and the subject hasn't been on a meeting agenda since.

The Woodland Park Summer Program is just what it sounds like. We're not "Dinosaur Camp" or "Pirates & Princesses," we're just who we are except outside only and during the summer. I'm particularly proud of the Summer Program because it's the first school we made all on our own, and by that I mean during my 12 year tenure here, because certainly there was a group of parents who started our original schools back in the 70's. Most of the cooperative preschools in North Seattle are affiliated with North Seattle Community College's parent education program. When we had the idea for some sort of summer camp, it came on the heels of us having built our first outdoor classroom, and we were excited to keep using it. Unfortunately, the collage wasn't able to support us, which might have been the death knell, but after checking into things like insurance and hiring parent educators we decided we could just go it alone. It was the model we turned to for starting our 5's program, which just completed it's inaugural year, when the college wasn't able to make a decision fast enough for us.

While the 5's class now operates under the auspices of NSCC, the Summer Program remains an entity unto itself, run with a slight renegade air, featuring parent meetings at trivia nights, bowling allies, and bars. Our other schools must maintain a certain amount of rigor considering that parents are receiving college credit, but since school's out for summer, that's been replaced by a sandals and short pants efficiency. It feels as homemade as street stand lemonade.

There's an edge of devil-may-care wildness, a little more risk-taking and experimentation, lots of water, mud, plants, bugs, and sand between our toes -- and I'm talking about the adults, because that's how the kids always do it at Woodland Park. We mix up the ages 2-6, with some older alumni joining us this year as "play mentors," 7-9 year-olds who will have the responsibility of role modeling, inspiring, and supporting the parent-teachers. Every day feels like some sort of family reunion picnic. If only we fired up the grill . . .

By the end of summer, when we're fully in our rhythm, even when the weather stays stubbornly 64 degrees and gray for much of the time, we begin to bemoan that it has to come to an end and ask why the rest of the year at Woodland Park can't be like this. Could it be? I think so, but then what would happen to summer?

I'm sad for the children whose parents have bought into the BS about "academic regression" during the summer months. Especially those who advocate for longer school days and the outright elimination of summer. Who cares? If you forget something in three months then you really didn't learn it anyway. Besides, that's what summer is for, to fill our heads with more important stuff; to remind ourselves of the raw joy of being carefree; to use our noses on flowers instead of grindstones; to lift our faces up to the sun, to shed our cloths, to smell of sunscreen, and to do the things we do when no one is telling us what to do.

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Under The Loft

Yesterday morning as I prepared for class, I found a rather large stash of items hidden under our loft: a toy pony, a car made from Legos, a disabled flip phone we use as a toy, and several other small items, some of which I'd been missing. It's a tiny space, with room for maybe 3 kids to lie down even under the best of circumstances, although I use half the space to store a set of awkward blocks, so there's precious little space under there. Still, there are a couple of guys who spend at least part of their classroom days jammed in there together. 

Over the years, the space under our loft has been where the kids in our 3-5's class go when they seek to be off the adults' radar which is a very, very hard thing to find in a cooperative, where we tend to have adults aplenty. If someone's going to hide instead of clean up, that's where we'll find them. If someone complains about being pinched or being called a "bad name," it will invariably have happened under the loft. And if someone is going to experiment with the awesome power of arbitrarily excluding others, the area under our loft is the place from which they'll seek to exclude.

The loft at times has gained such a negative reputation among the adults that it is periodically suggested that we remove it altogether, or at least limit access. The fact that those blocks are stored under there is at least, in part, as a response to one of these past waves of concern over the loft and the nefarious activities it apparently causes.

When I find a stash like I did yesterday, however, it makes me feel a little sorry for the kids, or at least some of them, the ones who feel they really need a place where they can hide their exploration of certain desires or ideas from the grown-ups. It's dark under there, or at least darker than the rest of our well-lit place, and that's exactly what they kids seek to explore when they're under there: the darkness; the things away from which we adults, whether intentionally or not, steer them. One year there was a pair of boys who got in the habit of setting up shop under there to tell stories so scary that they sometimes reduced the younger children to tears. There was one little girl who would use the darkness to cover for her urge to pinch her classmates so hard they screamed, then deepen the darkness by, no matter what, denying anything at all had happened displaying a wide-eyed innocence that would have made Meryl Streep proud. I identified yesterday's stash as toys as part of one pair of boys' ongoing attempt to avoid clean-up time.

Not all the kids are drawn to this dark place. In fact, most are not, but there are always a few who seem to really need to escape to where adults have no voice, where adult eyes cannot see. They have things they want to know, things they want to explore, and an adult presence, quite obviously, stands in the way. It's a place, of course, where all of us have been: a place of secrets and camaraderie, blood oaths and lies. It's the dark place implied in our fairy tales, where bad guys and villains and evil witches live. And it's such an important place for some children that even if they ran from there in panicked tears one day, they still return, often again and again and again.

What adults know is that it's a place, ultimately, of pain and ugliness, where the only truth, really, is the truth of the darkness. That's why they need to get away from us if they're going to explore it: we can't help but attempt to shine light in there. But they will explore the dark, they must, if not under the loft, then somewhere else. Is school the right place for this exploration? I don't know. At one level, I want it to be, but then again it's impossible for me to not constantly be shining my light into that dark because I am an adult and that's simply what adults do, merely by our presence, as those boys who made this stash know all too well.

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The Pre-K Play: Iconic, Archetypal, Foundational Literature

In January, after our December holiday break, I challenged the Pre-K children to think of something they could do for the whole school. This is how we've kicked off the New Year for a decade now. When we started I had no preconceived notion of what that might be, really wanting it to emerge from the children themselves. That group the first year took it on as a problem to solve, determining that we needed a birthday throne, and set about making the very one we use to this day.

Making water in which butterflies will swim and bad guys will emerge.

The following year, a boy named Vaughn, now a high schooler, said, "I want to do a play," and thus was born our school's tradition of ending the year with a performance by the Pre-K kids for their younger classmates. It's a project that continues to emerge each year, sparked by the strong memories of the younger children, who are now the "big kids," and who have decided that now it's their turn to create a performance for their friends. One of the magical parts of the play, I think, is that the younger children are blissfully unaware that it's in the offing. They have no idea that the older kids are meeting an additional afternoon each week to be together as older children, where they incubate many of the themes, projects, theories, and ideas that are eventually brought to full flower in the larger multi-age part of the class. When they see the play performed on the penultimate day of the school year, it is a true revelation for them.

Creating the bridge that will turn into a "butterfly one."

Once the children have settled on producing a play, we begin the writing process, which can take until at least mid-February, re-reading what we have each Tuesday afternoon when we come together, then editing and adding to it. We don't always start with our characters, but this group did. I try to write what they say word-for-word without comment. Not all the children are present for each writing session, as there are always other activities to chose from on any given day, but over the course of our process, they each have a hand in the script, at least insofar as it involves their own characters.

Making butterflies for the bridge.

Sometime in late February or early March, we move our creative process to the stage, where we begin "rehearsals," which are really just extensions of the writing process. Some kids are already capable of imagining words on paper as action on a stage, but most of them need to experience it in context with their whole bodies involved. To an outsider, this phase, which I've arbitrarily decided ends when we briefly scatter for Spring Break, probably looks like just a bunch of kids goofing off together on stage, with a teacher hopelessly reading from a script, but this is really the creative core of what we're doing, as the kids work out every detail of what they will be doing together. 

Here are these notoriously "mess averse" kids, getting messy making "fire," into which 

the Panther will "go." When they finished, they filed out of the room, hands held up like

surgeons after they've scrubbed in for surgery, to wash up in the sink.

During this period, everything may change, including the children's characters. This year, for instance, Jody started as a Dragon, then became a Bat Dragon, then a Spider Dragon, then Spiderman, then a Transformer, until he finally settled on Panther, which helps explain why the Panther that appeared on our stage for the actual performance, swung from webs, shot bats out of his mouth, and transformed into a tank.

Creating one of our backdrops.

In the meantime, as the script takes shape, we begin working on our props, sets, and costumes, either creating each piece ourselves, or cobbling them together from things we already have in our classroom or at home. I've never had a Pre-K group that put more care and thought into their costumes, many of them thinking things through right down to the rings on their fingers.

For five full months then we work on at least some aspect of this play every Tuesday afternoon. In the beginning it may just be 15 minutes of writing, but by the end, the play has pretty much come to consume our entire time together.

Tomorrow I will share the script, then on Tuesday I will present you with a video. To you, an adult, it might look like (as my retired English professor father-in-law once said about most contemporary fiction) "just one damn thing after another," and objectively it is. But what you don't know, what you can't know, is that what you read in our script and see on our stage is now a piece of iconic, archetypal, foundational literature that is as much a part of these children as it is a product of their collective creativity. It's a story both about who they are and who they aspire to be.  They all now know this story as well as any they'll ever know any story. To them it's not one damn thing after another, but rather the mythological story of who they are as "a people."

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Working With The Student Teachers

It was early in our school year, probably the first day, and one of our very young 3-year-olds shouted out an answer at circle time, oblivious to the fact that many of his classmates were raising their hands. Willie, a 4-year-old who was beginning his second year in our 3-5’s class, a veteran of how things work at Woodland Park, leaned into his new friend and in a very clear stage whisper explained, “If you sit quietly on your bottom and raise your hand, Teacher Tom will call on you.”

This is how our classroom’s communal memory is passed on from year-to-year, be it raising hands, making rules, giving compliments, dealing with someone who is hurting or scaring you, or understanding our daily routines. The older children pass their knowledge on to their younger classmates who in turn do the same the following year.

When I plan our weeks, it starts with our Tuesday afternoon Pre-K class, which is a 2½ hour session each week set aside specifically for the children preparing for kindergarten. I sometimes think of this as a kind of staff meeting where I am training my student teachers for the week ahead.

I often “preview” more challenging projects in the Pre-K class, giving the older kids a chance to master skills or acquire knowledge which they can pass on to their younger friends. I typically don’t make this expectation explicit – it just happens.

The classic example of this is cutting paper “snowflakes.” We pre-fold dozens of pieces of square origami paper (we like a rainbow of snowflakes at Woodland Park) into shapes conducive to producing an approximation of a “snowflake” if cut just so with scissors. I demonstrate the “magic trick” of making a few simple cuts then unfolding the paper to reveal the lacy, symmetrical result. We then turn the kids loose with the scissors, allowing them to experiment, including discovering what happens when they fold their own paper. There are always 3-4 kids who can’t get enough of this, which is perfect given that they will have plenty of opportunities to extend their exploration during the rest of the week.

The following day, the younger children arrive to find the art table set up with the strangely folded origami paper, scissors, and no other indication of what’s going on. If the Pre-K kids don’t descend upon the table right away, all it usually takes is for me to say something like, “Ariya needs someone to show him what we’re doing at the art table,” and he will be instantly joined by his older classmates, eager to show off what they know. After a day as an “official” art project, the scissors and origami paper – some pre-folded, some not – will appear on our do-it-yourself table where it’s not unusual for an older child or two to set up shop for the morning, assisting any and all in their efforts. The paper and scissors continue to make their appearance until the fad burns itself out.

This dynamic isn’t limited to art projects. Our Pre-K science activities often wind up in the sensory table or garden. Certain mathematical concepts we learn in Pre-K are conveyed to our younger classmates, child-to-child, via puzzles or other manipulatives. New toys and games usually make their debut with the older kids, allowing them the opportunity to gain expertise that they can pass on to their friends.

When we are confronting community-wide problems or challenges, such as the rat that appeared in our garden, these veteran students are often consulted. And while we can’t always act upon their ideas (e.g., converting the rat into a classroom pet) we often can, such as the time we used tape, glue and splints to repair our broken play dough cutter.

For their part, the 3-year-olds are blissfully unaware of this dynamic, knowing only that they are going to school with these sophisticated, glamorous friends who demonstrate the upper reaches of what a mere kid can do. Anyone with older children can attest to the fact that the second child’s learning is often accelerated in her effort to “keep up” with big brother, and in many ways, it’s this phenomenon that drives our curriculum. It’s not uncommon for younger children to develop “crushes” on certain of the Pre-K kids, tailing them around the room, imitating them, bringing them pictures from home.

Even more common is the “adoption” of a younger buddy by an older child, especially in the spring as the younger child is preparing to step up, while the older is ready to move on. For a couple months, they almost operate like developmental equals, which tells me that the Pre-K kids have pretty much wrung everything they can out of our little rag of a preschool. After 3 years with the same teacher, the same facility, and the same basic routines, they know everything there is to know. It’s not uncommon for these kids to start pushing at the boundaries, breaking rules, testing the limits. This is as it should be.

And at the same time it’s also not uncommon for their younger classmates, next year’s Pre-K kids, to remind their older friends to raise their hands, remember the rules, and stick to the routines. The student has become the master.

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Selective Mutism

As a 2-year-old, Oscar would toddle into the classroom ahead of his mom, stop in his tracks when he saw me, jaw-dropped, utter the words, "Teacher Tom," in a hoarse whisper, then stand there for a good minute just staring at me as if stunned. He would then not say a word to me or anyone else for the rest of the day.

Sammy would keep an eye on me at all times, tracking my movements from the corner of her eye, and if I got too close would flee to another part of the room. I don't think I was even in range to have heard her voice for 5 months, even if she had tried to speak.

Emi wouldn't make eye contact with me, twisting her body into all kinds of shapes to avoid it, going so far as to soundlessly crawl under the table when my proximity was unavoidable.

These are just 3 of dozens of examples I could have shared of children who were simply overwhelmed, it seems, by me. Teachers are very powerful people in a child's life. It's not surprising that we would strike some of them mute. In every case, their parents let me know, often apologetically, that their child babbled away at home, often about me or the songs we sang or the toys with which we played. What I didn't always know to say back then, but what I know to say now, is, "They don't have to talk to me if they don't want to."

When I first started teaching, I often made the mistake of approaching these silent children with the idea of coaxing them out of their shell. And if I didn't do it, their parents would, saying things like, "Tell Teacher Tom what you wanted to tell him," or "What's got into you?" It didn't take long, however, for me to realize that this approach, in every case, was only making matters worse. 

It didn't help that at some level, their mothers seemed embarrassed, so that's where I've learned to start, assuring them that it doesn't hurt my feelings that their child won't speak with me. I tell them the story of Aidan or other children who didn't speak. I let them know that I am confident that their child will start talking to me on her own schedule. I then tell them that the best way they can help me is to just keep me informed of her current enthusiasms at home or if anything particularly exciting is going on, like seeing a fire truck at the neighbor's house or a new toy or a favorite musical.

The approach I take to these kids is to not approach them, but to rather sort of sidle up to them in the course of events, while they're engaged in something else, often just playing along with them without questions or words, engaging perhaps with other children or adults in the area, dropping in references to things or events that I now know interest them at home. I can usually at first feel their tension at my elbow, their anticipation that they will be asked to somehow perform for me. That's why I keep these sidling moments brief at first, breaking them off on my own accord, maybe with a smile in their direction.

I don't know if this is the psychologically sound approach or not, but to me it feels as if I'm sort of conditioning them to my presence, giving them small doses of the stress of being near me, gradually increasing them over time. My hope is that by sprinkling my banter with references to familiar or exciting things from home (not peppering them with questions, not expecting anything from them) I'm making myself seem familiar, as if I'm a part of their extended family, an intimate.

I mentioned in yesterday's post that since we're a 3-year program we can take these things as slowly as they need to be. Since we're a cooperative, the room is full of parents, including those of these silent children, which makes us less an alien place. I believe that this is the reason that these silent children are all talking in our school by the time they're 4.

I don't know if I'm talking about "selective mutism" here or not, a psychological condition that is thought to be found in somewhere between 1-in-100 and 1-in-150 children, making it more common that autism and just as common as childhood depression. Statistically, some of these kids would have had to have filled the bill. I think, perhaps without knowing how, we're doing something right, catching this condition perhaps before it can become full-blown.

Many treatments, especially in the US, involve the prescription of things like Prozac. You only need that if you're in a hurry.

My friend Donna from Irresistible Ideas for Play Based Learning collected some links should you be interested in learning more about selective mutism.

Treatment Programs for Children with Selective Mutism

Selective Mutism

Selective Mutism: When There's More To It Than "Being Shy"

Selective Mutism Clinic, Sydney

The Children Who Chose To Stay Silent

For more links, head on over to their Facebook page.

(And you'll notice that in this post, I didn't once mention the emotion "shyness.")

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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