It's Just Life Itself

Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. ~John Dewey

For those of you who are unaware of John Dewey, he was, among other things, an educational reformer working during the early part of the 19th century and who can rightly be called the grandfather of our current notions on progressive education. He was born and raised during the Victorian era, a time not unlike our own, when the prevailing ideas about education were that children are simply incomplete adults who needed to be stuffed with knowledge, forced into stillness and silence, and "manufactured" into little adults ready to go to work. If you've ever used the terms "hands-on education" or "experiential education" (the actual slogan of my daughter's school here in Seattle), you're quoting Dewey.

The teacher is not in the school to impose certain ideas or to form certain habits in the child, but is there as a member of the community to select the influences which shall affect the child and to assist him in properly responding to these influences. ~John Dewey

A typical day at Woodland Park Cooperative Preschool begins with the children arriving with their parents, washing their hands, then freely playing, or not, at any one of the "stations" I've prepared for them. We've given them names like "Blocks" and "Art" and "Drama" and "Table Toys" and "Sensory" and "Do-It-Yourself" and depending on what those things are, there can be as many as a half dozen more mini-stations in the form of special toys or objects I've planted around the room for children to discover. Our outdoor classroom functions the same way.

But, of course, as much as this description sometimes makes it sound like the kids get to do anything they want with the things and people they find at those stations, it's not free play in the sense that anything goes. For one thing, we're already pretty tightly hemmed in by the rules the children have created for themselves. If anything, we adults must strive to temper their enforcement, which is in and of itself a refreshing role for adults to be playing in the lives of young children. And as much as I resent it, there are a number of insurance company imposed "safety rules" that we can't circumvent without leaving us legally exposed.

But we teachers, of course, have a more important role than that imposed on us by mere rules. The main reason we have a name for each of those stations isn't for the kids, but rather so our parent-teachers know where I expect them to spend their morning, guiding and facilitating the "free play." If necessary, I typically start off each of the adults with a brief description of what I envision transpiring at their station, more often than not finishing with the advice, however, to "let the children make it their own," which is why so many of our art station projects, for example, turn into finger painting.

I approve of Dewey's definition of the role of teacher as "facilitator" and "guide." These are, importantly, open-ended terms, left for teachers to adapt to suit the child, the circumstances, and our own personalities.

Some of our parent-teachers tend to interpret their teaching role to mean they get to play with the kids, usually in a role that looks and feels like an older, wiser, more responsible child. More often than not, I find them "playing stories" with the kids, using the materials at hand to facilitate imaginative, inclusive games, that often grow to take over the room, but just as often contain themselves to small group in a corner going deeply into their ideas.

Others tend more toward the role of guide, often huddling up cheek-to-cheek with a child or two, asking questions about what they see happening, wondering aloud about the physics or the social dynamics or the consequences, not imposing their adult views, but rather role modeling inquisitiveness and thoughtfulness by asking aloud the questions one might logically ask oneself.

Other parent-teachers tend to say little, but fulfill their role of facilitator and guide through physical touch, by placing a hand on a shoulder, or balancing children on their loving laps. Some sprinkle the children's play with large, descriptive vocabulary words that may or may not sink in this time, but eventually will, expanding both understanding and the ability to communicate that understanding when the time is ripe. And all of us seek above all to express warmth to the children around us, always, whatever is happening, even when we forget and slip back into our Victorian habits of bossing around the "unformed humans," letting them know that we love them, that they can learn what they want to learn, be who they want to be, and that we are all in this together.

I'm expressing an ideal here, of course. Some days are better than others, but honestly, most days, most of the time, as the children freely play, we are there with them, warmly, as collaborators and partners in learning. Not telling them, but guiding them. Not controlling, but facilitating. Letting children get their hands-on, to have real experiences with materials and the other people, and to create an environment in which they can independently discover meaning for themselves.

People sometimes ask me if it's hard to work with all those "amateur" teachers. The short answer is "no." I find that each and every one of our parent-teachers already knows everything they need to know to be loving facilitators and guides, the only training any of us really need is a kind of "un-training" to help us overcome the bad habits that come from living in a neo-Victorian era.

This is what school looks like at Woodland Park. This is what teaching looks like. It's nothing special really; it's just life itself.

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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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Fair Enough

Exclusion is a type of power play that comes up every year in our 3-5's class. It's a hard one to discuss with children, I think, largely because there's so much gray area in there. I mean, we exclude people every time we close and lock the door to our homes, when we don't pick up that hitchhiker, when the bathroom is occupied, when there simply isn't enough physical space, when we have a girls/boys night out. Children know that sometimes we do exclude one another from time to time and figuring out the nuances between appropriate and inappropriate exclusion is the work of many years -- for some the work of a lifetime.

In a larger sense, I would assert that what we value as a society is freedom from arbitrary exclusion, such as that based upon things like religion, skin color, gender, and, increasingly, sexual orientation, while we all also have the right to exclude people who hurt us, who damage our property, who will not play by the agreed upon rules, and engage other "anti-social" behaviors. But even within that there is so much gray area that it's difficult to talk about, especially when we consider that we also value our right to freely associate with whom we choose. One person's righteous rebellion is another person's crime against society. Some see great value in, say, a "women only" club, while others see it as discriminatory. Some find unity through associations based on religion or ethnicity, while others see these same affiliations as nefarious. I have my opinions about these things, and you have yours, but whatever the case we all know that it's an ongoing discussion that, at bottom, is about fairness.

On Friday, a group of nursing students visited our 5's classroom as part of their coursework, for the purpose of presenting to us about the importance of hand washing. As part of demonstrating the proper technique they wanted to ask for four volunteers. I knew this would be a problem. One of the unspoken, yet bedrock tenants of our community sense of fairness is that everyone gets a turn. I'm glad they prepared me. I didn't want these poor nursing students to bear the brunt of the children's disappointment so I offered to do the selecting. I've made a set of cards, each of which bears the name of one of the children. I put them behind my back and randomly choose cards when circumstances like this arise. Everyone may not get a turn, everyone may not get to go first, but this method at least gives everyone an equal chance of being chosen.

Still, several kids objected, although we plowed forward for the sake of the nursing students. I later made a point of returning to the topic, however. I explained as best I could why I felt I'd been fair. One boy in particular disagreed. At first I thought he was basing his opinion on the classic preschool argument that it wasn't fair simply because he had not been selected, but as we dug deeper it was clear that he felt it was unfair that I'd held the cards behind my back. He would have felt better about it had I fanned the cards in front of me, face down, then let everyone see how I'd randomly selected the cards: in other words, more transparency. Fair enough.

Our 3-5's class recently democratically adopted the Vivian Gussin Paley rule from her book by the same name: You can't say you can't play.  I usually have to suggest this particular language, but I try to wait until the children have expressed, in their own words, a desire for some sort of agreement around the powerful ideas of exclusion and inclusion. We wind up with the rule every year, although agreeing to it by no means ends the discussion about what it all means: no, it usually marks the beginning of the discussion.

On Thursday, a group of boys gathered in a remote corner of the outdoor classroom, a place where children rarely stray, a tight little space up amongst the laurels, steep enough that it's difficult to stand, hemmed in on two sides by a fence. When a younger boy tried to join them, they told him he couldn't come in. I saw it happening, but one of our parent-teachers was closer at hand and she stepped in by reminding everyone of our newish rule. They let the younger boy attempt to fit his body into the tiny, crowded space, but when he found no room, he, on his own, chose to play elsewhere.

I had a brief chat with the older boys myself, re-iterating the rule. One of them said, "There's no place for more people."

I answered, "Yes, it does look like your bodies are already taking up all the space."

They huddled up there for quite some time in their tiny, out-of-the-way space. No one else made any effort to join them. Then I heard them chanting, "Please don't enter. Please don't enter. Please don't enter." It made me, from a distance, laugh. Their stern command had become a polite request. It's as good a compromise as I've ever seen. It's an ongoing discussion. Fair enough.

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"We Know The Difference"

This is my first year teaching a 5's class, although for more than a decade now I've been teaching a 3-5's class. Each year, when the younger children make their rules, their community agreements, we come to the subject of weapons and every year we agree to ban weapons, both real and pretend.

I've been part of these conversations for a long time, involving a lot of different children, and it always goes down more or less the same way. Someone proposes "No weapons" and everyone agrees. Then I ask about pretend weapons. Someone says "No pretend weapons." I ask why and someone answers that even pretend weapons are scary. We agree that no one should be afraid in preschool and that's that. I honestly don't think so, but I've often wondered if this rule is made simply because the kids believe it's what the grown-ups want, that we've expressed our anti-gun sentiments (and in Seattle, in Fremont, we're mostly anti-gun people) so clearly that the kids are just reflecting it back at us. 

This year, I'd expected our weapons discussion to go more or less the same way. As I'd expected, we banned weapons during our first week in class, but when I asked about pretend weapons, I was surprised by the response. "Pretend weapons are okay." 

I asked, leadingly, "Aren't you worried some people will be scared of the pretend weapons?"

"We know the difference between real and pretend weapons, Teacher Tom." I probed and prodded, but if anything the group's conviction became stronger. All of them, boys and girls, agreed that pretend weapons were okay.

I'll be honest: I don't like it. At any given moment, someone in the outdoor classroom is in someone else's crosshairs. And the play is intense. It's something that's happened mostly outdoors, this weapons play. We start our days out there and I've had several parents tell me that getting their child to school on time is a piece of cake compared to previous years because they don't want to miss even a single minute of "outside time." It's the boys who seem the most excited by it, but there are girls right in the middle of the action as well, usually without guns, opting more often than not for wands. I've tried, in quiet moments to get one of the girls or less enamored boys to admit to feeling afraid of the weapons play, only to be told, quite clearly, that, "No, I am not afraid."

This has been ongoing since September and it has ebbed and flowed. At one point the focus was on swords, but after Rex took home a nasty bruise on his back, the kids agreed they ought to ban "swinging weapons," both real and pretend, so we're back to "shooting weapons," and mostly guns. Children and adults have objected at times to being "targeted," so we have agreed that you may only "shoot" at people who you know are part of the game.

In truth, when I step back and really watch what's going on, as opposed to merely reacting, I see much less shooting and much more running around with sticks of one kind or another. I hear much more discussion about "teams" (it appears the requirement for joining any one team is to simply declare yourself a member and you're in) or specific roles within the games (bad guy, good guy, guard, ninja, etc.). I watch constantly for facial expressions that tell me someone is in over his head or lost himself in the game and forgotten he can say, "Stop!" I remain vigilant for things getting out of control, for someone too excited by the game, who appears to be crossing the line between pretend and real, as what happened when Rex got his bruise.

But mostly I remember similar games I played as a boy, running wildly, hiding, imagining myself as a cowboy then an indian, a cop then a robber, a good guy then a bad guy. I knew the difference between real and pretend weapons, just as I knew that I wasn't really a cop or a robber. I remember that my mom didn't like it. She would ask, "Why do you play such violent games?" but never insisted we stop, although I recall there were some neighborhood boys who were not allowed to play with us when we played guns. I reckon that my constant asking after everyone, my vigilance, is sending the kids the same message my mom sent me.

Last week our stick ponies became the weapons. It was really getting under my skin, but what made me intervene was the way they were waving those sticks around in one another's faces. After several reminders about our rule against "swinging weapons," I intervened more firmly, saying, "I'm worried about those sticks. I keep seeing you guys poking them into each other's faces."

"But we're just shooting, Teacher Tom. They aren't swinging weapons."

"I understand, but it looks like you're swinging them in people's faces. It's my job to keep everyone safe. What you're doing doesn't look safe."

Henry looked at his stick pony weapon for a moment, then flipped it around so that the plush pony head end was forward. "How about like this?"

"That part is soft and won't hurt as much if you accidentally hit someone in the face. I like it. Does everyone agree?"

Everyone agreed and the game re-commenced.

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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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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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Living In The Ideal World

That which is hateful to you, do not unto another: this is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary. ~Hillel

I've enjoyed the Milton Bradley game of Twister, although not for a couple decades, but I save much fonder memories for the children's version, Animal Twister. When my siblings and I helped my parents clean out their attic a few years ago, I claimed our childhood edition of it, expecting to use it at school.

Unlike the adult version which is more about flexibility, leverage, strength, and, as we got to be teenagers, the vague sexual titillation of taut bodies and hot breath in close proximity, Animal Twister is a competitive free-for-all of the winner takes the prize variety. My brother and I sometimes played it as a two-person game, but it really was much more fun with groups of 4 or more. Everyone stood, spaced around the border, toes just barely off the edge of the vinyl mat, usually arguing about who was over the line, in tense anticipation. Instead of the spinner used in the adult version, Animal Twister uses a stack of cards featuring the blue or red silhouettes of cartoon animals that match the larger versions that appear on the mat.

The "caller" then, for instance, shouts out, "Lion! Foot!" or "Whale! Hand!" and everyone scrambles to be the first to accomplish that goal. Yes, what made it particularly fun with a large group was the pig pile that resulted from nearly every call. I don't recall ever knocking heads, but that seems like a logical risk, and one of the reasons it's taken me 3 years to finally introduce it to the kids: I just kept imagining two assertive kids diving headfirst across the mat, heads colliding with the sickening sound of a pair of under-ripe melons over the ostrich shape. 

Maybe I was just waiting for our new 5's class with their slightly better developed risk assessment capabilities, sense of self-preservation, and ability to empathize with others, but we finally played Animal Twister last week. I'd anticipated having to ultimately treat it like we do wrestling, with a list of safety rules, but decided to start off with no instructions other than to remove our shoes. I wanted to see if they, like we did as kids, would regulate themselves without relying on the crutch of rules or adult authority.

I've written before of my theory about rules: they exist as a last resort in human relations, a sign that we've failed so far to live together according to our commonly held ideals, so we make rules as a sort of external motivation, a reminder that we are not yet the people we wish to be. In the ideal world, one we may never attain, but toward which we should always strive, rules would be unnecessary because we have internalized how we ought to treat the other people. I wanted to try out Animal Twister with the assumption we could succeed as an ideal society.

This was one of several stations, so at any given moment it was a self-selected group of participants, usually no more than 4 at a time. It's definitely a "contact sport," something the children seemed to understand intuitively -- over three days only once did a child object, "He pushed me!" to which I replied, "Gentle pushing is part of the game," which seemed to satisfy everyone.

I think every child in the class gave it a go at one point or another. Some of them clearly were not as comfortable with the body contact or competition as others and moved on to other activities after only a few rounds. Others, however, like Rex and Elena, could not get enough of Animal Twister. The two of them spent the better part of 3 full hours over 3 days playing the game, developing their own competitive tactics. Rex found success in immediately putting his body in the center of the mat, taking up space with a wide stance, screening off large sections of turf like a basketball player vying for rebounding position. Elena chose to flit around the edges, looking for her target from outside the scrum, then darting in quickly with a foot or hand when she spotted her target. I played the role of referee, not telling them how to go about the game, but rather declaring a stop to each burst of action when I judged that someone had found the animal first: "Marit got it!" "William got it!"

When a child was "first" the reward was that they got to hold the card they'd won. I was particularly impressed with Rex's competitive spirit. He worked hard to win each round, but on several occasions when he felt I'd erred in his favor, he turned his card over to the rightful winner, saying, "You were first." 

In fact, that's what most impressed me about our Animal Twister sessions: the sportsmanship. Archie treated it as a joke when he repeatedly came up second best, saying, "Aw! I never get one!" laughing, then trying again and again, often finding the proper animal figure first, but using his hand instead of his foot and vice versa. He thought it was particularly funny on a couple of occasions when he discovered that he was actually sitting on the target and the others had to slide their hands or feet under him. When he finally did win a card, he clutched it in his fist like a thing of great value, occasionally missing a turn while peering at this hard fought prize. All the faces wore smiles, all the cheeks were flushed red, no one boasted about their successes, no one despaired over their failures. This was pure, on-the-edge, physical fun. We were successfully playing this rough and tumble game together according to our own, shared, internal rules. We were living in the ideal world.

At one point on our third day we wound up with 8 or 9 kids trying to play at once. This was too many and the pig piles too tempting, so we did wind up with a child in tears, although I think it was mostly out of anxiety at finding herself immobile at the bottom of the pile than from pain. Up to that point, however, we'd played this wild, competitive, full-body contact game without any rules beyond removing shoes, an incredible achievement, I think: nearly 3 full hours, a time during which we treated one another as we ourselves wish to be treated.

After the pig pile incident, there were a few more pig piles, but I said, "I don't want people just throwing their bodies in there. That's how people get hurt." It made me sad that from that moment on, after every scrum, one or two of them would look at me as if waiting for me to say they'd done it wrong. The ideal world was over, at least for some of them, as they were now anticipating external judgment about their behavior.

We'll give Animal Twister a break for a few weeks. I want the children to forget my intrusion into their ideal world.

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Popping The Motion Bubble

A lot of kids go straight to the swings when they arrive at school. It's a way to "warm up" both physically and emotionally, giving those slower to warm kids a place to be in the midst of the action, yet enclosed in a kind of motion bubble from which to observe a bit before launching into their day. 

On most mornings when I open the classroom door, there's someone on there already, swinging, swinging, swinging.

The children in our 3-5's and 5's classes at Woodland Park make their own rules and they've not yet found a need to make any regarding the swings. 

So, unlike other schools there's no adult hanging around out there telling the kids how they would sit or stand or "be careful," the children make it up as they go when it comes to playing together on the swings, yet we've had precious few of those swing set related injuries those liability trolls are forever obsessing about. We've got a decent layer of wood chips under there and a "jump zone" free of hard things and that's enough. 

There was one group of kids last year who went through a democratic process of developing a swing sharing policy, one that required a combination of asking for a turn and counting, but that has survived today only as a game, a ghost of that memory, that I sometimes catch children playing with one another simply as another way to have fun counting and taking turns, as opposed to obeying rules.

In fact, without rules our swings are, more often than not, a place to play together, with no one insisting that there be one child per swing or that they must sit on their bottoms or stand a certain distance away or take turns. Sometimes kids do get bumped, but since adults aren't out there pushing kids higher than they can swing on their own, it's never more than a routine fall, the kind of thing that happens dozens of times a day, almost always without tears. And then everyone's more careful next time.

Without all those rules, the kids work it out, they take care of themselves and others, the motion bubble gets popped, and your friends can join you in there.  And that pretty much sums up why we're at school in the first place.

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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