Goofing Around

During the rest of the year, I rarely think how our little play-based preschool might look to the "outside" world, but these are the weeks when parents are touring with an eye toward enrolling their precious children in Woodland Park.

Almost every day, in all 3 of our classes, small groups of adults, some of whom I know, some of whom I don't, come into our classroom, and stand out of the way while we, quite frankly, are doing what very well might look to the uninitiated like goofing around. 

I hope that most of them are here because they've heard a little bit about us from alumni or the parent grapevine, or perhaps have engaged in some research into play-based education, or have at least done a little reading here on the blog, because otherwise it's quite likely we look as if we're just goofing around.

It's high quality goofing around, no question, I mean the kids in these pictures are doing something they did almost every day for a week or so, during tours, whereby they collected a drum, an old weather worn marimba, and a garbage can lid to play a cacophony, while chanting in their best imitation of Teacher Tom, "All the children into the blue rug." Looked at from a certain perspective, you know, it might come off as just goofing around.

One of the things that throws me a little, is that as a cooperative, any parents in the room are typically down on their knees, right in the middle of the action, while these touring parents are standing, usually off to the side, politely staying out of the way. It seems like, from that perspective, those three guys, for instance, who were putting egg timers into our large wooden blocks, picking them up, then calling them "egg timer elevators" might have seemed a little like they were just goofing around.

And, you know, it didn't help too much when I looked up from where Jasper, Keane, Luella and I were hanging out under the loft, lying on pillows, doing nothing but saying to each other, "We're just goofing around."

I mean, naturally, we're aware, whether through direct knowledge or pure instinct, that "we are here on Earth to fart around," and that anyone who tries to tell us different is wrong, but not everyone knows this and I have this thing where I want to make a good first impression. Would it be too much to ask that a few of the kids be happily engaged in spontaneously singing the A-B-C song when those tours come through, instead of, as happened last week, wondering aloud during circle time whether or not they would have to wash their hands if they picked each other's noses. It just sounds a little too much like goofing around.

Of course, one can also hope that goofing around is exactly what they're looking for.

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Lion Moms

Yesterday, we took our Pre-3 class to the Woodland Park Zoo here in Seattle. We don't normally take our 2-year-olds on field trips, but circumstances made it make sense for us, and the zoo, after all, is just up the hill. In fact, most of these kids are quite familiar with the zoo given that it's right in their own backyards. 

We'd been tipped off that the new lion cubs would be "out" for a bit in the morning, so we made our way to the lion exhibit as quickly as 22 very young children and 22 adults can move (yes, between our regular contingent of parent-teachers and extra volunteers we mustered a 1:1 ratio for this venture out into the big world) which isn't terribly fast.

It's impossible not to watch mammal babies of any kind without reflecting on our own babies. These cubs were pouncing and bouncing, lunging and leaping, attacking and sprinting -- in other words, playing. One of them struggled repeatedly to climb upon the branch of a log, falling each time and picking itself back up to try again before finally being distracted by a passing sibling and the temptation of those haunches. We admire the sleek grace of adult cats, but here before us, enchanting, was the lurching, unashamed, unjudged and unjudging clumsiness of the play from which it is all learned. 

Meanwhile, the lioness paced, agitated, alert, focused not on correcting or "teaching" her babies, but rather fixed like a laser on the greatest threat in this environment: us. There was a rope line behind which we had to stand. Apparently, mom had on previous days attacked the glass, looking to drive the human visitors away, snarling and clawing. She was magnificent in her maternal instinct.

The babies, always playing, were naturally curious about these strange creatures they saw through the window, but their mother was fierce in her love for them and her devotion to their safety, an entity not to be crossed. Just like those 21 mothers and 1 father who came along with us yesterday to keep an eye on their babies as they played at the zoo.

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You Won't Hear Me Cheering

Tonight, President Obama in his State of the Union address is expected to announce that his administration is going to make early childhood eduction a priority in his second term. According to speculation this may mean adopting all or part of a plan by the Center for American Progress to create universal preschool with a price tag that could reach nearly $100 billion in the next decade.

Holy cow! What's not to love about that? I'm guessing this will be met with cheers right across the political spectrum, at least judging by recent efforts by both Democratic and Republican governors to expand preschool access for their citizens. There will be naysayers, of course, but achieving his goals on this will not likely be among Obama's biggest headaches. 

But it has me worried. Despite the exciting prospect of that much money being directed toward early childhood education, and despite how critically important these early years are, this administration doesn't have a particularly inspiring record when I comes to education policy. I've written extensively on this blog about how the education department under the leadership of Secretary Arne Duncan has adopted much of what I call "the corporate education reform agenda" including increased standardized testing, an over-reliance on direct instruction, longer classroom days, larger classes, de-professionalized teachers (e.g., union busting), privatized schools (e.g., charters/vouchers), reduced access to arts, music, humanities, and physical education, and a desire to push increasingly academic and developmentally inappropriate curriculum standards into lower and and lower grades. It's an agenda that is being driven not by data and research -- because if it was the administration's policies would have a vastly different look -- but by the greed of for-profit enterprises pushing policies that will most quickly fill their coffers.

I'm quite certain that with $100 billion on the table, these corporate "reformers" will be the ones clapping the loudest.

Nowhere is this corrupt influence more evident than in what is called the Common Core State Standards, and particularly those being forced upon children in the K-3 early years. According to a critique written by Edward Miller (teacher and co-author of Crisis in the Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in School) and Nancy Carlsson-Paige (professor emerita of early childhood education at Lesley University and author of Taking Back Childhood) that appeared recently in the Washington Post:

Recent critiques of the Common Core Standards . . . (have) noted that the process for creating the new K-12 standards involved too little research, public dialogue, or input from educators . . . Nowhere was this more startlingly true than in the case of the early childhood standards -- those imposed on kindergarten through grade 3. We reviewed the makeup of the committees that wrote and reviewed the Common Core Standards. In all, there were 135 people on those panels. Not a single one of them was a K-3 classroom teacher or early childhood professional.

In other words, it was a committee packed with politicians and business executives, many of whom working for or investing in companies that produce text books, standardized tests, and curricula. This has been this administration's pattern on education policy on every front, listening to the sales pitch from salesmen, while totally ignoring research:

The promoters of the standards claim they are based in research. They are not. There is no convincing research, for example, showing that certain skills or bits of knowledge (such as counting to 100 or being able to read a certain number of words) if mastered in kindergarten will lead to later success in school. Two recent studies show that direct instruction can actually limit young children's learning. At best, the standards reflect guesswork, not cognitive or developmental science.

I will go farther. I don't think it's guesswork at all. It looks to me like these people are quite certain that these standards will redirect large chunks of our education budgets into their own pockets. And now it appears there will an additional $100 billion pot into which they cannot wait to get their greasy hands. Rest assured, if states are going to see a penny of this money, like with "Race To The Top" funds, it will only be if they agree to spend it on what these guys are selling. And what they're selling is bad for children even while it's good for profits.

So you won't hear me cheering when the president speaks of universal preschool tonight, even while I support the concept in principle. I will, instead, be digging in for what will most certainly be a fight to prevent corporations from using our own money to turn our children into a drill and kill labor force in the service of profit over education.

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Love In Wrestling

I usually wait until the kids tell me they need to wrestle before laying down the gym mats for wrestling. Typically, they tell me this by spontaneously wrestling in the classroom, and lately a group of our Pre-K boys have been letting me know they need to wrestle. If you want to read how we go about setting this up as an activity, keeping it safe while at the same time keeping it wrestling, or some rationale about why I find it necessary to provide this opportunity in preschool, here's a post from back in 2009 in which I provide our wrestling rules and reasons more or less as they've remained for close to a decade now.

I've long felt that this urge for assertive physical contact is for many children driven by barely contained love for one another, and this year's Pre-K group has done nothing but confirm my theory. In fact, I've actually heard Calder say, "I love you!" while in the midst of wrestling with his buddies, but frankly, he doesn't need to say it because it's right there in the expression on his face.

And lest you think that this is something done just for the boys, I'll re-share an observation I made back in 2009:

Parent educator and teacher Chris David once explained the differences between boys and girls by asking me to think of their brains as architectural structures. Boys, she said, tend to have brains comprised of many little rooms. If a boy is playing in one "room" and the subject of rules comes up, adults need to understand that the typical boy must leave the room in which he's playing and go down the hall to find the room that houses the rules. Girls, on the other hand, tend to have brains made up of one large room. The rules and their play are in the same room so it's far easier (and quicker) for them to apply the former to the later . . . Applying this metaphor to wrestling, it's no wonder that girls rarely engage in wrestling during times that are "not time for wrestling," while boys sometimes forget. When wrestling is officially sanctioned however -- at least in the little laboratory of our preschool -- the girls are as game as the boys.

Wrestling, of course, isn't for everyone. The one thing I've added since 2009, is to provide "tumbling mats" in another part of the room as an alternative for those who would rather avoid the physical contact or who just need a short break. Lily appeared to be one of those kids. She let me know up front that she did not want to wrestle, saying, "It's too rough for me."

But the rest of the kids did wrestle, joyfully, sometimes pairing off in one-on-one matches, but most often writhing around as one big knot of bodies. Typically, I need to stay right on top of things, continually reminding the children of the rules -- "No hands on faces," "Luca is off the mat," "I heard someone say stop" -- but last week, these kids really didn't need me. I was impressed by how attuned they were to one another and how well they managed to keep the rules in mind as they explored leverage, force, and muscles with one another.

As part of our preparations for wrestling, I had reminded the kids that someone is likely to get hurt, that this is just part of wrestling, and sure enough Calder picked up a nose bleed when he bumped in nose on the back of Luca's head. "If someone is crying or angry," I tell the kids, "We all have to stop until that person is off the mat." Without a word from me, we all stood back on the edges of the mat while Luca's mom Megan tended to his nose, and while Connor's mom Trisha cleaned up the drops of blood from the mats, then we went back at it.

After awhile I noticed Lily standing just off the edge of the mats following the action closely. At one point she stood on the mats for a few seconds before stepping back off again as her friends bodies tumbled closer. Megan asked, "Lily, do you want to wrestle?"

Lily didn't answer, but she did smile. She was on and off the mats a few more times.

Megan said, "Lily wants to wrestle."

One of the boys, a proficient and enthusiastic wrestler stood smiling at Lily, but that was apparently too intimidating for her. He then lay down on the mats, on his belly, entirely inert, a kind and gentle invitation to his friend. Lily fell on top of him and the two lay there for a bit. He rolled over and Lily lay on top of him again. She was so proud and he should be too.

Don't let anyone tell you there's not a lot of love in wrestling.

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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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"Xie Xie"

I've not written much this year about our preparations for Chinese New Year, which starts on Sunday (although we'll be "officially" recognizing it on Monday) because I've already written so much about it in past years and there's really not much new to our celebrations from year to year. This, of course, is part of what traditions are all about: repeating those things that have meaning for us, that tie us together as a community, and that remind us of our shared aspirations, hopes and values.

This week we've played with a sensory table full of rice, chopsticks, food cartons, red envelopes, and baskets. When we learned it was the Year of The Snake, and the Water Snake in particular, we added a few rubber snakes to the mix.

Rex, in particular, has this year enjoyed remembering the holiday, often unable to contain himself as I start to introduce an art project or piece of Chinese lore, announcing to his classmates, for instance, "We're going to make a dragon and march it around the school!"

We make our dragon scales by decorating paper plates with markers as they spin on these old turntables. In the past, we've used brass brads to connect them, but they don't hold together very well when we carry it around as part of our new year's day parade. This year we're trying bits of pipe cleaners which present their own problems, but should hold together as we carry our dragon all through the school and the outdoor classroom on Monday.

And he's right, we are making our annual dragon which I hope will be ready by Monday. We've created several hundred paper plate scales.

"We get to wear the dragon head! It's really a lion head!" And he's right about that too.

And he even remembered that "the Creative Dragon flows through your mind when you're painting!"

I'm quite impressed by how our good luck banners turned out this year. The one there on the left I purchased many years ago. I've been told it translates as "Harmony through peace." The kids really appear to have used it as inspiration, not copying actual characters, but rather in capturing the flow and energy of the lines.

We've also made paper lanterns, painted red good luck banners and dragons, read a half dozen books, played with rice, chop sticks and leisees (red envelopes) in our sensory table, cleaned the classroom, and many of the kids (coincidentally or not) have shown up with new haircuts and new clothing. Even those who've not had haircuts have informed me they've at least recently washed their hair.

We pre-drew spiral lines on construction paper as guides for the kids to follow with their scissors to make our snake decorations. It's a classic preschool craft project, one of those "just right" challenges that appeal to older preschoolers. Many of them couldn't get enough of it.

And it's not entirely true that everything is the same this year. Since this is the year of the Water Snake, we decorated our classroom with coiled construction paper snakes.

This photo really doesn't do justice to all the snakes and lanterns dangling from the ceiling. This whole week both children and parents have been stopping in the doorway to take it all in.

And something else new . . . We had a visit from Melody, a Chinese dance instructor and folklorist, who has been coming to Woodland Park for a long time now to tell us of the giant monster who cannot see us if we wear red and is frightened when we make lots of noise. Several of the kids were nervous, remembering the scary story from last year. Afterwords, they agreed that as 4 and 5-year-olds, the story wasn't nearly as frightening as they'd remembered it.

Since Valentines Day falls so close to the new year, we've been combining the holidays a bit. If you look closely, you'll see some heart shaped boxes and baskets made it into the sensory table, along with our ever-popular Love Rats.

One new thing she taught us is that Chinese children, when they awake on new years morning, go into their parents' bedroom, kneel on the floor beside the bed, then bow three times, touching their foreheads to the floor, thanking and honoring their parents three times, "Xie xie, xie xie, xie xie." (Sounds like: Shieh shieh)

Each of our classes have practiced this bowing ritual this week and I've been encouraging them to try it in their own homes on Sunday morning. There is something delightful to me about the idea of our little American children honoring their parents this way and judging by the reaction of the parents in the room as we practiced, I'm not alone in feeling this way.

So, I guess everything isn't the same, and I suppose it never is no matter how hard we try. And that too is part of all traditions.

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"Yeah, But It's Not Broken"

I was recently searching through past posts and came across this one from a little over a year ago. I'd forgotten what it was about, re-read it, and laughed aloud when I got to the end. I figured if I'd forgotten the punchline, maybe you had too. 

I've written here often that I'm not all that concerned about what the children learn. From among the infinite bits of trivia that comprise our existence, who am I to choose what becomes permanently stuck in their brains and what has to be looked up later in life on the internet? No, my primary concern is that they develop the habits of inquiry and exploration: not that they learn, so much as that they think.

Making my job so much easier is the great truth that they all come to me with those habits, imbued by nature via the urge to play, so I find that most of my job is largely just getting out of the way.

For instance I've had these three air pumps in the storage room forever. Two of them are the hand operated kind you carry on your bike, the third is a foot pump model with a nice big air pressure gauge mounted on it. Last week I put them on a table in our room, along with some other gadgets. 

Several adults asked what the pumps were for. None of the kids did.

Of course, 2 and 3 year old boys seem to always know what to do with long stick-like things: pick them up, hold them at eye level, and swing them around while walking through crowded spaces. I'm exaggerating, of course, but it does seem to be the case, even if it isn't as universally age and gender specific as I've made it sound. The shiny, red one was the most popular for this purpose. After we persuaded a couple of the guys that their friends were worried they would get their eyes poked out by this behavior, they got down to figuring out what else they could do.

A few of the kids tried to operate the foot pump, but it became quickly evident to me that none of them were being physically assertive enough to depress the foot pedal with their hands, which is what they were trying to do, probably since I'd put it on a table. The hand pumps, however, made their way from hand to hand, being put through their paces, being bones of contention, being the subject of intermittent conversation.

"They're light sabers."

"This one's a machine."

"Hey, you're blowing air on me!"

"It's my turn now."

At some point, probably through either frustration or by way of clearing the decks, the foot pump wound up on the floor. Connor stumbled on it, stopped, put a hand on the table to steady himself, then jumped on it, successfully depressing the pedal, causing the pump to issue an impressive hiss of air. Soon we had a line of kids wanting to try it out.

As you can see from the pictures, the pumps later found their way to the sensory table where we were playing with river rocks, plastic sea creatures, and water. We discovered they could be used to make bubbles.

Or rather, we learned that the silver hand pump and the foot pump could make bubbles, while the red one couldn't. I passed my grown-up judgement, "That one's broken."

I've never seen so many blank stares. I tried again, "No bubbles means no air is coming out of this one."

Jody said, "Yeah, but it's not broken. See?" And he proceeded to demonstrate that the piston still slid quite smoothly in and out. "That's what a light saber is supposed to do."

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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