Kids In The House: Play-Based Preschool Curriculum

I was once told that if you have something important to say to a busy person, the first step is to practice getting your main points across in two minutes or less. That way, the theory goes, if you happen to find yourself, say, in an elevator with the President, you won't waste the opportunity stumbling over your words. And if you're really good, the President will then reply, "Tell me more."

Anyway, that was sort of the mission when I traveled to Santa Monica to make a series of 18 short parenting videos for Kids In The House. And even while I doubt I'll ever find myself alone on an elevator with the President, I found it an excellent exercise to try to talk about big topics in a limited time-frame without it coming out as word salad.

A huge part of this blog is about the whys and wherefores of a play-based curriculum, so I know I can go long on the topic. Embedded below is my attempt at an elevator ride speech on how a play-based curriculum works.

And while you could hardly throw a rock at your computer screen (although I wouldn't recommend it) without hitting a post here that addresses at least some aspect of a play-based curriculum, if you're interested in the long-form version, you might want to check out some of these posts:

Teaching A Play-Based Curriculum
How A Play-Based Curriculum Works
I Just Need To Play With Them
How An Emergent Curriculum Works: Hardwired Into Our DNA (first of a 5 parter)
Choosing The Way That Is Hard
Why We Laugh When We Play
Let's Define Play
Why I Teach The Way I Do (This is the really long version that I would hope the President would read after hearing the elevator pitch.)

And if you liked the video, you can find not only the rest of my videos (search for "Tom Hobson"), but also some 8000 more two minute parenting videos at Kids In The House.

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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What Motivates Me

There's a song I sing when it's time to gather around for circle time, our community meetings. It's something I made up, I think, although it probably grew from a kernel planted by one of my mentors. It always starts off the same way, "Come on over to the checker board rug, come on over to the checker board rug, come on over to the checker board rug, and have a seat on the floor . . ." After that, it can pretty much go off on any number of tangents, each one sillier than the last, usually inspired by something one of the kids has done or said. It's just a way to goof around until everyone is settled in. And then, since I typically don't have anything specific planned, we usually just goof around together some more. In a nutshell, that's the Teacher Tom method.

Honestly, I was never particularly motivated to become a teacher. There were a couple of my high school teachers to whom I looked up, but that had more to do with my perception of their lifestyle as teachers -- being cool role models, coaching sports teams after school, having pretty wives -- than anything to do with helping kids' brains grow bigger. Even when I finally became a father, I had little interest in teaching our baby anything: I just wanted to goof around with her.

People assume I'm interested in pedagogy and curricula and brain development, and I am, I suppose. I've done just enough reading, and taken just enough classes, and attended just enough workshops, to have a working knowledge of most of what's out there, but everything I know about teaching, really, I've acquired more by osmosis than any sort of concentrated study, and frankly, I rarely think about any of it anyway. Likewise, I'm not all that interested in knowing about spectrums or disorders or syndromes or any other kind of diagnosis. I'm not ignorant of them, of course, and I recognize that there is value in this kind of knowledge, but it generally only reveals such a tiny piece of what makes a child who he or she is that it borders on the irrelevant, at least when it comes to the way I do "teaching."

And speaking of irrelevant, I know and care even less about much of the stuff my public school colleagues talk about, like "Common Core," or "WASL Tests," or all those various certifications and qualifications and whatnot. I mean, I've looked into some of it, and found it has so little in common with what I do on a day-to-day basis that it hardly looks at all to me like what I call "teaching." If it wasn't threatening to take over the whole of what we call "education" in America, I would gladly ignore it entirely.

As I'm gearing up for my trip to Australia and New Zealand, where I'll be presenting and facilitating education workshops (information and links at the bottom of this post), people are expressing enthusiasm for learning more about my approach, methodology, and pedagogy. And that's what I'm going to talk about, although I'll never be able to offer a tidy list of "10 Tips" or "12 Steps To Success." I'll probably mostly talk about the fine art of goofing off with kids.

You see, I came into teaching through a back door, not even really knowing where I was, to be honest, holding my own daughter's hand. We found a bunch of kids there and started playing with them. Everyone called it "school," so we did too. I was never particularly motivated to become a teacher, but when I saw what my mentors Sue Anderson and Chris David did in their little cooperative classrooms, I was motivated to do that.

We spent our time together at this kind of school mostly just goofing around, although by virtue of being adults we occasionally had to work with children to help them be safe, to treat one another fairly, to express our emotions in healthy, productive ways. But that wasn't our "curriculum," heavens no, all of that adult stuff was just by way of getting back to the core of why we were together: to have an interesting time goofing around.

I'm still not particularly motivated to be a teacher, but I do enjoy being Teacher Tom. I love nothing more than dropping to my knees and playing with the children, talking with them, listening to them, being their friend. My main job, as I do it, is just to find a way to get each kid on my bandwagon, which can only be done by forging a relationship based upon a two-way street of listening, acceptance, and love -- and a sacred agreement that no one is the "boss" of anyone else. The rest is just goofing off together. 

I may not be motivated to be a teacher, but I am motivated by the unique joys and challenges of creating a relationship with each child. It's endlessly amazing to me that the more I've done this, coming to a place called school each day to goof around with kids, that there is still so much more to learn, that there is always a deeper depth and a higher height and a sillier way to sing that old song. 

Finding those new places is what motivates me; finding them with the kids, going there together, then goofing off. That's what motivates me.

Australia/New Zealand Tour information

I will be Down Under for the first couple weeks of August. Here's the itinerary:

Aug. 2 -- Brisbane

Aug. 3-4 -- Shoal Bay

Aug. 8 -- Melbourne

Aug. 9 -- Adelaide

Aug. 10 -- Perth

Aug. 13 -- Auckland

Aug. 17 -- Christchurch

For details and registration information, click here, the scroll down until you find the event your interested in. I look forward to meeting all you Aussies and Kiwis!

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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Teaching Values

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.  ~James Baldwin

I don't claim to be a parenting expert.  I'm just a guy who has spent a lot of time playing with children, from that I've learned a little bit, and because of this blog people write me for my take on things. If there is any one thing that people write me more than anything else, it's something along the lines of, "I've tried everything and nothing works." I'm talking about universal parenting aggravations like getting kids to eat their vegetables, take a nap, or participate in household chores. And these are important things. Not only do we want our children to be healthy, rested, and responsible today, but these behaviors represent the values of good health and responsibility that, if we can only "instill" them, we know will serve our children throughout their lives.

While I try to be more sympathetic than this with individual readers because I know they wouldn't write to some guy on the internet wearing a red cape unless they were truly at the end of their rope, my answer to their dilemma is really quite simple: Quit trying.

You can serve children healthy food, but you can't make them eat. So quit trying.

You can put children into their bed, but you can't make them sleep. So quit trying.

And you can't make them clean up their room without the promise of a reward or the threat of punishment. 

So, I suppose I could reply to these parents that they haven't, in fact, tried "everything," because obviously they could come up with a carrot that is sweet enough or a stick that is painful enough that you can get a child to do what you want them to do, but I would never suggest that anyone consciously step onto the vicious cycle of reward and punishment. Rewards and punishments may appear to work in the moment -- the promise of ice cream may well motivate a child to eat a few peas; the threat of having toys taken away may well motivate a child to tidy up -- but human nature dictates that, being unnatural consequences, the value of the rewards and the severity of the punishments must be regularly increased or they lose their effectiveness. Not only that, but the lessons taught in the long run, to be motivated by the approval or disapproval of others, are certainly not what we wish for our children. Values must come from within; they are not imposed from without: that's called obedience an unsavory and even dangerous trait.

Whatever we publicly proclaim, our actual values (as opposed to the values to which we aspire) are always, always, always most accurately and honestly revealed by our behaviors. When we eat junk food, we demonstrate that we value convenience or flavor over eating healthily. When we don't get enough sleep, we demonstrate that we value our jobs or our hobbies or our TV programs more than rest. When we let our homes become cluttered and dirty, we demonstrate that we value something else over a well-ordered household.

No, the better course, I've found, when it comes to teaching values is to simply give up trying to make another person do something that you want them to do. If you value healthy food, then eat it. If you value being well rested, then sleep. If you value a tidy bedroom, then keep yours tidy. And ultimately, with time, sometimes lots of time, it will be your role-modeling of these behaviors that your child will come to imitate, not on your schedule, but one of his own, which is all we can expect of our fellow humans.

You cannot instill values in other people, you can only role model them. And while I've avoided mentioning them in this post, no matter what your priest, rabbi, pastor, imam, or guru says, this goes for moral values as well.

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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In That Direction Lies Happiness

We must hang together gentlemen . . . else we shall most assuredly hang separately. ~Benjamin Franklin

Happy Independence Day. And “happy” is the appropriate greeting for today. The Declaration of Independence was the first historical instance of the word "happiness" appearing in the founding documents of any nation.

Today in 1776, 56 men signed their names to this radical document. As a result they were, without trial, proclaimed traitors by the government and sentenced to death. These were middle class people. John Hancock was the wealthiest among them and he was not even a millionaire by today's standards. The wealthy sided with the king. Most of the signers were working people -- farmers and tradesmen primarily. None of them left behind a family fortune, or a foundation, or any other kind of financial memorial of their lives. Our nation is their legacy.

Their average age was 33 (Thomas Jefferson's age at the time). The youngest was only 20-years-old. The oldest was Benjamin Franklin, who was 70.

As a result of having signed the Declaration of Independence, all 56 of the signers were forced to flee their homes. Twelve returned to find only rubble.

As a result of having signed the Declaration of Independence, 17 of them were wiped out financially by the British government.

As a result of having signed the Declaration of Independence, many of them were captured and tortured, or their families were imprisoned, or their children were taken from them. Nine of them died and 4 of them lost their children.

As I read the Declaration of Independence, as I do each July 4, I find myself in awe of their courage. They were all aware of the likely consequences, but they did what they knew must be done. Two-hundred and thirty-seven years later, I still feel the outrage they must have felt as I read through the specific governmental abuses that lead them to that critical moment.

Even more than our Constitution, the Declaration of Independence is the beginning point for the United States of America. I find it both educational and inspirational to return to the source before heading out for fireworks.

When Franklin was asked what kind of nation they were forming, he answered, "A republic, madam, if you can keep it."

I worry at times that we won't be able to keep it, that, in fact, we've already lost it. I worry that too many of us have declared our independence not from tyrants, but from one another, not understanding that in creating a constitutional government of, by, and for we the people, we were also declaring our interdependence.

At the signing to the Declaration of Independence in 1776, Franklin famously said, "We must hang together gentlemen . . . else we shall most assuredly hang separately." 

And while we come together today to commemorate our independence from tyranny, this is also a day for embracing our fellow countrymen, for celebrating our interdependence. In that direction lies happiness.

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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Something To Do

Every child should have mud pies, grasshoppers, water bugs, tadpoles, frogs, mud turtles, elderberries, wild strawberries, acorns, chestnuts, trees to climb. Brooks to wade, water lilies, woodchucks, bats, bees, butterflies, various animals to pet, hayfields, pine-cones, rocks to roll, sand, snakes, huckleberries and hornets; and any child who has been deprived of these has been deprived of the best part of education.  ~Luther Burbank

I've mentioned the little park across the way from my apartment a few times on this blog. It's called Denny Park, Seattle's first park, a full city block that is mostly lawn, large shade trees, a few flower beds at its bulls-eye, and criss-crossed with paved walkways. On the western side are the offices of the city's parks and recreation department. It's all very simple, pleasant, and up until recently, mostly full of not much to do. Even the obligatory playground was that way, featuring a zip-line, a small merry-go-round, a collection of large boulders set in the ground, a slippery silver metal dome, and a large circle of pavers.

I have two dogs to walk, so I pass the playground regularly and have observed it at all hours of the day, throughout a couple of years. There are more children in our neighborhood than in the past, I suppose, but on any given day, the playground is bereft of young children, although it does often attract teenagers who play rowdily on the zip-line and young lovers who seem to like to lazily spin on the merry-go-round. Occasionally, however, there will be a few young children there, probably on their way to someplace else. The older kids are drawn to the zip-line, where they take turns pushing one another on it, faster each time, causing their bodies to swing out until they're almost parallel to the ground.

The younger children, the preschoolers, are more often attracted by the boulders, the silver dome, and the circle of pavers. Often, as I pass, I will hear parents urging their toddlers to do something, to try out the zip-line or the merry-go-round, but when left to their own devices, that's where they stay, feeling the smooth metal with their hands, jumping off the boulders, walking the shape of the circle. I've seen more than one child repeatedly try and fail to get fists-full of wood chips to stay on the dome, only to succeed when they try it on the boulder, a phenomenon they then test with their whole bodies by trying to climb on first one, then the other. Sometimes they skip or gallop or run around the paver circle, or pick the little daisies growing up through the cracks. Often, I notice, they find the boulders a nice place to sit while talking to their friends or to just look up into the branches that canopy this oasis in the midst of traffic congestion.

Typically, during our final parent education session of the school year, we'll go around our circle of parents as each of us share our memories of summer. Almost to a person, we recall "mud pies, grasshoppers, water bugs, tadpoles, frogs . . ." In my 12 years of sitting in these meetings, I don't remember anyone talking of slides or climbers or even playgrounds.

Our neighborhood, once a sort of no-man's-land on the edge of downtown, on the wrong side of Aurora Avenue, best known as a place to pass through on the way to the freeway, has in recent years become a place to live and work. Some well-intended person at the parks and rec department took a look at those boulders, that silver dome, and the circle of pavers, had the idea that with all the new people, including children, moving to our neighborhood, it was time that Denny Park included something for the kids to do. So they've removed the boulders and dome, while keeping, for the time being, the pavers, and replaced them with a brightly colored climber, complete with ladders and slides.

It "opened" without fanfare a couple weeks ago and I have noticed more kids there than in past Junes, their strollers lined up along the sidewalk, parents, I guess, having brought them there because now there is something to do. I've yet to see a child on the new climber except for one very young boy who was placed up there by an adult and who then proceeded to cry until he was lifted back down. I watched one girl balance her way along a nearby rock wall. I've seen others picking up fists-full of wood chips and throw them into the air. Children still run around the circle of pavers, but mostly they seem to be almost intentionally staying away from the climber, opting instead to explore the lawns, the leaves, the helicopter pods of maple seeds, and the boles of the old trees, the best part of education even here in the middle of the city.

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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Identifying Design Flaws

Yesterday I had lunch with my parents. Dad's a retired transportation engineer and as often happens our conversation touched on roads and driving. There was some of the typical complaining, which is the gist of most discussions of traffic, but because, I suppose, it's Dad's profession, each gripe segued into solutions. I'm not a happy driver, which I've written about before on this blog, which was why, despite not feeling quite myself, I chose a 25-mile round-trip bike ride over getting behind the wheel of the car. Then something pretty cool happened, we started talking about the good drivers out there. You know the ones: the majority, the ones you don't notice even while speeding shoulder-to-shoulder at 65 mph; the ones who manage four-way stops without a hitch; the ones who we entrust with our lives and the lives of our loved ones each time we take to the roads.

It's a kind of miracle actually. Yes, we arrive at our destinations fuming about the "idiots," but it's the rest of them, the majority, cooperating, taking turns, abiding by the rules, showing small courtesies, that helped get us there safe and sound. It's easier to think this way while breaking bread with one's family than while sitting in a traffic jam, I reckon, but when you really think about it, especially when it comes to big city driving, it can be a soothing balm to one's sore opinion of humanity.

I feel the same way, of course, when it's the kids at school who spontaneously, democratically, and indeed, miraculously, come together like a single organism to achieve a common end or devise a common means. But it's not a miracle at all. It's what, when left to our own devices, we do if given the chance.

Too often as adults in the lives of young children, we find ourselves tasked with dealing with the "accidents" or playing the role of traffic cop, doling out the citations and warnings to the "idiots," and that, unfortunately, at the end of the day is what sticks with us. We lose sight of the fact that most of the kids, most of the time, are cooperating, taking turns, abiding by the rules, and showing small courtesies because that's what people, no matter how small, do.

Over many decades of talking about traffic with a transportation engineer, I've come to understand, I think, some important principles. At one time or another all of us are the "idiots," because we are human. There are a few of us that, for lack of a proper education in the art of day-to-day democracy, are "idiots" a lot of the time. And then there are times when everyone is an "idiot." That's where you'll find the design flaws: it's not the drivers who are the idiots, but rather the engineer.

As a teacher, I try every day to appreciate our shared idiocy, to understand that most mistakes, for most of us, are of the self-correcting variety. We give one another a hug and are on our way. When a child habitually struggles to cooperate, to take turns, to abide by rules, and to show small courtesies, I strive to help him come to an understanding of how community works. And when it looks like rebellion, I have to know that the children are simply rising up, as we do in all democracies, to let me know that the "idiot" is me, and I have some design issues to work out.

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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Still Hiding In The Bushes

Jen over at A Path Less Taken recently posted an excellent piece about her experiences as the parent of teenagers. It reminded me of this post from a year or so ago. A year is a long time in the life of a teenager, but I'm happy to report I stand by every word. When people ask me, I still honestly answer, "I love being the parent of a teenager." I have so much more to say about our experiences together, but in the interest of privacy and respect, I won't publish most of it until she's much older. She has previously approved this piece, however, so I feel comfortable in running it again. 

This is a blog mostly about preschool aged children, but being the parent of a teenager, I'm here to tell you, as unlikely as it might sound to those of you with the younger kids, that's where they're all headed, god willing.

When my daughter Josephine was in sixth grade, she and a friend wanted to go to a dance, at night, in an all-ages venue. This wasn't the usual chaperoned school event, although I'd heard of the organization hosting it and knew nothing bad about it. On the other hand, I'd often walked by the place and been slightly taken aback by the scruffy looking teens hanging out there, although it was purely a reaction to their dress and hair, not behavior. I'd spoken with her friend's father so I knew we were all on board with the plan of us each driving, and our kids meeting up there. As we got close to the venue, Josephine asked, "You're not going to walk me to the door are you?"

"Well, how will I know you've hooked up with your friend?"

"We're meeting right out by the street. You'll see us."

"Okay."

"Thank you. Mama would walk me to the door. She'd probably try to come inside."

"Really? She would do that? I wouldn't do that."

She paused for a moment, then said, "No, you'd just pretend to leave me, then hide in the bushes." And sure enough, she was more or less onto my plan, which was to drop her off, park the car nearby, then spend my evening within a 2-block radius eating dinner and window shopping. It bugged her, but at the same time I think she also felt a little relieved to know that I'd be nearby, just in case. It's not that I distrusted her, I told myself, but rather that I didn't trust those other kids and what they might all do together. I often look back on that as my first real experience as the parent of a teen.

Probably the most common response I get from new acquaintances when I mention my teenager is something along the lines of, "That must be stressful," or "A challenging age," or just, "Good luck." It's a sort of culture-wide joke we tell about teens, one we all have the right to tell because not so long ago (or so it seems), we were all dopey, mopey, distracted teens ourselves. That this characterization doesn't match my experience as a parent so far, however, has started to really make me wonder over what we think about adolescents.

I genuinely love being the parent of a teen. I like her teen friends. I don't mind her messy room, her clothes, her hair, or even the fact that she seems to spend all her free time trying to expand her social world. In fact, I admire her persistence and energy, wishing I had a little more of it myself. Other parents bemoan the fact that all their kids want to do is "hang out," even forbidding it, worried that it's just a set-up for getting into trouble, and it is. But I think I understand it: after 15 years of being relentlessly on her parents' radar, being off it, just hanging out with friends out in the world, is enough of a unique experience all by itself.

And while I'll never come to peace with some of the "stupid" risks she's taken, and will likely take in the future, there's also a piece of me that knows, deep down, that she's going to do whatever it is she wants to do, try whatever it is she's wants to try, and the only say I really have is to give her my best, most honest advice, and love her. Indeed this is the bottom line truth for every parent, so if I'm going to do that job, I need to do everything I can to keep those lines of communication wide open, to not be overly shocked or punitive or despairing, but rather to have conversations about the real risks and rewards. I sometimes feel the pull toward putting the hammer down the way other parents do, to just say, "Because I say so." The world of drinking, drugs, sex, and driving, after all, has laid waste to so many young lives, but authoritarian parenting is far more likely to lead to the chaotic, chronic behaviors we label as delinquent. So while I attempt to walk the middle ground, when I err, it's on the side of permissiveness, starting with a desire to say "yes," if only she gives me time to think about it; time for us to talk about it; time for me to find a good hiding place in the bushes.

Sometimes after our talks, she decides to not take the risk after all. More often she goes ahead then later tells stories of being there with all her friends whose parents put their foot down in righteous opposition and now have no idea where their child was and what she was doing. The kids are all there taking the same "risk," but at least I know where mine is, equipped with my best advice, whether she takes it or not. 

I recently came across a fascinating article in National Geographic entitled Teenage Brains, in which author David Dobbs discusses teenaged brain development (which goes on into our early to mid-20's) in the context of evolution.

The resulting account of the adolescent brain . . . casts the teen less as a rough draft than as an exquisitely sensitive, highly adaptable creature wired almost perfectly for the job of moving from the safety of home into the complicated world outside.

These are the years when their brains and bodies are making the final preparations to leave the nest, to head out into that thrilling, dangerous world, and whatever we feel about it as parents, it is their destiny. As neuroscientist B.J. Casey puts it:

We're so used to seeing adolescence as a problem. But the more we learn about what really makes this period unique, the more adolescence starts to seem like a highly functional, even adaptive period. It's exactly what you'd need to do the things you have to do then.

I'll let you click over and read the entire article about the biology behind why adolescents take risks, seek novelty, and bond so passionately with their peers. It's all adaptive behavior even if we sometimes view it as quite the opposite. I walked away with a renewed admiration for the teenaged brain, but this is the part that stood out for me:

We parents, of course, often stumble too, as we try to walk the blurry line between helping and hindering our kids as they adapt to adulthood. The United States spends about a billion dollars a year on programs to counsel adolescents on violence, gangs, suicide, sex, substance abuse, and other potential pitfalls. Few of them work.

Yet we can and do help. We can ward off some of the world's worst hazards and nudge adolescents toward appropriate responses to the rest. Studies show that when parents engage and guide their teens with a light but steady hand, staying connected but allowing independence, their kids generally do much better in life. Adolescents want to learn primarily, but not entirely, from their friends. At some level and at some times (and it's the parent's job to spot when), the teen recognizes that the parent can offer certain kernels of wisdom -- knowledge valued not because it comes from parental authority but because it comes from the parent's own struggles to learn how the world turns. The teen rightly perceives that she must understand not just her parents' world but also the one she is entering. Yet if allowed to, she can appreciate that her parents once faced the same problems and may remember a few things worth knowing.

In the meantime, you'll find me hiding in the bushes.

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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