Nature v. Science: Rivers & Bridges, or Chickens & Dinos

feeding chickens at the Dodge Farm

So,  I have the privilege of teaching a couple classes for homeschoolers once a week.  Cooperating homeschooling families meet at a church in the south metro one day a week and send their kids to a variety of classes.  I know Art class is very popular, as is Spanish (my students often call me by the Art teacher's name or greet me with an enthusiastic, "Hola!").  They also attend Creative Writing classes, and there's PE and something called eXtreme electroniX (that's gotta be cool, right?).  I am billed as, "Dodge Nature Center Science."  I never gave the title of this class much thought really.  I supplied a nice fat vitae and syllabus for families to peruse, but other people created the title and I inherited the class, so I just rolled with it.  But, actually, the title has begun to bug me.  The part of the appellation that sticks in my craw is, "Science."  You see, I teach these classes for three to seven-year-olds.

checking out Midas the chicken, with Joey

Nobody, but nobody really teaches three-year-olds "Science," with a capital "S."  A descriptor like "Science," suggests I am imparting a lot of facts and introducing a procedure for formal study.  That sort of thing isn't age-appropriate for young kids.  My own kids have "Science," in middle school and they are performing chemical experiments on rocks, learning lab procedure and reading textbooks with units on distinct topics.  This is age-appropriate for eleven and twelve-year-olds (and their teacher has the good sense to realize that her approach has to be heavy on the experiential and hands-on, with less emphasis on didactic imparting of facts and statistics).  What I teach, or support, for inquisitive youngsters is inquiry itself.  With the homeschool kiddos, our classes' outside exposure is limited to the host church's yard, landscaping and small flower garden.  I usually supplement this curtailed outside environment with a catalyst, like a live animal or a taxidermied bear head, and kids explore that catalyst, pursuing it with me via hands-on investigation, supportive literature, play and simple tools.  Inquiry and wonder is the age-appropriate beginning for scientific inquiry.  The seven-year-olds in my classes are definitely ready for more rigorous investigation and I supply them with a lot of games and guesswork that de-centralize the classroom in their favor and encourage them to find solutions to bigger questions.  These kids can use tools more readily, and most can read.  The journals that they use begin to function a bit more like actual journals, rather than a repository for experimental scribbles.  The older kids are that much closer to the moment when they will embark on theoretical ideas and more complicated experiments, but they still need and are primarily enlivened by hands-on, concrete experiences, like feeling the sharp canine curve of an actual wolf tooth.

real, live chicken feet

Experience leads to appreciation.  For young children, concrete experiences are more meaningful and especially so if they relate directly to that child's life and daily general experience (that's why my catalysts are usually native to life in Minnesota).  Kids love the idea of sharks, and can talk about sharks, or dinosaurs for that matter, for a long time.  They love the taxonomy and danger associated with these animals.  The taxonomy and the danger are equally abstract, really.  It is fun to collect the names of dinosaurs, and to link them to the stats of a particular animal that used to occupy the planet.  It is also fun to imagine sharks ripping other living things to shreds.  This is all very hypothetical though.  In my "Science," class we could geek out on dinos, sharks or space all day, but we wouldn't be having a real experience, other than our shared joy in discussion (which we can't underestimate, of course!.  Instead, I know it is much more valuable to try to hold a chicken and feel it's "dinosaur" feet.  In the case of the chicken, the child is interacting with an actual thing-- looking at, feeling, smelling and responding to something that is directly related to human life on Earth.  In all cases, the real thing is the best thing, especially for young children.  And nothing jogs the mind to consider hypotheticals like a genuine experience.

chickens are sort of like turkeys...and, "Look!  I'm a turkey!"

Recently, while teaching about wild turkeys, I presented my class with an actual turkey egg.  Now, we had just read a book about turkeys nesting on the ground and we had wondered what might pose a danger to such eggs.  The size, the color and the fragility of the actual egg immediately prompted terrific guesses about the demise of the eggs.  And the honor and challenge of passing a real egg filled with a real yolk around the circle of kids inspired the children to reach new heights in impulse control and motor skill.  It is easy to discuss how the shape of an egg evolves to suit it's purpose when you can roll it on the floor and see what trajectory the roll takes (cliff-dwelling birds have very pointed eggs, which keeps the eggs from rolling off the edge-- notice how "Math" concepts climbed right in there?).

If you've read this blog before, I am no doubt preaching to the choir on this experiential stuff, but it is important to realize that age-appropriate teaching for young children has terrific outcomes.  Kids who get to experiment with the stuff of life, those that get to hold a real salamander for instance, or climb an actual tree, they not only build a relationship with the natural world, they build a relationship with their own body and their own mind.  Large and fine motor skill development, sensory development, impulse control development...all of these things are inextricably linked to cognitive development.  The kid who learns where to put her feet and hands when she is swinging up into a tree has learned to think hypothetically through experience.  Experience teaches kids how to think.  That's why babies put everything in their mouths.  Three to seven-year-olds will be smarter and more capable if they are allowed to experiment with their bodies and the world, to take calculated risks (with a chaperon) and to reflect on those experiences.  Kids will be more ready for the abstract, for "Science," if they have first had a real relationship with the stuff that inspires it.  "Snowflake" Bentley couldn't have discovered so much about snowflakes if he didn't first play in the snow, and love it.  In this way, the form of scientific inquiry follows the function of interacting with the world.  The drive to build a sturdy bridge across a raging river leads us to mathematics and architecture.  Too often we think of knowledge in a backward way (bridge before river) in our rush to educate our kids.

I've said it before, but I myself didn't really grasp "math" as an interesting, necessary, vital concept or as a study of the forces of nature, until I was an adult.  Too much of my own "Math," with a capital "M," education was marred by a lack of hands-on experience.  Through working to side our house, my husband came to understand fractions and geometry in a whole new, real, necessary way.  My own first-hand admiration of seashells, pine cones, artichokes, sunflowers, the crowns of trees and the art of Andy Goldsworthy led me to an understanding of Fibonacci numbers.  Going into labor is a great way to learn about inertia and falling out of an airplane will certainly school you on gravity.  But, seriously, what am I teaching my Dodge students and my homeschoolers?  Is it Science?  Well, I hope I'm encouraging them to look and think, primarily.  And what do you call that?  Maybe "pre-science prep""  Or maybe you call it, "Nature Appreciation," with a capital "N."  So much of what I do as a shepherd and chaperon is social coaching as well.  We explore the world around us, and we also learn how to do this alongside other people.  In fact, perhaps 99.9% of what I do with kids, here at Dodge, and elsewhere is support social skill development.  I just happen to think that play outside, and interaction with the natural world, is the best way to promote social and emotional development.  So maybe we should just call that homeschool class what it is: "Nature Club."  Like any other social organization, we hang out together, but in this case, nature is our excuse.

Thank You, Castor Canadensis

photo courtesy of the intrepid Holly Brand

Beavers are pretty entertaining.  Ever watched a beaver go about his business?  No?  I recommend visiting Wild River State Park and hiking down to the Nevers Dam Overlook.  You can park by the camper cabins, or stay overnight in one for $50 (they sleep 6, so that's a good deal), then walk down a very long stepped path to the western shore of the Saint Croix River.  Plan on getting down there about an hour before sunset.  At the bottom of the path, veer to the left (north?) and look up river.  Scan the ice, and hopefully open water, between the shore and that island just off shore.  Do you see him?  Not yet?  Well, look for signs of his handiwork along the bank.  If he's been busy, you'll see plenty of fresh stumps, skinned sticks, dragged saplings and precariously leaning, almost gnawed through trees.  This guy can cut down a dinner plate diameter tree in 15 minutes.  Oh!  There he is!  Look, he's swimming in the open channel.  See him paddling against the current?  Now he's hauling himself carefully up on the shelf of ice.  He's such a dark satisfying blob against the winter-pink, waning light.  He's trying hard not to break that thin ice; he walks like an old lady with brittle bones until he gains purchase on the thicker stuff.  What's he doing now?  Wait, is he looking over here?  Now he's up on his hind legs-- he's so tall!  Reaching up with his little front feet--little hands--to grab that branch.  And, he's, well, he's just chowing down on  it.  I can hear him now.  

Saint Croix eddy, Trumpeter Swans just around the bend

Dodge Nature Center doesn't have any beavers.  I wish we did.  It is seriously engrossing to watch these animals.  Last weekend, my kids and I hiked up and down that steep hill, with all those thigh-burning steps over and over again, just to get a glimpse of the beaver, and his/her (?) mate at work.  They showed up every evening and didn't seem to mind us too much.  We had to be quiet and respectful.  No sudden movements, no loud noises.  And you know who got the closest to these industrious animals?  My daughter J.J.  She is a whirling dervish of energy-- an ant, a fidget, a dancer, a gymnast.  The kid doesn't sit still for much and the rest of us are usually just racing to catch up with her (all those steps really didn't take any wind out of her sails).  But J.J. became still as stone watching the beavers.  She couldn't get enough.  And little by little, without anybody, including the beavers, noticing, J.J. inched ever closer to the animals.  She watched and watched.  The sun began to set.  I watched her watch.  Her focus was singular.  Her breathing slowed, her muscles relaxed.  She had nowhere else to go, nothing else to do.  She was just alive in the moment and completely at ease in her own skin, just a few feet away from working wild animals.  I was struck by the power of the experience, her experience.  These animals, in their place, leading their lives alongside or independent of us, had the power to awaken and stimulate awareness and also to soothe, frankly, a frenetic little soul.

Children:  delightfully disorienting

Time and again, we here at Dodge give lip service to the power of spending time outside.  I seem to go on and on about this non-stop in my writing life, and of course I see the power of play and exploration outside in my daily work with young children at our Preschool, but...nothing hits home with as much power as personal experience.  I certainly know I need to spend time outside.  I know my kids do too.  Just the other day, I realized with a wince that my kids were so busy with school, homework and enriching activities that they really are not getting much vitamin D these short late fall days.  It's dark when they get on the bus.  It's dark when they finally have down time, and it is usually so late in the day that they don't go out and play.  Despite the fact that it would, and did, make our Thanksgiving weekend crazier, I vowed that our family would get outside together and head off to Wild River State Park.  I'm really, really glad we made time for time outside.  Although watching your own kids is a vicarious experience, there is something oddly more personal about it than having your very own experience.  It is hard to explain, but I've learned that parents literally live through their kids, through the ups, and the downs.  It can be disorienting to realize that you no longer really own yourself-- your kids own you in a delightful, and also truly terrifying way.  So here I am to tell you once again, get outside and slow down out there.  Dodge may not have beavers, but we have plenty of other stuff to slow down with:  deer, turkeys, ponds and creeks, snow on spruces.  You can't watch the grass grow in winter, but you can watch the snow pile up and the clouds scuttle overhead.  Dress warmly, be comfortable and find a way to just be out there.  For a few long moments, just live in someone else's moment:  a beaver's moment, a jay's moment, or a kid's moment.  Those are bigger, longer moments for sure, bigger than all the busier little parts that make up the mysterious sum that is life on this planet.

*Castor Canadensis is a truly interesting animal; get the basic facts at the MN DNR.

An Ofrenda for Olivia

Rebekah and daughter, Imix

We are always helping preschoolers learn how to share.  We coach them through in their play and general social interactions with peers.  The goal is to help young children grow up to be inclusive, patient adults, right?  Like most learning, the skills of sharing, patience, kindness, openness and listening are best acquired by doing.  Our Dodge community got a great hands-on lesson in sharing last week with the help of some special visitors.  Danza Mexica joined us for a series of performances and interactions, and now our Dodge community is a bit bigger.

Rebekah Crisanta is a lively member of our Dodge community, our larger local Twin Cities community and of the Ce Tempoxcalli community, a non-profit promoting interculturalism and community action. We first met Rebekah and her family last year, when her daughter, Imix, joined the Spruce Classroom.  Before the year was out, the Spruce Room blossomed into a very diverse and very exciting little community.  Many families shared a bit of their family life with us throughout the year, including Imix's family.  Rebekah, Imix and Danza Mexica Cauuhtemoc joined us for dancing and sharing of Mexican heritage and culture, and their visit and involvement was so enlivening and enriching, we asked them to join us again this year.  This time, all the kids at Dodge got to share some time with Danza Mexica, and to participate in a very special activity:  making an ofrenda for Olivia Dodge.

Danza Mexica's first visit:
Imix's little sister
was dancing then too!

The late Olivia Dodge, 1918-2009, or "Mrs. Dodge," was the founder of our Thomas Irvine Dodge Nature Center.  It is Olivia who gave us the big gift of the land that we all enjoy here, day in and day out, year 'round.  She loved this land so much, she named it for her son.  It is Olivia who made it possible for all kinds of young children to have access to developmentally appropriate, land-based education.  Olivia made it possible for us to perhaps cultivate and nurture the Olivias of the future.  And, for Olivia, Rebekah Crisanta, graciously and ingeniously invited us to practice a little bit of interculturalism and a whole lot of sharing, by making an ofrenda.  In Mexican tradition, an ofrenda is constructed for a beloved elder who has become an ancestor, someone who has died.  The ofrenda is composed of tokens that represent the elements of life, and the details of the ancestor's life.  Rebekah and Imix shared with us the ofrenda of a family member who was a farmer; it contained corn and representations of plants among other things, and a marigold, or cepoal-xochitl, whose potent scent calls the ancestor to the party.  The party is El Dia de los Muertos.  El Dia is, of course, a traditional Mexican holiday, when the ancestors are celebrated and remembered by their loved ones.  The ofrenda is the centerpiece of the holiday, recalling and calling the ancestor back to us.  So, together, we made an ofrenda for Olivia.

things they love; things Olivia loved

Olivia's ofrenda

Kids hiked and collected things they love, like leaves, feathers, sticks, rocks and bark.  These items were also things "that Olivia loved."  We know that Olivia loved this earth.  She loved the birds in the trees, the frogs in the pond and the animals in the pasture.  And Olivia also loved kids, and a good party too.  So we had a good party, with lots of kids and tokens of the things she loved from the land.  We gathered in our big meeting room here at the Preschool and Rebekah and Danza Mexica danced and drummed while children constructed a makeshift ofrenda for Olivia.  Rebekah spoke eloquently and simply about Mrs. Dodge and honoring the earth.  Then Danza Mexica danced and drummed their souls out.  They performed an Honor Dance, an Eagle Dance (because the "eagle is an elder, an ancestor with his white hair, like Olivia") and a Deer Dance.  Imix drummed along with the master drummer and little sister, Xochitl, rocked along in her car seat as the rhythm thrummed through the entire room.  Kids were riveted.  Rebekah and her apprentice dancers told stories of the earth with their bodies, crouching, spinning, balancing and whirling in their beautiful finery and impressive pheasant feather headdresses.  The stories were very powerful, electrifying.  Rebekah became a deer in the Deer Dance-- listening, leaping, stamping, startling.  It was a thing of beauty and awe-- like interculturalism between people and deer!  They taught us the Monkey Dance and the Snake Dance.  We wound our way through the entire school, head coiling upon tail, with the snake eventually consuming itself in a melee of fun, a giant circle of life.

Eagle Dance

sharing Danza

The power of this special interaction was infectious.  One of my students reported to her mother, "Mom!  There were dancers in the Morning Bunch Room!  They danced about LOVE and NATURE!"  When our class returned to the Spruce Room after the event, the kids immediately ran for musical instruments and began leaping and spinning, shaking rattles and telling their own stories with their bodies.  We got out our big drum and went at it.  Eventually, we made our own turkey feather and necktie versions of those impressive headdresses.  In the Oak Room, children set about illustrating and writing stories about dancing and feathers and snakes.  My colleague, Kristenza, shared with me that her Willow Room students had a long and engrossing conversation about life and death as they hiked to collect gifts for departed Olivia.  One child mused that Olivia rises in the morning and sets at night, like the sun, "going in a circle, over and over again."  A circle, like a snake.  Another child shared his thought that winter was the season of dying and wondered if Olivia had died in winter (she did!).  These things cannot really be taught, can they?  They have to be experienced and lived.  The kids got to live as much of these matters as they could, in just the right way, just because someone else was gracious enough to share their experience with them-- Olivia made it possible for us to share Dodge, and Rebekah and her friends make it possible for us to share Dodge too.  Olivia's circle keeps getting bigger.

sharing the experience

El Dia de los Muertos is a celebration of life and memory.  Less to do with Halloween, and much more to do with a true idea of giving thanks, or "Thanksgiving" (not the Columbus/Puritan kind, by the way).

We give thanks to Olivia, and we give thanks to Danza Mexica for their great generosity of spirit.

Danza Mexica transported Olivia's ofrenda to the Wellstone Center last weekend for an even bigger party.  Olivia's memory was celebrated at their Dia de los Muertos community event and stood alongside other ofrendas, witnessing much happiness, an Aztec ceremony and lots of dancing.  The circle gets bigger and bigger.

new friends

To share more about Ce Tempoxcalli and Danza Mexica, and maybe even learn how do dance (!), visit their website or contact them at info@ce-t.org

Season Eye Opener

Buck this morning

We've been mushroom crazed here at Dodge this fall.  We've been finding, cataloging and eating fungus.  It's been an entire slippery season of mushrooms.  Guess who else is enjoying the fungal bounty of this damp fall?  Whitetails.  Deer find mushrooms scrumptious-- they too are mycophiles.

What else do deer eat?

-acorns
-corn
-soybeans
-grasses
-tree leaves
-tree buds
-tree bark
-wild grapes
-apples (wild or not)
-lots of shrubs and bushes

When we visit my parents in the Florida Keys every year, we always see Key Deer.  These petite cuties  don't look it, but they are omnivorous.  I've seen Key Deer eat crabs, fish and hot dogs.  While my dad and I were grilling on the beach, a crafty little deer came and stole a pork chop right off the Weber!  Maybe he was just mischievous, you're thinking.  But, no, we watched that deer wolf down that pork chop.  His friend carried off my daughter's box of Cheez-its and crunched crackers not five feet from us.  When you see a list of what deer eat, even discounting Key Deer, it is clear that Whitetails are adaptable.  Whitetails live, successfully, in every county and corner of our state.  An old friend of my husband's confirmed that he used to see Whitetails picking over the carcasses of dead fish in lake country.  The DNR estimates that we share Minnesota with close to 1,000,000 deer.  Deer are really good at accommodating us, even though we do our best to diminish their habitat (and their predators, which keep them in balance), so it's no wonder that we see them all the time here at Dodge.

Doe on playground

And yet, it is a wonder.  It is wonder-full.  Dodge deer have habituated to mild disturbance.  They've learned, through their successive generations, that preschoolers, elementary and even middle school aged kids pose little or no threat to their existence.  Dodge is a relatively safe place for Whitetails.  No hunting, no dogs, no traffic.  Lot's of food and a good amount of shelter.  It seems no surprise then that we can routinely get within ten feet of a Whitetail or two, or thirteen.  But still, it is surprising.

This morning we encountered 3 bucks vying for the attentions of a single doe.  Picture 4 groups of preschoolers, out on their respective hikes.  Then the word goes out over the walkie-talkies that a really big buck is hanging out by the Nature Center parking lot.  Suddenly twenty odd kids and five teachers are bearing witness to a yearly rite of passage:  the rut.   Seems like I'm destined to do an annual deer post every November.  There really is no way around it.  Whitetails just make their presence known here at Dodge.

Admiring a buckscrape

Things always pick up right after Halloween.  The wind blows, the leaves come down, and there they are.  Actually, we see deer year-round, but what we don't often see are bucks.  Bucks cruise around, conducting a mini migration through different populations of deer, having contests with different males, trying to win the right to mate.  And this week, there are at least four bucks chasing does right around the Nature Center.  These guys come in small, medium, large and extra large.  When you stop and think about it for a second, it is simply amazing that preschoolers, and grown-ups, can get up close and personal (what's more personal than the rut?) with these large and interesting animals.  It's also amazing that Dodge teachers have a real reason to discuss the word, "rut"  with preschoolers.  Continue to be amazed, consider the stats of the ubiquitous Whitetail:

-4-6ft long
-3.5ft tall at the shoulder
-85-300lbs
-Run 30mph
-Jump 8ft high
-Leap 33ft across

Track on morning hike

Consider more cool facts:

-4 chambers to their stomachs and are ruminants (like cows)
-Stomach bacteria changes seasonally in order to break down the forage a deer encounters through the succession of seasons!
-Blow or snort when they feel uneasy or threatened
-In Virginia, where they are hunted in the greatest numbers, can run the fastest:  47mph!
-When first frightened, they first run with tails or "flags" up
-When shot at, Whitetails can run in zig-zags with tails down
-Conduct a lot of communication with glands.  For instance:  crouch and pee down the backs of their own legs in order to activate glands in their flanks.  This says, "I'm here, and I'm really big, so check me out."
-Have dichromatic vision, meaning they see two color families:  blue and yellow (this is why they don't see blaze orange very well)
-1 in 10,000 female deer grows antlers
-Number of points on the antlers and the general size do not necessarily indicate the age of a buck; most yearlings grow antlers with 3 or more points
-Antlers are shed after deer mate, after the rut, when testosterone drops, from December to April
-Antlers begin to grow again in the spring
-Deer mature at about 1.5 years
-Gestation is just under 7 months
-Does usually give birth to twins

Calling in the bucks with antlers clacking

We love watching Whitetails with preschoolers.  My best afternoon here ever, bar none, took place when I when I was hiking with a group of boys and we were caught unawares by a three-way buck battle.  The boys and I dropped low and watched the battle rage.  For days, even weeks after, those boys re-enacted the buck battle.  They told the story forward and backward.  They drew pictures and wrote words about the encounter.  The were electrified by the power of Nature, with a capital "N."  We should surely keep watching Whitetails, and learning from them, but we should also respect them and remember that, although they have a big, positive impact on us, we have an impact on them too, and it is not always so positive.

Things to keep in mind when you admire deer at Dodge, and elsewhere:

-Bucks do not eat during the rut, and they lose weight and condition in their relentless pursuit of does; interference with their behavior during the rut can further degrade their physical well-being, setting them up for starvation during the winter.

-Bucks and does must eat as much as possible before the snow flies.  Winter is extremely tough on deer, and like most animals, they get stressed out when people watch, follow or otherwise harass them for too long.  Stress eats up precious calories in the deer body, setting them up for malnutrition and illness. When you observe deer, do so from a distance for a short time, and then go your own way, leaving them to eat and recuperate.

Deer do seem ubiquitous, and sometimes they drive us crazy.  They eat our landscaping, or garden goodies and they run in front of our cars.  But deer have complicated and mysterious social lives.  We can admire and emulate their adaptability too.  And we should keep in mind that, like us, deer are just trying to make a go of things.  Deer have learned to cope with a relentless human presence.  Perhaps we can extend deer a little grace by remembering them each November, studying their habits, honoring what we still don't know about them and admiring their resilience.  A closer look at Whitetails might just reflect a few of our finer traits.

Tomorrow's Gonna Be A Better Day

Once again, I was listening to the radio.  Like my fellow Americans, I find moments to muse in my car, when I am alone.  My morning drive to work is a little island of time in a constantly rolling sea.  Once in a while, I actually stop going over my mental To Do list and, as my boss would say, I "reflect."  

First, a couple weeks ago, I was listening to music, a song by Billy Bragg.  And then this morning, I was listening to the news.  This news had a human interest-y story about electronic gaming, and how game designers and companies are actually targeting specific demographics to enhance what game makers call "fun pain."  Apparently, games, especially the initially free ones, are designed to hook kids good, and then make it extremely painful to stop playing the game, so painful that the player is willing to buy his way into continuing or improving.  The games are designed to bring players, particularly young, male players to the brink of devastation by threatening the loss of all the material created so far, all the points earned or the death of their character if they so much as think about turning the game off.  The games are designed to addict and frustrate kids in the pursuit of the addiction so that they will do anything to get a continuance of the game, including buying more power or time within the game.  So a player can ka-ching right inside the app to buy more resources for his character, or to just continue playing.  And the gaming companies, as well as the big computer and phone makers are gathering real time data on young players as they play in order to enhance this "fun pain" principle.  I hear this and I feel a bit sick.  Parents are quoted right there on the radio, saying things like, "it's a real addiction," and "I hate those games more than anything else" and "He can play for twelve hours straight.  Tennis, hockey, all those fun things, they can't complete with the games."  I think:  smash the device, go outside.

As a teacher in a place that is dedicated to land-based learning, I am especially susceptible to looking for the evil in technology-- or society, or really, anything to do with the world that people have constructed out of this earth.  I feel guilty about every plastic bag, about the stuff that runs my phone that kids in Africa are digging out of pits with their fingernails, about fracking and pipelines and driving my car.  But, remember, I said I was also listening to Billy Bragg.  Before you jump on my bandwagon of doom, please consider Billy Bragg.  

Okay, Billy's a bit of a sad sack, a rambling romantic rake, but I like his music, and I like his world view. The guy generally stands up for people and ideas who don't always have a voice.  He's political and unapologetically so, but here's the thing:  Billy Bragg is an optimist.  Time and again, the guy speaks out about the worst of the worst ills of society, but he has faith that we people, the ones screwing things up, also have the power to fix the screw ups, the power to change things for the better.  He has faith in us.  Consider his song, Tomorrow's Going to be a Better Day:

To the misanthropic misbegotten merchants of gloom,
Who look into their crystal balls and prophesy our doom,
Let the death knell chime, its the end of time,
Let the cynics put their blinkers on and toast our decline.

Don't become demoralized by this chorus of complaint,
It's a sure sign that the old world is terminally quaint,
And tomorrow's gonna be a better day,
No matter what the siren voices say,
Tomorrow's gonna be a better day,
We're gonna to make it that way.

To the pessimistic populists who harbor no doubt,
That every day we make our way to hell in a hand cart,
And the snaky set, who's snapping to get,
Anyone who sticks their head above the parapet.

Oh don't become disheartened baby, don't be fooled,
Take it from someone who knows the glass is half full,
Tomorrow's gonna be a better day,
No matter what the siren voices say,
Tomorrow's gonna be a better day,
...We're gonna make it that way.

Nice writing.  Big idea.  But what does this have to do with land-based education for young children?  A day ago a friend of mine, and a parent of one of my students said to me, "When does play end?"  She read my previous blog and was thinking about her older son, a graduate of Dodge.  I know she felt like she was crying in the dark, calling out in the wilderness.  For her school-age son it seems like play is over.  She related a story about a kindergartner who returned from winter break to discover that the play kitchen, once residing in the classroom, had disappeared.  Playtime was over.  Seems dire, right?  Here we are at Dodge, standing on our lovely, ivy-covered soapbox, telling you how great all this outdoor play is and then you have to send your kid to kindergarten where all they get is twenty minutes outside (if they are lucky) and a lousy play kitchen that evaporates mid-year.  There seems to be a disconnect here, right?  

So, if the glass is half empty, we see the terrible impact of all that structured time inside of a nearly barren utilitarian school.  My daughter's first grade class did not have windows.  I went home and cried.  The students bend to the will of a system that is organized around standardized curriculum supplied by big publishing business.  Teachers seem to teach to tests and learning seems codified to a degree that we would not have recognized as late as the late eighties.  

But, if the glass is half full, we see kids enter a broader social arena that seeks to meet the needs of an incredibly diverse population.  Each public school class, kindergarten and beyond, includes every kind of child you can imagine.  Kids learn to cope and get a long with each other.  In elementary school, most learning, indeed the focus of learning, seems to be social and emotional.  Can you get along with all of these people?  Can you control your impulses when they should be controlled?  Can you listen to the teacher and try to ascertain and meet her needs, and yours a little bit too (this is a neat trick!).  Can you make yourself known and heard?  Can you discover what kind of a person you are in this wider community?  Can you jump through societal hoops and still be yourself?  Can you see the value of going to school with all of these different kinds of people (including your teachers)?  These are questions that arise for students and parents in elementary school and I think they are meaningful.  I learned the most the year that my daughter had a teacher who just plain didn't understand her.  I learned about myself and my issues around tolerance.  I learned that I had choices too.  I could get mad at the teacher (I did).  I could stay at home and complain about my district and my school (I did that for a while too).  Or I could participate in this new system and join the community, with my voice and actions (I eventually arrived at this).

But what of play?  I couldn't change recess in elementary school, but I talked to the teachers about it, and discovered that most of them were also frustrated about the lack of outside time, and the lack of hands-on learning.  Most of the teachers I got to know at our neighborhood school were working with the system they have in order to create opportunities for physical activity and project-based learning.  And, I believe, project-based learning is where play goes as kids mature.  At least it is where older kids should go, and it is where good teachers take them.  There was the teacher who dissected eyeballs and owl pellets and grew crayfish with the kids.  There was the teacher, who, when the kids read, "The Indian in the Cupboard," hauled in an old cupboard, let the kids paint it and populate it with their own mysterious bits and bobs.  There was the teacher who insisted the kids go outside at least twice a day, and snuck the kids out to race or sled during that last hour each day.  Another did yoga and let the kids make murals and read on their tummies in the hallway.

In elementary school, there seemed to be a heavier emphasis on learning routines and developing habits of organization.  Could you read independently for twenty minutes and then at precisely twenty after close your book at transition to spelling?  Learning in discrete boxes of time seemed ludicrous to me.  But, in retrospect, I see this as more about developing habits of control and social skill rather than developing cognitively.  Now, as my kids enter middle school, I hear a lot more about project-based learning.  I see kids in the school making things with their hands, moving outside for activities whenever they can and having fun.  I see kids laughing, playing in the halls socially right in the midst of science lessons.  Our kids have recently joined the Science Olympiad team and, come to find out, they are having fun, literally playing with scientific concepts as they create and prepare to compete.  I have come to realize that most interested, invested teachers know that kids need to have ownership of discovery if they are to learn about the world and succeed.  And most teachers, once you take the time to talk to them, seem to recognize and to value creativity and thinking "outside the box."  And, when you come across the occasional dud teacher who doesn't recognize or value creativity and hands-on learning, who can't get her head out of the workbook, you have to either live with him or her, or speak up.  This too, after all is a learning opportunity.

So, here at Dodge, we may be tempted to think that "out there" is a pretty bleak place.  Time and again, though, when I tell public school teachers where I work, they smile and say, "I love that place.  Our kids have such a good time there."  See?  We have some choices to make.  What we do at Dodge, the fact that families and schools choose to participate in land-based activities with us has an impact.  We can carry land-based, project-based, hands-on learning values forward by participating in our communities.  At my first ever middle school PTO meeting I said, "Could we have a school-wide outdoor learning event  here on our own grounds?"  The principal nodded enthusiastically and said, "That's a great idea. We have a spectacular woods right out our own back door and we don't use it enough."  Another parent, a teacher said, "At my school we now do a bunch of all outside days, and we invite naturalists-- teachers and kids participate together."  

So tomorrow's gonna be a better day, if we decide to make it that way.

A Pandemic of Acceptance

This morning, on my drive in to work, I was listening to the radio.  I heard a story about enrollment at West Point, specifically female enrollment.  There is a push to enroll more women at the Academy.  There seems to be an argument about whether the previous enrollment of less than 16% women was a goal or a ceiling.  I don't know, but I got to thinking about diversity at West Point.  Apparently they are striving to enroll more cadets of color too.  Purportedly, West Point culture has to change a lot of it is going to be a welcoming place for women and people of color to matriculate.  What if West Point does change and becomes as diverse as the general population?  What if the Academy culture alters to accommodate and include everyone?  What of the results, of the West Point graduates themselves?  What will the generals and colonels of the future be like?  What decisions will they make?  What will the prospects for military engagement be?  Suddenly, I could see a pandemic of acceptance, tolerance and a general rise in social skills sweeping the globe.  Wow!  Would we be as likely to wage war if we were all on speaking terms?  You know where I'm going with this, don't you?  For an early childhood teacher, it is all about the social skills.  Getting along means tolerating differences, and even celebrating them.  Because we are all wonderfully different.

So project-based learning is terrific.  There is no denying it.  When you are teaching, longer term projects that emerge from a group's collective interest can be super rewarding to support.  Watching inquiry push forward into new territory is amazing, as kids sort of lean forward together, anticipating a new discovery around the next bend.  Time and again, here at Dodge Nature Preschool, we see great ideas flame up and then fan into a bonfire of excitement and long-burning learning.  At the Preschool, we have some special success stories that we tell, to each other and to our professional colleagues far and wide:  the time "Owl Fever" struck the afternoon class and then the entire Preschool, the interest in shadow play that carried us through an entire year, an obsession with mixing and stocking colors to match everything we encountered outside, a deliciously dangerous attraction to snakes which lead one class into new territory...These stories, the way we document the exciting projects that unfold, come to inform our mission, the way we teach and how we prepare for a new school year at Dodge each fall.  They are important stories to tell and keep telling and they lead teachers to anticipate and look for signs of new projects developing.

New ideas emerge, like mushrooms popping out of the ground, and many become veins of inquiry that we follow for as long as we can.  This fall, actual fungus emerged everywhere, in great number and variety.  Kids noticed mushrooms and we noticed that they noticed and soon things snowballed and we were cataloging mushrooms, hunting for more, making books and spoor prints, cooking Puffballs (even trying to roast them like marshmallows!), drawing pictures and telling stories.  All because of a seasonal phenomena that got noticed.  Who knows how far this mushroom thing will go-- we are still in the developing stages of this project (the snow will likely put an end to it eventually), and kids don't know each other all that well yet, although jockeying for space to view small fungi is helping.

No, those aren't marshmallows...

To my mind, this knowing each other seems to be integral to the greatest kind of project-based learning.  The most rewarding class-wide projects seem to emerge and then to take hold in late winter and then they carry us right into spring.  Why?

I have a hunch that these later projects end up being more rewarding and go farther because the children and teachers know each other much better by mid-year.  The beauty of a mixed-age classroom is that we often have a coterie of children returning to a classroom each year, and they carry with them a special kind of consciousness.  The returners know the "drill," they've had experience with routines and habits, and they also know something else:  they know that people collaborate together in the classroom.  Maybe they haven't actually participated in collaboration previously--maybe they were too young and enjoyed solitary of parallel play--but, still, they've seen collaboration happen, they know it exists, that it is a practice here at Dodge, and in life.

Experience tells me that collaboration follows social development, of course, and social development leads to an ability to collaborate-- to observe and act on, react to and build on what your peers are doing.  As a whole, the classroom community generally solidifies after the turn of the New Year.  Kids not only know each other by name and sight, they know particular things about each other; they expect and anticipate things of each other; they look forward to social interaction with peers.  This is the trajectory of development we want to see.  I think early childhood teachers value this social and emotional development more than anything else, because it means that the child is learning how to be a person, and a person in a community.  These are life skills we're talking about.  And without these life skills:  suppressing your own desires and impulses in order to get along, sharing, seeing the value of sharing, interacting, and finding the joy in interaction, mastering your emotions enough to hang with your peers successfully--these skills get us through middle childhood, adolescence and adult hood.  These are skills that get us jobs and help us keep them.  And the beauty of social and emotional success is that it prepares you to learn more about the world around you and to acquire knowledge in the years to come.

This morning, a mom took me aside and told me that her child was expressing worry about friends.  "He wants to have friends.  He's worried he doesn't have any."  The worried child is three.  I said, "Terrific!  That's what we want to hear or see, an interest in peers!"  As a child develops, we look for his or her interest in other people, that awareness of society, to appear.  When we know a child is interested in the people around him, we know he's on his way to joining society.  Playing alone, or next to peers is perfectly normal in early childhood, but as a child moves through early childhood, we look for, and usually find the interest in peers emerging, like a mushroom after the rain!

We recently held our annual "Curriculum Night" for new or interested families at the Preschool.  I always want families to hear and see how curriculum emerges at Dodge.  Of course, socializing constitutes the bulk of early childhood curriculum.  It is my belief that the natural world provides the best catalyst for development, whether social or cognitive, for young children.  The playing field out there is delightfully uneven, for all of us.  Nature is largely unstructured or managed by teachers, so teachers too are placed out there, alongside their students-- more shoulder to shoulder, rather than in front or above them.  Out there, we are all people in our element; we share it.  As I have written before, it is all too easy for us to forget that we are of nature, part of the planet, animals in a network of animals.  And out there, I argue, children, and groups of them, develop socially faster and easier.

We had a class that liked to play on a giant log.  We found this out after visiting the log log and environs through the fall.  First a few kids, the older, more skilled kids, climbed the log.  Younger or less skilled kids couldn't help but notice, because we were all out there playing together in close proximity.  The less experienced kids either began to attempt the log, or to engage in other things, like drawing in the dirt with sticks.  The dirt drawers, in turn, were noticed by the skilled log climbers, who, attracted to the notion of drawing with a stick, came over to try their hand at it.  Some of the older, more skilled kids wrote letters in the dirt with their sticks.  Younger kids noticed and tried to do the same.  Around and around these exchanges went, with all the attendant skills developing on the fly, simultaneously:  eye contact, language, turn-taking, impulse control, emotional regulation, motor control and ultimately lots of cognitive development too.  An experienced teacher, used to looking for clues to developmental readiness, could easily step in and support interaction-- pointing out connections, making invitations, modelling behavior, encouraging collaboration, suggesting challenges, providing tools and support...One child in that class hung off to the side right through the fall.  She could climb trees really well, though.  So she went off to one side and did that with a teacher.  Of course, other kids noticed and wanted to try.  We invited the tree girl to demonstrate her skills, to explain "how to do it."  At first she balked at this suggestion, but eventually, perhaps overcome with annoyance at watching the little guys failed attempts, she began to snap out directions, "Put your foot here!  No here! Then grab this.  Like this."  Gently, we asked her to be patient, appealling to her sense of self, "They want to learn how to do it s well as you do it.  You're an expert.  It would be great if you could help them out.  You're really good at this."  Reluctantly, she slowed down and stopped barking at her peers.  Then she went off and climbed tougher trees and began to show off.

Her young fans followed and the exchanges continued.  Eventually, on hikes, kids would stop at certain trees and wonder aloud, "Do you think she can climb it?"  This girl became known, right along with her peers. The log place became known too, and loved.  Then, with encouragement, kids mapped all their favorite places, where they had done favorite things together.  At year end, we had a class party, hiking to five different places, planting a kid-made flag and belting out a favorite song at each site for families hiking with us.  When we sang the Pirate Song, the entire class stood shoulder to shoulder, arms slung around each other's necks.  The Favorite Places Project is my favorite project of all time.  Friendship is the best project.

This year, the tree girl is hamming it up right and left, looking for opportunities to make connections and lead the pack.  Now the whole class knows how to roll logs and find interesting bugs, how to be a "werecat," how to follow a deer trail through the prairie, how to snort when you laugh, all because she showed them the way.  When kids are together outside, I have noticed that there is really no place to hide.  Okay.  So a kid can hide, but she really isn't allowed to unless we're playing a game.  And, while playing, a kid is either going to notice other kids, or get noticed.  Usually the child who removes herself physically during play in the field becomes an object of particular interest.  Children either think she is experiencing something they haven't yet experienced, or they want to draw her into their play in some way, or they point out her distance to peers or teachers.  Outside, with the group, there is no such thing as really disappearing.  Most often, somebody is going to get in a kid's business in some way.

I would say that inside, it is entirely possible to hide from your peers and retain a large measure of anonymity.  A child may "fly under the radar" in the classroom (not under teacher radar), if she continually chooses solo activities.  Think of puzzles, drawing, cutting-- anything that is a one woman show.  These activities are great and we want children to enjoy a balance of independent and collaborative exploration, but a kid can resort to these activities if she is for some reason reluctant to join in group play.  Social development and social risk-taking can take a lot longer to emerge in a child who plays solo inside a lot.  It's no stretch then to imagine that a classroom that starts each day outside together might just gel as a community faster.  They might just access the rewards of group activities and projects a little sooner too.

So project-based learning is terrific, but true collaboration, listening and responding to peers, teaching one another (rather than more didactic teacher-led, top down inquiry), seems to be born of lots of social practice and skill development.  Maybe Dodge graduates will be the ones to integrate West Point... playing with stick guns instead of gun guns?  This week I asked two children strenuously waving sticks what they were doing.  The new friends turned and smiled, "We're fighting the air.  We're having an Air War."  That's the kind of military intervention I can support.