The Long View

This time, I'm taking you to the Oak Room here at Dodge Nature Preschool.

Interestingly, the Oak Room has qualities similar to its namesake tree:  archetypal, timeless, classic, reliable, durable.  There is even a metaphor to be found in the pattern of the oak leaf.

The lobes of the leaf are not always entirely uniform, but they cannot be mistaken for any other tree.  The Oak Room has a certain quality, a combination of order and aesthetics that is unmistakable.

The environment in the Oak Room is very purposeful.  It all "works."  One gets the impression that objects and materials have been chosen carefully and arranged thoughtfully.  Objects appear to be in the right place, creating a pleasing fit, and suggesting their purpose right away.  The visitor sees this in the arrangement of kid art work, of lovely decorations and of the materials children are invited to use.  It is easy to figure out what things are and what they should be used for.  Creating a classroom that is both visually and physically pleasing as well as useful, is difficult, to the point of being an art.

A certain alchemy is achieved by the four teachers working in the Oak Room.  How it is achieved is rather mysterious, but it must have something to do with the teachers who work in Oak, and design its environment.

I have had the great privilege of teaching alongside three of the four teachers in Oak (some day, I'll get to teach with Brenda).  All four of them are gifted teachers with skills as solid as oak.  They also have very certain styles.  Not one of them is really like the other.

Melanie Grue lends a certain ironic and current flair to the mix.  Although children and adults find Melanie very reliable, she also brings the delightfully unexpected and surprising into any room she teaches in, usually via music and stories.  Walk into her classroom, and the children she teaches will most certainly have a favorite Calef Brown song.  They might know that crazy "Chicken Song" too.  They will most certainly have read, "A Good Day," and maybe, "Jenny and the Cat Club."  There is a combination of irony and innocence at work with Melanie; she might beat box to some "Octopus Slacks" song and also delight in a child's delight of a butterfly.

Kris Rollwagen is simply a legend; it is true, she teaches here at Dodge, with us.  Are we lucky or what?  Kris is a kids-come-first teacher.  A laser beam focus on children and the affairs of their hearts is second, or perhaps first nature to Kris.  She has enough energy to power Dodge on her own, and sometimes it seems like she does.  Children seem to know that they (and their grown-ups) can stand on her shoulders.  Kris has shepherded many families through the process of starting school and gaining confidence.  Children and adults alike look to Kris for guidance and security.  Many times I have sought her out for advice, and perspective.  Kids know that Kris will read Leo Leoni and William Steig and Patricia Polacco to you.  Kris will take you over the river, through the woods and then some, and all at a jaunty clip.  Everybody knows, when you cry, Kris will give you the strongest, fiercest hug.  With Kris around, you don't have to worry.

If Lora Serafini hadn't married her husband she might have married a dog (no offense, Paul).  And (Lora will understand this completely), if Lora wasn't Lora, she'd be a dog.  As a teacher and a friend, Lora is just as loyal as man's best friend.  She talks straight to the kids and honors them by not beating around the bush.  I've seen her share joy and pain with kids, just like you hope your best friend would.  Although she might try to say something smart about this, I know nothing pleases Lora more than sharing a laugh and a joke with a child.  Or a dog.  Lora brings a keen and critical design eye to the classroom, and some really great art prints.  She is a big advocate for restraint, functionality and simplicity in decoration.  If she could have, she would have worn Keens with her wedding gown.  Just like a dog, she likes to walk and play the most.

While I haven't yet taught alongside Brenda, I've learned a lot just by teaching next door to her.  She is fastidious.  Beyond fastidious.  Extremely organized, and yet very creative.  You can't say that many artists are super organized, but Brenda is.  She has a talent for inviting participation in big, messy, multi-media art-making extravaganzas and finding a way to channel kid energy around these events into real beauty, with a purpose.  Kids have great big deep experiences with Brenda, but the end result is often beautiful too.  Brenda is famous for creating very thoughtful visual displays and organizing classroom documentation for maximum impact.  Brenda also contributes her own art work to the classroom walls.

Somehow, these four amazing people have managed to create a cohesive whole that communicates a cozy hipness.  I imagine that in many ways the room feels very familiar, very much like home to most Oak students.

When you walk into the Oak Room, you get a long view.  You can see the length of the entire room.  For better or worse, the childrens' cubbies form a gauntlet of sorts that the visitor must run in order to gain access.  I think the layout itself creates a sense of protection, and privacy.  Kids coming in can see what they are getting in to, they have a sense of the lay of the land, and anticipate play.  They also must have a nice sense of transition as they figuratively and literally change hats before entering and exiting school.  This is true of all of our rooms to a certain extent, but nowhere is it more physically apparent than in the design of the Oak Room.  Standing in the doorway, one gets an excellent sense of how the room works and flows.  The long view is a nice metaphor for the way the teachers have set up this room.  Items and activities seem chosen for the long view.

A collection of shells and books about shells perch on the shelf above building blocks, at eye level.  The shells invite children to touch them and explore them.  The architecture of the shells invites comparison to the architecture that the children create with the blocks.

A gorgeous tank of Minnesota fish sparkles in the sun near a window (thanks to ichthyologist and Board President, Peter Garretson's), and just around the corner is the water table, full of fish to play with.  A funky little display sports a collection of available costume jewelry alongside thought-provoking pictures of people all over the world wearing jewelry.

A Chinese Export lamp lights the cushy couch for reading.  Task buckets are labelled.  Interesting art is framed on the walls.  Baskets are just the right size for the stuff they house.

Textures delight and surprise.  All rough edges seem to be smoothed out.  Mirrors reflect light and the shape of things.  Plants sit in conversation with objects and art.  All of this creates the "the long view," and gives us that sense of perspective we all desire, no matter how old we are.