Friendship: The Ultimate in Experiential Education

Have you noticed that friendship is often forged in the fire of new experience?  When people, young and old, are thrown together in unfamiliar circumstances, they often bond, don't they?  Summer camp is legendary for friendship, among other things.  Kids meet other kids out of their usual context, and, as they work to sort out a new shared milieu, they sometimes embark on new relationships that end up lasting a very long time indeed.  From what I understand, many kids seem to find a particular joy in the special and separate friendships they establish outside of their "regular life."  My own kids have "camp friends."   Their camp friends are the kids they first met here at Dodge, the very first summer they attended camp.  And then, every summer thereafter, they have enjoyed re-visiting these friendships with the same little coterie of kids.  They've had some limited contact with these kids during the school year (they only live in the next town over), and mostly because life is so busy these days that maintaining friendships outside of your daily experience can be challenging.  Interestingly, at summer camp, kids just seem to pick up right where they left off, resuming that old friendship, and with very little baggage.  In a way, the friendship seems more accessible, as it is less complicated and likely based more on the immediate shared experience; kids are mostly living in the moment during summer camp, and they don't have the school performance pressure layered on top of that.  Maybe there is so much less at stake, that they can just relax into the shared fun.  And summer camp is not supposed to be work; fun and new experiences are sort of the stock and trade of summer camp-- friendship and activities are the priorities.  Summer camp is structured to promote activity and interaction, right?

I do think the structure of a new shared experience can be a handy excuse for pairing up or bonding in friendship.  We adults know that it is sometimes easier to meet new people when you go it alone in a new experience.  Travelling with collegial baggage can be great fun, but it can stand in the way of your reaching out to someone else too.  I think, however, that a new, shared experience itself can create enough camaraderie, that even when you are in the midst of it with friends, you end up relating or commiserating with new folks too.  Early this spring, in this blog, I detailed a frozen adventure Dodge teachers shared together.  We had great fun together, but we also enjoyed meeting new people during the expedition.  With people we had just met, we joked about apprehensions, bonded over shared fear of failure, and also wondered and gushed about all the beauty we found in the north woods.  The trip gave us an excuse to relate to these people.  Recently, at the May Day Parade in Minneapolis, my family held hands and sang, "You Are My Sunshine," with thousands of other people (I'm not a singer, per sae, and I certainly don't routinely break out into song in a public park; the occasion was the special excuse to relate to strangers).

Here at Dodge, whether at summer camp, or at the Preschool, we of course routinely see kids forge new friendships through shared experience; social relationships are certainly our stock and trade in early childhood education.  We see how important social scaffolding and a little bit of structure is for developing friendships.  Sometimes, in addition to promoting good manners, a requirement or an expectation imposed by a teacher or a particular project or program can sanction friendly relations and even sponsor true friendship.

Kids are often buddied-up to complete tasks at school, right?  Remember your high school lab partner?  Sometimes this pairing was loathsome, but sometimes it yielded unexpected results.  Sometimes you found out that a person you might never have found a reason to talk to was pretty interesting.  Some college roommates form lifelong friendships; sometimes they should go their separate ways.  In one of my classes, necessity and structure provided a fortuitous avenue to real friendship.

Here at the Preschool, we get to stick with many of our students for several years, following and supporting a child's progress over a nice chunk of time.  This year, I have followed and supported the social development of one student with particular interest and care.  Historically, this girl has struggled with feeling comfortable in her own skin.  She is so sensitive, in my opinion, that her hyper awareness of social situations has sometimes hindered her from taking social risks, from being unselfconscious and authentic.  In the past, she has made fun of the "girly games" some of her female peers play.  She has watched the "girly" play from afar and seemed to purposefully distance herself from it.  After digging around with her parents, we arrived at the idea that she desperately wanted to connect to these girls in her class, but was likely anxious about reaching out.  All thoughtful orchestrations around supporting interaction between this child and her female cohort seemed to backfire.  I had no idea that one simple, purely accidental action would yield the most terrific results for her.

One day, not so long ago, our entire class was setting out on a hike.  The kids were jazzed up and frankly rambunctious; it was the first really warm day and they were "off the hook."  Like so many spring lambs, they leaped around, over and into on another, running farther and farther afield and nearly out of earshot.  After racing to keep up with the group and issuing too frequent reminders to "slow down," I decided I just couldn't keep hounding the group to "stick together."  I made an executive decision and issued an edict:  break into pairs and hold hands.  I told them they were now "glued together," and it was their job to "stick together," no matter what.  Without thinking, I paired the girl in question with a girl who was the object of this child's most secret desire for friendship.  The two stayed glued together, hand-in-hand long past the time when all the other pairs of children dissolved.  They played through an entire afternoon, studiously holding hands, finding work-arounds when they had to scratch an itch, pull on a boot, take off a coat.  We marveled at their commitment and earnest mutual interest.  After some research with parents, we discovered that this was the best possible thing that could have happened for the girl, and for her new friend too.  The girl had been so loath to approach the child whom she desired for a friend, that my totally practical act of teacher desperation was a godsend for her.  From that day forward, the two proceeded down a wide avenue of friendship.  And from time to time, when she feels that things need a little push, my newly confident friend finds me with her eyes, cocks an eyebrow and says, "I think maybe we should buddy-up and find a partner today.  Things are getting kind of out of hand."  So now she and I both know how useful the excuse of structure can be!

Now we have an entire series of pictures of the new friends together in everything.  Weeks and weeks have gone by; the friendship is enduring.  My favorite recent shot shows the pair, chins up, Mona Lisa smiling straight into the camera's gaze.  I love the directness and confidence of their expressions.  Only after sharing this photo with colleagues, did I notice that the girls are still holding hands.

Of course, school, and most of our social institutions, are built around structures and conventions that are supposed to enhance how we all get along.  For the life of me, though, I can't think of a more elegant, more brilliant and direct example of how convention promotes friendship:  hold hands, be friends.  In these days of unmanned aircraft, robo checkouts, cash machines, texts and virtual reality, it is nice to see the power of the present and proximal in skin-to-skin, pulse-to-pulse relations.  Physical, close proximity contact with other people, just might be the best experiential education there is!

If you're young or old and looking for a handy excuse for a real time relationship with nature, or other people, try visiting Dodge for camp, or class or just a walk.  In addition to walking my talk at summer camp at this summer, I'll also be hosting a writing workshop here this summer; check it out!

Here's what some of our favorite folks are saying about Dodge summer camp and Adventures in Nature:

"My favorite part of camp is when imagination takes over and the campers practice magic, train to be a Jedi, or go hunting for Bigfoot."

--Mick Garrett, Naturalist and Camp Coordinator

"My favorite thing about camp is drop-off and pick-up time.  Seeing the excitement of the children in the morning about what they get to explore today, touch and smell.  Seeing parents leaving knowing their children are going to experience nature through environmental education.  Then at pick-up, hearing and seeing children excited to tell moms and dads about their experience, begging them to go on a hike so they can show them what they did and where they did it.  Absolutely awesome!"

--Jason Sanders, Executive Director