Wonder love

Keeping Time

This post was originally written for the Opal School Blog, but as a personal reflection, it made sense to post it here as well.

My desk these days is filled with calendars, lists, agendas, new files and binders. Somehow attempting to give form to the enthusiasm and the anticipation of all a new school year will bring.Trying to contain it. Organize it.

On Fresh Air last night, Terry Gross interviewed neuroscientist David Eagleman about his book Incognito. "All of our lives — our cognition, our thoughts, our beliefs — all of these are underpinned by these massive lightning storms of [electrical] activity [in our brains,] and yet we don't have any awareness of it," Eagleman says. "What we find is that our brains have colossal things happening in them all the time."

One of the most interesting snippets had to do with the relationship between time and memory. He described research that has been done on thousands of subjects willing to encounter a free fall of 150 feet, backwards into a net. What goes on in their minds while they are falling? Time slows. The brain floods with memories, moments, and the participants consistently marveled over how a second-long fall could feel like minutes.

Waiting for the school year to begin is a free fall of sorts. Memories, experiences, hopes and dreams all causing colossal action in our brains, and how we move to start just the tip of the conscious iceberg. 

But what happens for children? Children experience time like the numbers on a digital clock-- out of context with the winding hands of the analog. How do we support them with a sense of belonging to our adult world that can see the relationships of past to future? How do we develop enough wisdom ourselves to recognize the experience that has framed our cognition, our beliefs, our thoughts -- that the lightning storms firing in our brains are not the same that fire in our children's? How do we learn to value the wisdom in their experience while keeping them safe, keeping them engaged, keeping them on time?

This summer, my family worked with a wonderful specialist named Mary Dee Sklar, who has written a course called, Seeing What I Need To Do. She helped us learn to make abstract concepts of time visible and even tangible so that all of us can see and feel together what it means to move cooperatively through time.

Hours and minutes and days are the blocks we use to build our lives together. Tools such as analog clocks, wall calendars, visual schedules, and timers can become ways that we hold those blocks in our hands to play with our children so that they can learn to build with us and understand how to fit their needs and the needs of the lives of others together with beauty and mastery. In coming weeks, we'll share some of the strategies we are using. And we hope you will share as well the tools and routines you use.

When we pave this pathway of belonging for our children towards the world of adulthood, we alter the patterns of those lightning storms in their brains forever. And we leave a lasting trace on the hours and minutes and days that continue to build the lives of our loved ones long after we are gone.

How to Teach Reading and Writing (and a little math and science, too)

Stella loves to lay in the hammock. I'd say it is her favorite summer pastime this year. I spent about an hour laying in it with her one morning this week, and I taught her to read and write. Here's how:

1. As we were swinging gently back and forth, I looked up into the tree and saw that a spider had made a web and the sun was catching it just so we could see every line. Having finished reading Charlotte's Web the night before, I asked Stella if she imagined that Charlotte's webs looked that way? Could she see the orb lines and the radial lines? 
2. I reached for the drawing paper and pens that were available in our little outdoor studio space and invited Stella to draw the web she saw. This is a difficult task, but she gave it a try. 
3. When she finished, she wanted to write, "From Stella" on the bottom of the paper. She asked me how to write "From". So I told her the letters and she wrote them down.
4. Then she wanted to write "I love you". So we started with "I". She wanted more letters so I explained to her that was the whole word. 
5. She asked if she could write a heart and I said yes but that wouldn't be the word. She would need letters to make the word "love". So she asked for the letters.
6. This time, I made the sound /l/ because I knew it was a sound she had in her name. I told her it was the sound in Ste -- ll --and she blurted out happily, "l"! And then she was tired out, so she decided to stop the writing.
7. We laid back in the hammock for a little more snuggling and swinging. A squirrel hopped along the top of the fence but got startled when it saw us and ran away.
8. We checked on the web again and Stella noticed a tiny moth flying around it. She wondered if it would get caught and the spider would eat it. We considered the patience it takes to be a spider. 
9. I looked up on the tree and noticed a bit of sap running from a knot hole. I remembered that Stella had asked about making syrup very recently, and took a moment to make the connection for her.
10. She hopped up and cleaned the raspberry bushes of berries, then hopped back in.
11. We noticed that the spider's web had broken. And we took a little more time to consider the patience and feelings of spiders. Stella spent a few moments trying to talk to the spider in spider language, which I, like Fern's mother, could not understand.
12. Stella decided to add the spider to her drawing. She asked me how many legs it had and I told her. Stella's spider got 8 legs counted carefully -- on each side of the spider's body.
13. We noticed a second spider building a web behind the first, and we were reminded of Charlotte's babies.

Okay, so Stella doesn't yet read and write independently. But an hour spent like this, in the context of good books and materials at hand and making conversation in the wide world -- an hour spent snuggling and connecting and considering the feelings of spiders and squirrels -- an hour spent noticing and wondering and making meaningful marks on the page -- this is how she will learn. Experience offers her a chance to find her place in the family of things. She, like all human beings, wants a way to participate.

And it is oh, so much more fun than flashcards.

The Creativity Crisis

Published almost 2 years ago, The Creativity Crisis re-surfaced on Twitter yesterday from @IDEA and I had a re-read. (If you want to listen to the embedded podcast, start at about 12:30 for the interview with Bronson and Merryman.) If anything, reading this article today, the problem feels more urgent.

Here's another article tweeted by @IDEA about the same time yesterday: Building Better Kids. Written a year ago, it shares research that confirms some of what the first article begins with. That is, that things that are happening for human beings before the age of 10 tend to predict quite well how they are doing when they are all grown up. The second article goes on to use this research to argue for increased improvements in early childhood interventions. (Yes, of course, let's do that!) The authors use the compelling research to make the case that nothing can be done to change anyone's lot in life after the age of 3.

But the Creativity article shares another piece of the research which would seem to conflict. They say that the research shows that creativity has been on the decrease since the 90's. Here's the paragraph that explains:

Kyung Hee Kim at the College of William & Mary discovered this in May, after analyzing almost 300,000 Torrance scores of children and adults. Kim found creativity scores had been steadily rising, just like IQ scores, until 1990. Since then, creativity scores have consistently inched downward. “It’s very clear, and the decrease is very significant,” Kim says. It is the scores of younger children in America—from kindergarten through sixth grade—for whom the decline is “most serious.”

It would seem that, despite the research that is so clear that we must do the best we can by children's brains by the time they are 3, that we can't do anything after that can't quite be true, because, clearly, we have been doing something.

Funny, that these articles should both come by my Twitter feed yesterday just after I'd gotten back on the blogs and reset my intentions. Because they perfectly frame the dilemma. There are things we can do that increase creativity, innovation and engagement. The things we have been doing lately though, and only seem hell bent on doing more of, aren't working. They don't work. They take us backwards. Worst of all, they maintain the status quo -- who has and who hasn't -- secured for generations more. One might begin to think that part is by design... hmmm.

And we're so sure that what we know is all there is to do in school that the only thing we can do is build better brains before they get there? Really?

It is true that the creativity of children relies on the creativity of adults. Creativity is enhanced by collaboration. So why not start from the place that says we CAN turn this creativity crisis around and focus on new ideas instead of throwing up our hands over all the old things we've thought of so far? Countries all over the world are doing it. Schools and individuals all over this country are doing it. Let's focus our attention there. For example... click here.

And finally, some words of wisdom from Howard Gardner:

The Creative Mind:

 The Creative Mind is embodied by Einstein in the Sciences and by Virginia Woolf in the Arts. People who are creative are those who come up with new things which eventually get accepted. If an idea or product is too easily accepted, it is not creative; if it is never accepted, it is just a false example. And acceptance can happen quickly or it can take a long time.  

 I believe that you cannot be creative unless you have mastered at least one discipline, art or craft. And cognitive science teaches us that on the average, it takes about ten years to master a craft. So, Mozart was writing great music when he was fifteen and sixteen, but that is because he started when he was four or five. Same story, with the prodigious Picasso. Creativity is always called “thinking outside the box.”  But I order my quintet of minds in the way that I do because you can’t think outside of the box unless you have a box.

 As a psychologist, I thought that creativity was mostly an issue of how good your mental computers were. But my own studies and those of others have convinced me of two other things. First, personality and temperament are at least as important as cognitive powers. People who are judged creative take chances, take risks, are not afraid to fall down, and pick themselves up, they say “what can I learn from this?” and they go on.

 The other day I was giving a talk and the first question asked was “How do we make people creative”? And I answered that “It’s much easier to prevent it than to make it”. You prevent it by saying that there is only one right answer and by punishing the student if she offers the wrong answer. That never fosters creativity.

 Second: People think of creativity as a property of the individual and therefore they say “I am creative”, but that doesn’t work. The only way that creativity can be judged is, if over the long run, the creators works change how other people think and behave. That is the only criterion for creativity. Therefore, the bad news is that you could die without knowing that you are creative, but the good news is that you will never know for sure that you are not creative. 

 

Before furnishing

Tonight is the school picnic!

Stella: You mean it's tomorrow now?

Yes.

Stella: Oh! So that means that M is going to be at school!

Yes she is!

Stella: Every single tomorrow M is going to be in my class. But not every single today!

What's a 4 year old to do with concepts contained in words like today and tomorrow? How is Stella supposed to make sense of the fact that her dear friend, M, was not in school on the first day she arrived this year? Clearly, she will work at it until she has a theory that can suffice to explain it all.

Isn't this just what we all do-- no matter how old we are?

I am reading Alison Gopnik's beautiful book, The Philosophical Baby right now. Devouring it is more apt. In it, she ties childhood and adulthood together. She argues the importance of childhood to adulthood, but also the parallels of process and reason. For example, children create wild pretend scenarios using elements of everything and anything they have discovered and encountered so that they can make sense of it, mix it up, and understand it even more. Adults create and consume fiction for the same reasons. How many of us have developed an understanding of some element of the human condition with more depth and empathy through fiction than through any other means? The differences between childhood and adulthood amount to experience, responsibility, and perceptions of reality.

Our young selves get to freely explore both this world, and all the possible...worlds, without worrying about which of those worlds will actually turn out to be inhabitable. We adults are the ones who have to figure out whether we want to move into one of those possible worlds, and how to drag all our furniture in there too.

Alison Gopnik

So what kind of elements of possiblity do we want to provide children with, so they have as much practice as possible with developing worlds before furniture begins to accumulate and need storage space? 

The Power of Oops

"I punch-ded Ruby today. It was an accident - ly. But it was an oopsie moment. I had an oopsie moment. Acause in my classroom we don't punch. We had to solve the problem. So I had to sit on the bench and my brain did something magical. I just thought 'there can be two mommies!' It just popped right in my brain. And everything just snapped together."

Stella, 4.1 years

This is the story I got to hear after school today, as Stella and I took a walk to the park. Her teacher had told me a little bit of what had happened and so when I asked Stella about it, this all tumbled out. A proud storyteller, all puffed up with her accomplishment. Beaming.

I had to laugh a little as I tried to imagine or remember how my own old stories of punching my friends in preschool might have gone.  I don't, in fact, have any memories I can trace to preschool. But if the trouble I got into for slugging my little sister is any indication, I think it's safe to say that no one ever helped me to see my actions as "oopsies". Or helped me to understand that my brain had the capacity to "magic" another way.

What a gift to learn to see these mistakes as opportunities. To develop the confidence to know you can think of another way. To learn that you are responsible to do so.

Ellen Galinsky published this article in the Huffington Post today. It was written in response to this article published in the New York Times several days ago. As Galinsky points out, we've got the debate all wrong. We need a new framing of what could be, grounded in possibilities like those that Opal School preschoolers make visible every day. And as adults, we could stand to trust that our brains might have "magical" capacities as well. 

 

Fearless

To celebrate our first day of vacation, Max made a Spring Break Cake. It was a treat.

But equally delicious was a moment with Stella at the playground, just prior to the cutting of the cake.

She had eyed those wobbly steps for months, at various playgrounds, but due to a combination of my own fears and hers, she had never really had a go at them. On this day, her legs seemed to have gotten just long enough, and we were both feeling brave and strong, and so she began to climb. She was unsure at first, trying to get a feel for it, reaching out to me and demanding that I be close by. I didn't hold her, but I coached her now and then, reassuring her, giving suggestions here and there. And so when she arrived at the top, fully powered by her own doing, she smiled a smile more radiant than the sun that had chased the clouds away on this first day of spring break,inspired a cake, and a new way to climb.

I think often of this quote from Ellin Keene:

When we are curious, we are building upon a uniquely human trait– the need to pose questions and seek answers. Curiosity becomes insatiable, seeking to understand becomes intoxicating, and we find the life of the mind deeply pleasurable. We want more.

Ellin Keene, To Understand

Stella wanted more. Around and around she went, taking a moment to shine her gorgeous smile over the playground each time she made it back to the top. Pretty soon she began to teach me with her words, "Pull them together, step up, step over, pull them together, step up..." She was voicing the strategy she'd invented. Now, not only fearless, but expert.

This evening, I stumbled across Susan Engel's latest op-ed piece in the New York Times, "Let Kids Rule the School" and I thought again of Stella and her drive to climb, to master technique, and to share what she'd learned. Susan writes that kids "need to be the authors of their own education." Or is it, perhaps that adults need to remember that they always are? When we stand beside them with a ready hand, they'll get to the top (no need to race) and want to go back for more.

Focus on Strengths

An Excerpt from Two Billion Dollars in Nickels: Reflections on the Entrepreneurial Life, by Paul Orfalea with Dean Zatkowsky (BookSurge: 2008):

Although society’s understanding of dyslexia and ADHD is improving, too many people still equate “difference” with “disability.” Every disability may be a difference, but not every difference is a disability. Children are sometimes branded “learning disabled,” even when it is their schools that actually lack ability. Schools that still treat education as a “one-size-fits-all” endeavor resent individualized instruction, which they consider inefficient. But our growing awareness of learning differences puts more enlightened schools in a difficult position: within the constraints of budgets and teaching skills, how can we best serve students with differences?

What if we reframe the question? What if every student learns in a different way and at a different pace? That’s right: what if everyone has a learning difference? Some may fit more neatly into traditional teaching templates, but does that make others “disabled?”

We hire specialists to identify and label disabilities, but we should be learning to recognize and support hidden abilities. To be successful in school, you must be good at everything, but to be successful in life, you only have to be good at one or two things. I recognize the importance of a well-rounded education, but some people take a roundabout path to get there. For them, school should be a part of the journey paved with small victories, not an impassable mountain of accumulated failures and dismissive labels.

Many of my Kinko’s coworkers attended the Management Action Program. Among other things, the workshop requires attendees to face a stark – and often harsh – appraisal of their professional strengths and weaknesses. But rather than dwell on weaknesses, as most people do, the program teaches attendees how to focus more attention on their strengths. Unless they are dangerous, weaknesses are to be ignored or marginalized.

Instead of obsessing over what a student cannot do, we should help each student make the most of his or her individual strengths, because you don’t make a difference in this world by trying to be the same as everyone else. That’s true in business and in the pursuit of happiness.

Opal School teachers are currently in the process of writing winter reports for each student, preschool - 5th grade. As they always do, these reports will focus on strengths, which is natural, because each child has an abundance of them.

It is true, of course, that each child also has challenges. But, when achievement and learning are the goal, there is simply no advantage to dwelling on them. Because our brains are complex systems, human beings are most successful in environments that build on strengths. Such environments provide inherent support for challenges, and tend to do the work of focused remediation without interrupting the motivation of the learner.

Take a look at Daniel Pink's TED talk about the science of motivation:

  

But I know, I know, parents want to know what their kids are struggling with! They want to know what they can do at home to help them struggle less in school... and in life. And then there's that maybe a little less generous but no less genuine, nagging concern: If everyone's strengths are being celebrated, then how will I know if my kid is the best at anything?

We push all kids to be their best selves by focusing squarely upon the things they are good at and allowing the engagement and motivation gained within that stance to lighten the parts of themselves that might otherwise get awfully heavy to carry. Because, in the end, if everyone is really the best they can be, what a difference it will make in this world-- and to the lives of each person living in it. 

 

Doing Dangerous Things

So here's a book I wrote about so long ago... in the hands of two 10 year old boys hell bent on making a mess, lots of noise, and using up all my kitchen staples. And hoping so wholeheartedly that they'll really need those goggles they worked so hard to find.

Oh, the possibilities...

And what might happen next?

What happens when children do dangerous things and live to tell about them? Is it possible they find out how brave they can be? 

Getting Somewhere

Oh, I know it's been a long time.

But I'm inspired tonight to return.

Yesterday, I saw the new documentary Race to Nowhere and, of course, I cried. Tears of sadness for the experiences that we have come to accept as normal for children in school these days. Tears of gratitude for the experiences my own children are having.

 

Sophie is a 13 year old seventh grader who regularly has no homework. For the past week or so, her school has been hosting some kind of Geo-bee-- you know, the spelling bee kind of thing only for geography trivia. And, over the week, I've noticed in her a mild but growing discontent with her own lack of knowledge of these facts. You see, she has been losing. And what's possibly worse, she's been noticing that some other kids have an account in this bank of geography information that are quite a bit more flush than her own.

No homework has meant that she's had time to nurture some deposits in her new account. We've turned an orange into the Earth and a lemon into the sun and talked about hemispheres, poles, direction, the equator, climate and weather. (Oh, and I only had to ask if she was paying attention once!) She's pulled out puzzles and put the United States together. And tonight she poured over The New Comparative World Atlas considering land mass and population, literacy rates and infant mortality. She matched photos in our old DK First Atlas with the maps in the World Atlas, making connections with articles she's read in her New York Times Upfront magazine, and future travel plans.

She knew when she wanted the information, and she knew how to get it.

We got home late tonight, after a long day and violin lesson. We ate dinner together, dreamed a little about a trip to Ashland to see a play, listened to Stella's school story, and Max's, too. And Sophie still had time to play a game, help clean up, and read for an hour before she closed her eyes for a full night's sleep. She'll get up in the morning looking forward to another day at school.

I'm so grateful that we were able to navigate this evening on our own terms. I hope Sophie will find the company of adult friends when she grows up who have had this kind of time as well.

Will she find company that know how to be happy?

Getting Out

This week I hosted a room full of visitors to Opal School as part of our year-long professional development series. Our focus this time was on supporting the social and emotional intelligences of children.  We talked together about strategies for creating learning communities, about the interconnectedness of the social/emotional and cognitive processes in our brain, about creating learning environments where boys can thrive, and about the importance of being in nature. 

Playing in nature...

 

Bringing school to nature...

Bringing nature to school...

Nature smoothes those connections between emotion and cognition. Time in nature and with nature invites a sense of wonder into a partnership with learning that grows a tree with fruit so sweet, the appetite for knowing and understanding becomes insatiable. 

What if school was a place where we banked on the pleasurable emotions of learning? Where we intentionally supported curiosity and meaning making because we knew that once we human beings get a taste of deep understanding, we want more? Where we weren't surprised to hear 6 year olds say things like, "When things get harder, they're more fun!" as an Opal School student explained to his teacher earlier this week? 

But if school isn't that kind of place for your child these days, and you haven't yet convinced the school board that it should be-- it's a lucky thing for all of us that nurturing a relationship to nature in our own children is such and easy thing to do! 

I found out yesterday that this month is "Children and Nature Awareness Month"-- sponsored by the Children and Nature Network. I found this out because of a post written at Rhythm of the Home.There is lots of inspiration there for getting outside with your child-- and, in honor of Awareness Month (and of the children themselves, of course) a challenge to do so has been proposed!

Reading this post with my mama hat on, my heart sank a little. I looked at the cold rain outside and thought about the tiny windows of time I have this month to be with my own children because I'm out and about trying to advocate for everybody's children... 

And then on our way to the car, Stella slowed us all down just long enough to hug the tulips, reminding me that we have all the time we need.