I’ve always believed that an adult's role in a child’s life is to protect them at all cost AND prepare them for a life without you. It appears we’ve ignored the latter in favor of the former. In a frictionless childhood, absent of obstacles, challenges, and conflicts, the development of critical thinking, problem-solving skills, and resilience is hindered.
If you’ve spent any time around a toddler you’ve likely had this experience. On unsteady feet the child falls over, your first reaction is to run over and comfort them, but as soon as you make eye contact the tears begin. You quickly realize they only wail when you react. The next time they fall you avert your attention and low and behold they pick themselves up without incident. Learning to pick yourself up is an essential life skill. Even at this young age, children are fully capable of independence, emotional regulation, and self-efficacy. The same goes with most learning in childhood, and why child lead play is vital.
The Yard is a kids-only space in which we supply young people with loose parts materials for building, exploring, imagining and destroying. Some tools provided are nails, hammers and saws, paint, tires, wood, fabrics and more. There are play:groundNYC trained playworkers inside The Yard when it is open to children. We do not allow adults into the main area of The Yard.
When children play they engage in physical, social, cognitive, emotional, language, and imaginative and creative development. This all seems pretty obvious but we adults don’t appear to make this a priority in our policies, the way we design the school day, and the way we design our communities.
The Nevada’s School Wellness Policy Best Practices Manual “recommends providing students with at least 20 minutes of recess each day.” This recommendation is not heeded by my local district, where elementary students get 35 minutes for lunch and recess combined. The nearest school to my home sets aside 10 minutes for morning recess before the school day begins and 15 minutes for recess adjacent to lunch. And, as you can imagine, outdoor play at this school is highly regulated with rules and guidelines, and no nails and hammers.
I came home the other day to find a small group of kids, ages 4-10, lounging on the sidewalk, unsupervised. We chatted for a moment then I went about my day. Nothing seemed unusual about the interaction until days later when I was visiting a friend in a different neighborhood. Then it dawned on me, not all communities have sidewalks.
Many communities are designed without sidewalks, and here in the desert many homes do not have front yards that are designed for functional use. So where do the children play when the street is unsafe and the yard is covered in decorative rock? In backyards, maybe, hopefully. However, when play is sequestered to an isolated area children miss the opportunity to play with children not in their immediate household. Making new friends is hard if all the kids are tucked away behind fences and gates.
When recess is too short, streets are too dangerous, and backyards are too isolated, I am reminded of this passage from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki.
The best way to control people is to encourage them to be mischievous. Then they will be in control in its wider sense. To give your sheep or cow a large, spacious meadow is the way to control him. So it is with people: first let them do what they want, and watch them. This is the best policy. To ignore them is not good; that is the worst policy. The second worst is trying to control them. The best one is to watch them, just to watch them, without trying to control them.
I was once gifted a set of highly sought after math manipulatives to share with my first grade students. This new tool came with the following pledge, “Your students will have fun, they will experience the joy of figuring things out, and they will become proficient in the most demanding algorithmic procedures.” Thrilled about the opportunity to put this promise to the test I went to the manual’s first lesson, “Build & Explore.” The lesson instructed teachers to “allow free time to play” and “challenge the students to make interesting patterns and pictures.” That was it. The only objective was to play and explore. “First let them do what they want, and watch them.”
I visited a second grade classroom last week. The room was beautifully decorated. Every inch of visible wall space was dedicated to one or another theme; number lines, alphabet, blends and digraphs, world maps, charts, and posters galore. All of which were chosen with care, but none of which were created by students. I watched as these little learners diligently took notes from a powerpoint being delivered by their teacher, and wondered when they engaged in creative exploration.
It’s been well over a decade since the introduction of the defamed Common Core State Standards and the Next Generation Science Standards. Despite the contention over their rollout and ill aligned curriculum, I am at peace with the practices outlined alongside the content standards. In both math and science early elementary students are guided to develop models like diagrams, drawings, physical replicas, dioramas, dramatizations, or storyboards. These models are all outlets for creativity and playfulness. Imagine a fictional storyboard of the experience of a water droplet in the water cycle.
Despite the very clear guidance to provide students the opportunity to draw pictures, I saw no artwork in the class that day.
🔗All That and a Bag of Chips
Delight № 22 - Taking the first dip of pool season.
Delight № 23 - Bulgarian community festivals.
Delight № 24 - Buying new notebooks from the $1.25 store.
🔗Long Form
Read This
Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
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