The Finish Line You Cannot Yet See

The Finish Line You Cannot Yet See: It’s a Marathon, Not A Sprint

As we roll into September and many of us send our children back into the high pressure, high stakes game of school, it’s a good time to remind ourselves that education is a long haul endeavour, it’s a marathon not a sprint.

Success in education is about learning not achieving, and improvement doesn’t occur on a daily basis. In fact, it may not come within the confined trap of a single year grade; an organizational system in which we have arbitrarily fixed and set as the timeline for specific skill acquisition, knowledge retention, and personal improvement. The trap of school grades, ten months, September to June is that, by its very nature, it forces parents and students to live in ‘daily emergency’. The daily emergency of THIS homework, THIS test, THIS project, which inevitably becomes THIS report card.

When the 100m finish line can be seen (June 2023) every stride between it and the start line (September 2022) is immensely significant. However, when we cannot see the finish line, when it’s many kilometres away, we shift our thinking and we shift our focus. We no longer care about each individual stride, but instead we use a far more holistic approach; we develop a plan, and create a strategy that is process-oriented; one that will get us to the end. So instead of living this school year in the ‘daily emergency’, think about the long haul, the finish line that you cannot yet see. Think about where you’d like your child to be in five years. Ask yourself which is more important to you - that you scramble around and stay up late with your child to ensure that the project she “forgot about” is still perfectly completed, or that she is ill-prepared, experiences disappointment, but in turn develops better strategies for organization and time management? Is it more important that you do sight word cards and homework sound-skill sheets daily so that your son can decode words and is considered “a reader” at the end of kindergarten, or that through engaging books and connected time with older readers (parents, grandparents, family, reading buddies) the joy of reading is so carefully nurtured that it sticks with him well beyond high school? 

When we live in the ‘daily emergency’ and treat learning as a sprint, we also fail to teach our children that the road to excellence is in fact a long one. Unit tests, culminating assignments/projects, and even report cards continue to reflect our “fast-food”, instantaneous society. Text messaging, online shopping, Netflix. Everything comes to us quickly, and requires less and less effort. The expectation that students will have not only learned how to solve algebraic equations, but that they can also apply that skill to new and changing contexts all within the one-month unit timeline is really no different. We are creating and reinforcing a belief that there can be instant knowledge and immediate mastery of a subject or skill. But acquiring any new skill, whether it’s solving equations or learning to print your letters, isn’t easy, and you have to work at it. Really work at it. It takes dedicated and patient practice to become good at anything. It takes continual refinement and repetition. In kindergarten, our printed letters most often start as all capitals. Some are big, some are small, and some are every size in between. Our pencil lines are wiggly, and crooked, and letters are even backwards. It takes many years of elementary school (and we all know adults still working on their penmanship) to refine that skill; to print consistently on the line, with uniform sizing, and precise spacing. It’s a long-haul endeavour. It’s a marathon. It’s not a kindergarten sprint. As parents, and as educators we fall victim to focusing on, and valuing the all too quick assessment (the mark, the report card grade, the report card comments). Instead, we need to focus on teaching our children, and teaching ourselves to delay gratification. To celebrate the long, gradual process of learning. When we do so, our children will become better students, but more importantly, better people. And I believe that is ultimately the finish line that we all hope to see. 

It is time to go back to school.

But the finish line isn’t June.

The Genius Of Our Littlest Learners - NASA Says So!

The Genius of our littlest learners

NASA SAYS SO!

Many years ago, NASA conducted what has become a famous study on the creative capacity, the creative genius of humans. At TEDxTucson, Dr. George Land dropped a bombshell when he revealed the results of a highly specialized test that he created alongside his colleague Beth Jarman. Designed to effectively measure the creative potential of NASA’s rocket scientists and engineers, it did just that. And more. 

While Land’s test was successful for the purposes of NASA, it left researchers with further questions about creativity, primarily seeking to understand its origins. Are we born with it, or is it acquired through experience? In order to find answers, Land turned to 1,600 kindergarten children, all between the ages of 4 and 5. These children were given Land’s test; a test that looked at one’s ability to develop new, different, and innovative ideas for problems - divergent thinking. 98% of those children scored in the “genius category for imagination”. Absolutely astonished by the results, the team decided to extend their study into a longitudinal journey, testing those same students again five years later at age 10, and then again five years later at age 15. 

98% to 30% to 12%. 

Intrigued and perplexed, Land then took his test to adults, aged 25 years and older. After numerous studies and data collections, what he invariably found was that roughly 2% of adults scored within the genius category.

As we age, our natural, intrinsic creative capacity is smothered. It is stifled. It is squelched. It is suppressed. Whichever adjective you wish to use, we are born with immense creative capacity, born to be creative geniuses, and yet we clearly don’t keep it. However, we do a great job of preparing our children for post-secondary admission, making them ready for jobs, and ensuring that they will in fact be “productive members of society”. And while we keenly focus on this preparation, we are robbing them in the process. We are robbing them of their most natural and precious skills; to be imaginative, creative, and curious. 

Most of us, parents and educators alike, have been forced to examine education and learning far more closely in the past three years. The COVID pandemic forced many of us to look beyond the lens of traditional classroom learning and yet through this, we haven’t conceived something new, something better for our children. Online classrooms were a replacement for the existing system, with technology merely replicating the offline model, neither of which promote or instil “creative genius” past the age of five. 

If NASA was focused on testing divergent thinking, our traditional classrooms, whether online or once again in-person, focus on convergent thinking. Teachers are the gateway to the acquisition of information and skills. They plan and teach lessons in order to give both, learners absorb and acquire this, and then assessment (tests, culminating tasks etc.) is carefully planned and evaluated to confirm “acquisition” or retention. But make no mistake, there are many teachers who do this with immense passion and creativity, who make every effort to engage students meaningfully and with purpose. The root problem lies not with the educators, but with the model, a system that relies on instructionism - a collection of educational practices that are teacher-focused, skill-based, product-oriented and have a tendency to objectify, quantify learning, built on a foundation of data.

If we have any hope of maintaining that 98% imaginative genius in our children, we need to concern ourselves with finding (or creating) learning environments that are centered upon constructionism. This should be our priority.  Parents are aware, and they recognize that it’s almost impossible to imagine what their child’s future will look like given the rapid pace and evolution of technology. Most of us can agree that it’s difficult to even know which skills will be necessary in order for them to thrive as adults in this unknown world. What we do know is that a system focused on information, instruction, and convergent thinking won’t help our children get there - whatever “there” may look like. 

Constructionism is the antidote to instructionism, and it is where children apply knowledge, generate ideas, solve problems, invent products. They create the new and unimaginable, and they rely on an environment that makes child-focused, child-led, child-directed learning a priority. It is interactive, process-oriented, and meaningful because it is an environment responsive to their interests. It makes divergent thinking a priority each and every day. 

It’s safe to say that we all want children to retain their creativity and imagination, to be adults who thrive with those same skills, and who put them to use in bettering our world. But if we want them as adults to build new and innovative ideas, to be inspired by wander and exploration, to develop solutions to problems through curiosity, creativity, and connection with others, then that must be the environment that they know now. They must be immersed in it throughout childhood and adolescence, as the singular model of learning, knowing, and being. 

Absorbing information from teachers and educators whether on the screen or at a desk creates pupils. It creates students. It creates cogs in the educational machine that churns the same old way.

Instead, let’s create makers, innovators, scientists, artists, and entrepreneurs. Our children can be one of those, and they can be all of those.

Let’s restore creative capacity.

Let’s nurture our inherent ability to think divergently, and maintain the 98% imaginative genius of our littlest learners.

Postscript: So now what? 

If you know me, you know the value I place on educational reform and the need for grassroots movements that will help create change. While large in both scale and scope, I believe we are on the cusp of such change. On a smaller scale, you can help bring forth a greater emphasis on constructionism and divergent thinking right in your own home rather easily. 

A tinker table for a STEAM powered family! (Science. Technology. Engineering. Arts. Math.) 

Where a crafting station meets a tool box. It’s everything, and it’s absolutely nothing. 

No phones. No screens. No blueprints and no instructions. 

Better yet… no walls… make it outside!

Start with 30 minutes, PARENTS and CHILDREN together - we sure need to start improving that 2%.

Create a space where you are all free to create, free to do your own thing, but together. A space where everyone can learn through trial, error, and exploration. Tinkering really is playing and inventing, so the space must be filled with opportunities that facilitate play, inspire creativity, and launch imagination.  

*Oh and if I was to bet - your youngest children will “hit the ground running” and you, the adults … well, there’s nothing harder than putting the first mark on a beautiful blank page. It’ll take time, but you’ll get there too ;)

A MYSTERY BAG TINKER TRADE

From Industrial to Organic

From Industrial to Organic

If you have spent any time looking at, or thinking about, the history of mass education than you certainly know that the Industrial Revolution was arguably the most significant factor in the creation of the educational system that most of us have come to know. But I want to pause here for a moment to note the importance of the word ‘education’ before system, rather than the word ‘school’ - and if you have never thought about the differences between these terms that we so commonly throw around, then it’s time to give them some thought. I want you to grapple with them. What exactly do they mean? Are they in fact different? And if so, how? 

What is education? 

What is schooling?  

What is learning?

If right now I shared with you an answer to each, I’d rob you of the chance to actually think through each term, so while they ruminate, let’s go back to the link between industrialism and education. 

The Industrial Revolution and the associated mass migration of people from rural to urban landscapes gave rise to new institutions across Europe and North America, and within that movement sprang a demand for organized mass education. Built like a pyramid, it was designed to match the needs of industrialism; the need for an abundance of manual workers and few college graduates created a broad base of compulsory education for all, followed by a smaller section of secondary education, and concluding with a tiny apex of higher education. The system of mass education then mirrored the majority of industrial processes. Produce identical versions of the same product; mold students to specific requirements. Compliance to industry specific rules and standards; create standards based on compliance to curriculum, teaching and assessment. Both models formulated on a linear process of sequential stages, where testing measures are used to control progress and movement between stages. And just like factories, secondary and post-secondary education was eventually organized around the same division of labour principle. 

While our education system has come a long way in the array of programs offered, the teaching methodologies and pedagogy used to differentiate instruction and assessment for multiple intelligences and varying needs, it would be foolish to argue that the core principles and processes of industrialism are not still the driving force behind the organization of our current system. 

Having grown up in this system as a student, having two parents who worked in this system, and having worked in it myself for almost a decade, it’s what I knew; it’s what we all know. It’s what we are comfortable with. It’s what makes sense to us, whether as parents or as teachers. But as I have furthered myself from this system, it has become increasingly clear that in order for learning (acquiring new knowledge and skills) to be both meaningful and lasting, we must create a framework of education (organized programs of learning) where there are an array of schools (any community of people that come together to learn with each other), rather than only the conventional facilities that we have grown accustomed to; the only thing we know as “school”.

This type of change is not easy, because in our lifetime, unlike almost everything else, education has never seen true seismic change. Even with the rise of private schools, the teaching/learning/schooling model largely remains the same. Most families paying for private school are in fact paying, more or less, for the same model - there just happen to be fewer bodies in the factory, but the industrial processes remain the same. 

Every day, we take our mixed-aged school group out to explore our property on what we like to call adventure walks. There obviously aren’t any desks, or books, or pencils. We don’t teach a specific lesson, because, well… adventure walking isn’t even a “subject”. I’m sure to most of the people who follow our social media, and watch our daily Instagram story we are just out “playing”, because there is no test for adventure walking, you can’t assess successful adventuring walking based on a rubric full of criteria, and there definitely isn’t a letter grade or a percentage on a report card for adventure walking. And so, it’s perceived as playing, not as learning (although play is in fact one of the very best forms of learning regardless of age) because ultimately this type of schooling is not one that we can recognize, identify with, and easily understand. 

Last week our students choose to spend a few hours tracking and following streams that sprung up from the spring snow melt, where they eventually uncovered a waterfall. The first “REAL” waterfall many had ever seen. They screamed with excitement, they splashed, they played, they led the journey, they asked questions, they listened, and they synthesized it all in order to make meaning, to acquire knowledge, and to learn. There wasn’t an exit card* used to determine exactly what they had learned, or better yet, what they could regurgitate back to me. Because, I am certain, that by choosing this opportunity themselves, by immersing themselves in something authentic to our changing seasons, that both the memory of this experience will last and the learning will stick. When “creative schools” advocate and guru Ken Robinson speaks about the need for organic education, he argues “that education will only improve when we understand that it too is a living system, not an industrial process, and that people thrive in particular conditions and not in others.” Nothing has become more clear to me than the fact that children thrive in conditions where they have personal freedom to explore and to create, when they have a sense of control and the ability to make choices, and when they can follow their own interests and passions. But when they are reduced to being data, when they are cogs or products in the industrial machine of education, most become bored and disaffected, and the joy of learning that is intrinsic to the human species is slowly eroded. Robinson further argues that we must shift education in the same way that industrial farming has more recently evolved and changed to organic agriculture; it is time for education to mirror the latter.

 I will attempt to succinctly outline this metaphor, albeit far less eloquently than Ken Robinson. The primary goal of industrial farming is to produce higher yields of crops and animals, and like farming, industrial education has become increasingly more focused on outputs and yields; the rise of standardized testing and improving test scores, raising the number of graduates, data driven school improvement plans - the list is quite long and extensive. Industrial farming sees large tracts of single crops doused in chemical fertilizers and pesticides, or cramped and unhealthy conditions for animals that are injected with hormones to grow larger and faster. These measures are undoubtedly efficient and highly successful in terms of yield, despite the adverse conditions created. Then in education we have ever-increasing class sizes, reduced funding and support for educational assistants and special education programs, cut backs to the music, art, home-economics, automotive; anything that is hands-on and experiential. So just like farming, students and teachers are subjected to conditions that, while churning out “literate” graduates in impressive numbers, inhibit true growth and development as disengagement, boredom, and apathy run rampant. And just like the drug-injected animals, the number of drug-dependent students has never been greater. The yields may be high, but in both cases there is a price to be paid. 

But Robinson gives us hope in how he describes the changing landscape of farming:

“In the last thirty years especially, there has been a growing movement to implement alternative forms of organic farming [where] the emphasis is not primarily on the plants, but on nurturing the soil itself. If the the eco-system is diverse and well-managed, the health of plants will increase along with the yields.” 

So it’s time we look at the soil of education because our plants - our students, our children - deserve to grow in a space that cultivates healthy, vibrant, deep, and active learning. With a diverse and well-managed educational environment, we need not worry about the yield, it will surely be fine. 

To build something new in the educational landscape has been scary, and it has certainly been challenging to relay a new conceptual framework to others in our community. It has taken time, and it has taken a steadfast belief in knowing what children deserve, and knowing that “just because it’s always been like this” or because “it worked fine for me” certainly does not mean it’s effective in the present, or for the future.  We hope to be ONE of MANY SCHOOLS in a grassroots revolution that will transform education from the industrial to the organic, because learning and schooling should be about finding the right fit for every child. They aren’t identical factory produced products. They are all different, and they need more choices. They need more change. 

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* Exit Card - A classroom strategy that requires students to respond to questions or prompts on a piece of paper that they will pass in to the teacher before they leave class. They are designed to be both content review at the end of a daily lesson for students and a formative assessment tool (tools used during the learning process in order to modify teaching and learning activities to improve student attainment) for teachers. Such cards require students to be able to effectively communicate their thinking through written communication.

If we had used an exit card for our water-tracking adventure walk it could seek explanations for concepts such as the effect of slope on run-off, the water cycle, the three states of matter.

References & Further Reading:

Robinson, Ken. Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution That’s Transforming Education. Penguin Books (2015).

They Can Sort It Out By Themselves

They Can Sort It Out By Themselves

By Doing "Nothing", You're Doing More

They don’t need us to interject. 

They don’t need us to interfere. 

They don’t need us to tell them what is right, and what is wrong. 

They already know, and they can sort it out themselves, if only we stop inserting ourselves. 

Earlier this week, I watched from a few meters away, just listening. Listening to tears, and then listening to the other little voices. Those voices brought calm and comfort to the one crying, those voices also brought mediation to conflict, and they brought a form of “discipline” that will always be far more effective than anything imposed by adults. It’s instinctual to go to a child in distress, and I’m sure most adults, had they witnessed this scenario unfold at our climber, would have questioned why I, the teacher, stood there “doing nothing”. But by doing nothing, I was doing something: something far more valuable… and it wasn’t easy to fight off that instinct.  

… 

You know the sound instantaneously, and the guttural reaction is always the same when you hear those tears. You jolt and immediately turn to the direction in which the sound came from - are they hurt? 

I surveyed the climber, no injury. One little guy in tears, and several other kids on, and around the climber. I began to move towards him when two students knelt down to see if he was okay. I stopped, turned ever so slightly so that they didn’t see adult eyes watching them, and I just listened.

“Are you okay?” they both asked. 

Tears. Tears. More tears. 

Followed by, “Are you hurt?”

The faintest of head shakes said no. 

So they tried again to be sure. 

“Are you hurt?” 

Now a very clear head shake no. 

“Do you need Katherine?” 

No words, but another slight head shake that said no. 

As they comforted their peer with a hand on his shoulder, I heard “If you aren’t injured then you don’t need to cry” (I may have laughed a little at hearing that and I may also be responsible for that line … but I’ll save the importance of tough love for another time!)  

At this point a third student came into the conversation, 

“Why are you crying?” 

Through the tears that were still flowing and an attempt to catch his breath, 

“He pushed me off the stairs.” 

The three students who were clearly now mediating the situation, turned to face the other student, the “pusher”, and a whole mix of questions ensued: 

“Did you do that?” 

“Why did you push him off?” 

“Did you push him off the stairs?”

At this point, I was undoubtedly fighting the urge to step-in, worrying that a whole new conflict was on the horizon. If the students overact in their approach there will be another student in tears. What if the words they say next are too harsh? 

As all of this played out in my mind, I quickly realized there hadn’t been an answer from the student who had pushed. Just silence, which every adult knows is an omission of guilt. But, no additional conflict. So back I went to just listening.

“It’s not okay to do that” said one student, eyes fixed on their guilty peer. 

“What do you need to do now?” chimed in another. 

Crickets. (As taking responsibility and accountability began to set in)

“You need to say sorry”. 

“Yeah, you definitely need to say sorry to him.” 

And then they just stared. Eyes once again fixed.

Those stares resulted in an apology shortly thereafter, the tears subsided, and everyone went back to playing with laughter in abundance, including both students who were involved in the original pushing incident.  And I … I still stood there having done “nothing”.  

…

These scenarios unfold day-in and day-out at schools everywhere, and likely at home if you have multiple children. Conflict (and the ensuing consequences) not only plays a central role in childhood play, but it will also continue to be part and parcel of all stages of life, including adulthood. Our immediate, on-the-spot adult interventions rob children of both the opportunity to learn that they are capable of solving problems on their own, and the opportunity to develop conflict resolution skills. At the beginning of the school year, several times a day students come to us with complaints, “he took my shovel”, “she said …”, “they won’t let me play”  and they quickly learn that we will not inject ourselves in to whatever conflict has developed. When we rush to step-in as the mediator we do our children no favours. Yes, of course when conflict escalates to include physicality, or when a clear pattern of bullying or domineering behaviour occurs we will step-in, otherwise, it is our goal to stay on the outside. We will coach, we will suggest, we will use proximity, but we will leave as much as possible to the students to sort out. They need to build the capacity to talk to each other, rather than talking through us. It does not take much of the year before they come to realize that they must resolve conflict themselves, and as the climber incident clearly shows, they quickly develop the skills to be able to do so. 

Children’s arguments are messy, and they are loud. They bicker, they quarrel, they squabble, and it often has a “delightful” whiny pitch. For adults it’s exhausting, it’s draining, it’s irritating to listen to, and so we interject to end it more for ourselves than for them. Instead, if we impose fewer solutions, let children navigate conflict and come to them on their own, they will be better equipped to take care of themselves and take care of others; and that is undeniably what every parent wants for their child. Conflict will always be integral to play, children will always find their own way through it, and whatever the outcomes may be, they will always be far more authentic, more meaningful, and more impactful when derived from their peers.

Conflict is not a failure of parenting, or a failure of teaching. And while it may be uncomfortable to “do nothing” when conflict arises, we must let our children practice how to handle it. 

They don’t need us to interject. 

They don’t need us to interfere. 

They don’t need us to tell them what is right, and what is wrong. 

They already know, and they WILL sort it out themselves.

Working For The Weekend, Waiting For The Bell

“It’s not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching to see what we do with ours” - Joyce Maynard

What you do, day in and day out, has a profound impact on the life your child will lead. And I’m not talking about the amount of time you play with them, or read to them, how extravagant the meals you make are, or how many trips you take them on. I’m not even talking about how often you go to their games, activities, competitions or recitals. I’m talking about what you do for yourself, the way you live YOUR life, the life beyond your title, your role as mother or father.

We have fallen into a state in which most parents, most adults are working for the weekend. Mortgages are high and so too are car payments, insurance, bills, groceries. The list could go on and on. We work tirelessly, slugging away at jobs that all too often evoke little passion, in order to keep paying, to keep living. But we aren’t living at all, and those little eyes are watching. They watch everything, and they learn quickly. They learn that weekdays are for work, and weekends are for fun. So as you slug away working for the weekend, counting down to “FriYAY”, they are quickly learning to watch the clock, and wait for the bell. Yes it’s idealistic, and perhaps unrealistic to think we will always love our jobs, enthusiastically returning day in and day out. But you should at minimum like it. And if not, you’re ultimately showing your child, engraining in them both a belief and an acceptance, that our existence is one in which we grin and bear 5/7 of the week to enjoy two days. Work or school. It all becomes the same, it all becomes one.

While it may seem as though I have succinctly covered the issue of work, the nine-to-five, eight-to-six day is, more often than not, responsible for even more of what your child is watching, and what he or she is seeing you do with YOUR life. If we did a little experiment and asked all of the parents in your child’s class

  1. What are your hobbies? … Yes that’s plural ;)

  2. What are you currently learning?

the answers would be sparse. There would be a handful or more hobbies shared, and then likely crickets. Learning something new? More crickets. Enter the “there’s no time for that” argument. And that is precisely the problem, and that is what children are watching and learning. While I’m of course making a generalization here (there are undoubtedly parents who are engaged in their own pursuits) North American children primarily observe that when they grow up “playing” ends, and so too does learning, instead of seeing that pursuing personal interests and learning is a life-long endeavour, a never-ending journey. Ask your child right now “What does an adult do?” I’m confident the answers will not only be eye opening and thought provoking, but that “go to work” will be first, and the words “play” and “learn” won’t be mentioned at all.

Yes, working and parenting is immensely demanding. It would be foolish to argue otherwise, but it is not the root issue I am hoping to highlight. The issue is what we do as adults for ourselves, separate from those two roles. Instead of maintaining personal interests, adults have collectively and readily adopted cyclical, indulgent patterns under the false guise of self-care. Quick remedies that are in fact not overly effective. Binging Netflix, consuming more treats, more drinks, more lattes because “you deserve it” or “it’s been a hard week” is not a sustainable means to improving and taking care of our mental, emotional and physical health. This distorted version of self-care focuses more on band-aid solutions and mini-fixes, rather than on finding long-term activities or passions that help adults develop their own interests and skills as a person. Endeavours that are not fleeting, but that truly make you happy over the long haul. But to do so requires a commitment to challenging societal norms, and rewriting the accepted cultural script of adulthood. Those little eyes that are fixated on Mom and Dad, that watch their every move - their daily, weekly, monthly habits- imagining and envisioning their own future adulthood, need to see one that more closely resembles an extension of childhood; one that makes time for personal interests, for play, for learning, and one that is not the summation of only work and parenting. It’s not selfish, nor is it a waste of time.

Inherently connected to what our children are watching us do, is what they are also listening to; both of which are also shaping their present and their future. We come back to the picture of parents working tirelessly, slugging away at their jobs. Feeling overworked, undervalued, and exhausted, the end result is one in which adults consistently and audibly complain about their jobs and their bosses. Those little ears hear this - maybe everyday, maybe weekly or maybe only monthly - but the by-product of this patterned behaviour is one that not only teaches children not to accept responsibility for a given situation or problem, but also teaches them to cast blame squarely on others. Personal accountability, a self-reflection on how we, the adult got here, how we found ourself in this situation is never a part of what they hear in our ramblings. When that is removed from our behaviour, it will certainly be removed from theirs.

You’re folding the laundry, you’re making dinner, you’re packing lunches and yes you’re “only venting”. But children don’t understand that concept. In the pre-operational (2-7 years old) or concrete operational (7-11 years old) stages of cognitive development, complex, abstract thinking and reasoning is not yet developed. Theoretical, hypothetical and counter-factual thinking are also not present. So while you are “just venting” it is much more literal to them. They aren’t processing and putting together the array of complex pieces - workplace dynamics/relationships, personal stress, financial stress - the myriad of factors that have combined and culminated in this moment. They aren’t recognizing exaggeration, embellishment or bias. They simply hear it, they consume it, and they believe that this too will be a part of their future.

It engrains.

It normalizes.

It becomes an accepted part of adulthood in the eyes of children and teenagers.

…

It’s certainly not easy being an adult.

And as far as I know, I don’t think anyone ever said it would be.

But I also know it doesn’t have to be THIS hard.

We reminisce and relish the days of childhood, but adulthood does not have to be its antithesis.

So choose to keep growing alongside your child. Keep playing, keep learning, keep improving YOURSELF, remembering that every day they are watching what you do with your life, as much as you are watching what they do with theirs.

Life Is Not Organized In Single Age Groups, Nor Should It Be

Life Is Not Organized In Single Age Groups, Nor Should It Be

The Cognitive, Emotional, and Social Advantages of Mixed Aged Environments

The split grade class. Commonly used in schools, rarely accepted by parents. The vast majority of parents respond to the news that their child is in a combined class with fear and worry. It is one of the most common topics that prospective families seek to discuss with us, and the inquiries consistently stem from a place riddled with concern, anxiety, and general pessimism. There has undoubtedly been a societal shift in which glasses are always half empty, and yet this glass, the combined class, is most certainly half full.

The benefits of diversity within communities need not be argued, and this is true whether we are talking about adults or children, or whether the diversity stems from race, gender, religion, or any of the vast array of characteristics and qualities that make up humanity. So why is that we are so worried about diverse age groups? About mixed grades, about combined classes?

Life is not organized in single age groups, into homogenous groups, nor should it be. Sometimes in life, we are the mentor, at other times the apprentice. Sometimes we’re the boss, other times we’re not. Sometimes we lead from the front, while other times we take cues from the back. In all of these situations we have to work together, and age is rarely, if ever, the deciding factor in our allotted roles. By giving young children the same opportunity to experience varying roles that stem from diverse groupings they will be better off. They will reap cognitive, social, and emotional benefits that are paramount to their learning and development.

In order to serve the masses, the educational system was designed and structured in a industrial revolution, factory style manner by which students would be separated by ability so that they could all be instructed at the same time - and the easiest way to do this - assume that children of the same age have the same abilities and interests. But as every parent already knows, especially those with more than one child, children learn and develop at vastly different rates. Not every seven-year-old has mastered the same skills in the same time frame. But any adult, regardless of whether you have children or not, should recognize this model and recognize its inherent problems. We were all students in this model; the one organized chronologically by birth year, clustering children on the false premise of homogenous skill and ability. So you know exactly what the problematic result is that I am about to describe. The problem we all experienced in our own classrooms as students, and decades later, still remains: some students become bored when the pace of instruction is too slow, and some students become stressed and eventually disenfranchised when the pace of instruction is too fast. Enter the mixed-age, combined class, reminiscent of the one-room school house of the past. Inherent to this structure is the natural, seamless integration of developmental groupings. Younger children who excel in a particular discipline already have vertical enrichment (acceleration) naturally built into their learning environment. They are challenged by the skills that “older students” already possess or are working on, as they seek to emulate and keep pace with their peers. Similarly, there are accessible entry points for “older” students who may struggle in a subject. Without a focus on distinct grades and ages, the fluid holistic nature of the combined class allows that child to continue working on, and acquiring needed skills that may be in a “lower grade” or “younger age”. No IEPs, no designations, just a natural integration as children grow, change, and develop on their own unique timeline.

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Regardless of whether deficits or strengths exist, the significance of having diverse aged peer groupings (as opposed to adults - teachers, parents) has been made clear by famous Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky. Vygotsky coined the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) - the area defined by what a learner can do with guidance/assistance through scaffolding, that sits between the actual development level and the potential level - and demonstrated that it is fundamentally social in nature, with peer interactions being imperative to learning and development. For children, their teachers and parents represent an unrealistic target. We simply aren’t peers, and when we, the “old timers” demonstrate a skill or concept that is challenging to a child, they often believe it is simply out of reach for them and don’t bother to try. They become “adult skills” in their mind, unachievable, unrealistic to them. This however is not true when that same demonstration comes from another child, even when that child may be several years older. But as Vygotsky illustrated, a limited circle of easy-to-compare others is comforting to a child; it is a protection strategy that in fact hinders learning. In other words… the single grade room is the safe, protected and easy-to-compare environment. Older students, who are still seen as peers offer the challenge needed to accelerate learning acquisition and movement through the ZPD.

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Let me share a quick story here … I recently introduced “Sit Spotting” to my mixed age students who range from age 3 to 8. If you aren’t familiar with “Sit Spotting”, it is a mindfulness meditative practice for children. As we adventure on our 100 acre property, they select a unique location in which to sit silently, using their senses to observe - what they see, smell, hear and touch. We started with two, one-minute sessions, sharing our observations at the end of each. Over the course of two and half weeks, we are now at 8 minutes - that’s right, you don’t need to re-read. 8 minutes of silent observation. Make no mistake about it, the zone of proximal development matters, it matters a WHOLE LOT in accomplishing this. If the group was entirely “JK”, 3 and 4 year-olds, we certainly would not be at 8 minutes, we likely would still be working on the 1 minute sessions. Instead, our littlest learners are acquiring a skill set from their older peers who model both the quiet meditative practice, as well as how to make detailed observations when they share in our follow-up sessions. Our older learners act as leaders, developing that skill simultaneously. We all know children listen and watch everything - and when it’s another child they look up to, they emulate. We need to nurture and embrace this dynamic; believe in the positive role modelling that older children are more than capable of - we need to remember the glass is half full.

When we speak of leadership in school settings, we naturally, instinctually believe that the leaders will always be older. However, just like adults, children excel in some disciplines, have deficits in others, and as a result, just like us, sometimes they too will be the mentor, and other times the apprentice, the teacher or the student, regardless of chronological age. In our mixed-age classroom sometimes the teaching student is older than the learning student, sometimes the teacher is younger than the learner, and sometimes they are the same age. The only constants are that both the teacher and the learner improve their knowledge and skill, and that every child benefits from the exposure to these natural fluctuations in ability and aptitude, and ever-changing leadership roles. As subjects, disciplines, and skill-sets change, the opportunity to develop as a leader, the opportunity to develop confidence, the opportunity to cement their own learning by teaching other students what they’ve already mastered changes hands; hands that are not organized by birthdate.

When it comes to the social-emotional realm of development, in a mixed-age class older students play the role of big brother or sister to younger students. Younger students gain security and comfort in this relationship, while the older students demonstrate increased confidence and self-esteem, as well as increased pro-social and fewer aggressive behaviours. Age mixing also provides a safe environment for all students to work on their communicative social skills. Students who are less confident in their social skills can practice them and work to improve them by interacting with other students, perhaps younger ones, that the child may internalize as less threatening and more approachable. Similarly, students who may have more developed language acquisition and social comfort can seek out relationships where they are socially on par, and that too may have little do with their birthdate.

I have the privilege of seeing the array of benefits of a mixed age class unfolded daily; the use of multiple accessible entry points and developmental groupings without IEP designations, the impact of ZPD and peers on skill acquisition, the natural fluctuations in ability and aptitude that result in ever-changing leadership roles, and the beauty of “sibling relationships” among students. I have the privilege of seeing that the glass is indeed half full. You went to school in which classes were organized chronologically by age, and your child, grandchild, niece/nephew likely does as well. The system hasn’t changed, and so most of you don’t have the privilege that I do. BUT we all have the ability to think critically, to grapple with new ideas that deviate from the norm, that deviate from what we “know”. We do know that life is not organized into single age groups, and perhaps we will eventually know that our classrooms need not be either.

One Person’s Trash, Is A Child's Treasure

If you’re one of those parents or teachers, who, like me want it all neat and tidy, I encourage you to keep reading. You likely have shelves full of beautifully organized and labelled bins in which are a wealth of amazing loose parts materials for STEM activities, tinker trays, makers spaces, and all the other open-ended play concepts that are so valuable to early childhood development. We take them out, make an organized mess, while channelling and embracing the myriad of Pinterest quotes that have us believing that we are doing it right:

“Creativity and learning is messy. Embrace the discomfort”

“Messy classroom are where the magic happens”

“Sorry about the mess, but we are learning here”

When the activity comes to its natural conclusion we then promptly clean it up, returning all of the various parts and pieces back to those carefully marked bins, which then go back to their specific spot on the shelf. Being truthful and completely honest, I have and continue to be this teacher, and it’s difficult, and I mean DIFFICULT to change.

This is the structure of most classrooms and most household playrooms. Female ECEs, teachers, and mothers continue to dominate the landscape and environment of early childhood learning, and whether we like it or not, want to admit it or not, this type of organization is largely a feminine trait (of course with exceptions on both sides) and is one of a few key contributing factors to the feminization of primary education (see more in Boys Adrift by Leonard Sax).

Let’s be clear, I am in no way saying there isn’t a place for this in teaching and in learning. There is undoubtedly great value packed into those bins. They have their place. Those fantastically organized loose part bins still develop creativity, ingenuity, problem solving, and communication among many others skills. But, and here is the BUT - while they facilitate open-ended play without a clear, pre-determined outcome, they are nonetheless predictable, safe, and easy to manipulate.

Enter stuff.

All kinds of STUFF.

The kind of STUFF that fills your garage, your shed, your attic and then eventually goes to the dump. Trash to us, treasure to children. The kind of STUFF that I hate to keep. The kind of STUFF I hate to look at. It’s debris, it’s junk, it’s by no way aesthetically pleasing, and however hard you try, it’s impossible to organize!

But what I have seen and learned from this STUFF, this junk, this debris is the immense benefit it has on the development and acquisition of skills, and in turn, I have developed a realization that I must continue to grow and change as an educator. I am fortunate to have students and a colleague that have helped me discover this, as I attempt to embrace the STUFF.

Unlike many Montessori and Waldorf loose part sets (ex. rainbow stackers, anything Grimm’s or Grapat) these “junk” parts and pieces are unpredictable, they lack uniformity in size, shape, texture, weight, angle, edges (the list goes on and on) and therefore require greater critical thinking, problem solving, communicating, and synthesizing of information within children. Yet, inherent to the loose part pieces and sets that are purchased online and in stores (for a crazy price I must add) are familiarity and predictability. When those conditions are removed, children are faced with unexpected challenges, complex problems which they must solve with other STUFF; other STUFF that is similarly challenging and STUFF that, more often than not, results in the addition of even more variables to the puzzle they seek to solve as they imagine, construct, play, and create. When the problems are complex and so too are the answers, the learning is deeper, the skill acquisition stronger. This is what we want for our children, for our students. This is what our children, what our students need. And, like many concepts related to child development, education, and learning (enter forest and outdoor schools into the conversation) it isn’t new, and has a long history of being successfully adopted outside of North America.

The “Adventure Playground”, otherwise known as the “Junk Playground” dates back to 1943 Nazi occupied Copenhagen, and since then has been adopted and embraced by much of the world, particularly in Europe. The United Kingdom has gone so far as to establish a professional methodology entitled “playwork” in which adults are trained to run these environments, and these environments are plentiful. Despite their popularity and success around the globe, they simply haven’t taken off in North America as we continue to be plagued by our rising, superfluous fears surrounding child safety and our corresponding need for adult-directed activities in carefully controlled environments. In the 1970s New York City had at least three Adventure Playgrounds, and now has only one (https://www.play-ground.nyc) and even closer to home, from 1974 to the mid 1980s Toronto had its own Adventure Playground located at the foot of Bathurst Street on the grounds of Harbourfront.

Children “were given hammers, nails, saws, assorted tools, metal shovels, and unlimited amounts of lumber to go hog-wild constructing buildings, bridges, forts, houses, dog houses, and whatever else they desired. There was a garden, a fire-pit, and a water supply. It was a mini-civilization, a shanty town on Bathurst — devised, designed, constructed and lorded over by kids. Children [built] amazing structures restricted only by their own imagination.”

Such a place is simply unimaginable in today’s overprotective, hyper-controlled climate of parenting and child rearing, and while injuries were undoubtedly common and plentiful, it was accepted as part of the experience, something many of us can connect with from our own childhoods.

SO…

Let’s let go of adult-directed, hyper-controlled, overly predictable environments, and go back to something that more closely resembles the childhoods that we remember.

Let’s adopt, accept, and embrace junk, debris, and trash.

Let’s let go of valuing the aesthetic that has come to dominate backyards, classrooms, and playrooms. Those Pinterest and Etsy inspired spaces that are meticulously planned, carefully crafted, and perfectly organized.

Let’s adopt, accept, and embrace the perfectly imperfect STUFF.

I am working at it, you should too :)

Further Reading:

Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men. Leonard Sax. 2007. Basic Books, Perseus Books Group.

The Junk Playground of New York City: Where children tinker with saws and hammers while parents stand on the sidelines https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/08/the-junk-playground-of-new-york-city/495371/

Toronto Once Had The Best Playground Ever https://www.blogto.com/city/2017/09/adventure-playground-toronto-history/

Well, what if you don’t find anything?!

Well, what if you don’t find anything?! Musings on Emergent & Inquiry-Based Learning 

There are a wealth of “buzz” words floating around the world of education and schools across the province; rhetoric thrown out to parents and learning communities at large, often used, but rarely authentic. 

I’ve quickly learned that majority of inquiry based, and emergent learning that is sold to parents, is contrived by the teacher at the front of the four wall classroom; I have in fact, at one time, been that teacher. The open-end problem is carefully created within a unit of study that has also been selected and planned - not by those learning, but arbitrarily by adults, some who work directly with children and some who haven’t in many, many years. Skilled teachers then offer their students a cleverly crafted and meticulously planned “hook” to engage them in the problem that they will be working on, usually with a variety of (pre-selected) materials that students can choose from in order to tackle the problem - wait, did you catch that? Say that again? 

We need to “hook” kids into engagement? 

Teachers work tirelessly to do this everyday, many with wonderful skill and passion. The problem is not actually theirs, but rather it’s that such a meticulously prescribed curriculum with hundreds of specific expectations leaves little room for authentic inquiry and emergent based learning. We set up problems for students in order to check off those expectations, none of which are chosen by the young minds and hearts of the learners. It is to no surprise then that masterfully planned, partially effective “hooks” must be used to engage students into learning.

…

Let’s skip ahead. It’s Thursday morning and we are out on our daily morning adventure, exploring nature and all that it has to offer. We are playing, we are creating, we are looking for animals, we are looking at the changing leaves, and sometimes we are just walking and talking. And then … it’s spotted. 

“I found a dead bird!” I hear from a little voice. 

We all rush over. 

“There’s one over here too.” 

Our footing quickly switches as we head to the other side of the path to see the second discovery.  

What quickly unfolds after sounds a little like this: 

“Are they dead?” (Yes, says another, they aren’t moving at all)

“Maybe it’s the mommy and daddy bird”

“How did they die?” (A long silence, no one is really sure) 

Enter a teacher-led conversation on predation, and what we might observe if the bird died as prey. 

“But the bird is fine? It hasn’t been attacked” (Another long silence from everyone)

Now it’s time to cue and prompt more observation and critical thinking. 

“Look all around you, what else is close by?” 

After hearing the natural first responses of five and six year-old - “leaves and trees” - one little voice pipes up:

“WIRES!!”

“Yes! Look up, at the hydro lines” I say.

“There’s electricity in the wires - that’s how they died!” one student exclaims.

In the flurry of excitement, questions, and chatter, I smile, thrilled at what has just transpired. Thrilled that I have done so little, and thrilled that they solved this themselves. No walls, no desks, no calculated “hooks”, no prescribed materials - just a real problem, an authentic learning opportunity.

“Katherine, can we dissect it?” (Says a returning student)

“What is dissect?” (From a new student) 

“You cut is open and look at the inside” 

(Perfect the returning student has connected to the frog we dissected last year - that smile of mine is growing even larger!)

“YEESSS let’s do that!!! Can we do that?!?! Can we do that?!” 

…  

With delicate hands we placed the two birds on a large leaf (enter another discussion -  touching dead animals and bacteria), brought the birds back to school, and over the next two days studied the exterior and interior (some new vocabulary acquisition) body parts. 

  • We compared the external parts of the bird to external human body parts, and through student generated questions discovered that birds, like us humans, also have tongues! 

  • We used an interactive anatomy diagram while we dissected the bird together. 

  • We examined the ribs, the liver, the small intestine, the esophagus, and the brain (cerebral hemisphere) 

  • And we learned when, why, and how to safely dissect.   

Were we studying a unit on birds? No. Were we doing a unit on anatomy and body parts. No (although we had just talked about joints when reading The Wizard of Oz. Things sure have a way of coming together!) Did we have other learning tasks planned. Yes. Did we throw them out the window. Absolutely!  

No hooks. No forced engagement. Inquisitive little minds and whole lot of opportunity. Authentic learning, authentic problems, authentic engagement.  

We have been asked time and time again by parents, by friends, by other colleagues, and by teacher candidates

“Well, what if you don’t find anything?”

Then we’ve spent time moving our bodies, calming our minds, immersed in nature. And when we make our next discovery, it will be even more exciting, even more magical. 

“Each time one prematurely teaches a child something he could have discovered himself that child is kept from inventing it and consequently understanding it completely” - Jean Piget 

So we will wait. 

Wait for our next discovery.

Wait for our next emergent, inquiry-based opportunity. 

Wait for student driven engagement. 

Wait for authenticity in learning. 

Explore. Learn. Create. Play.