var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; Spelling tests loom disproportionately large in my memories of elementary school. That's probably because it was the first, and for many years only, thing for which I had to "study." That is to say, our teachers would hand us … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; This is the legendary poem Deer Park (Wang Wei):鹿柴 (王维)空山不见人,但闻人语响.返景入深林,复照青苔上.It was written during the Tang Dynasty by a poet who is often referred to as Poetry Buddha.Here is one translation into English:On this lonely moun … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; As a boy of six-years-old, I objected to the term "babysitter." For one thing, I wasn't a baby, and for another, the word conjured the image of babies being sat upon. By the time I was 10, old enough to be entrusted with the c … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; When I talk to adults about their years of schooling, they rarely talk about what they learned in math class. They talk about teachers. They talk about their social life. And at some point almost all of them talk about the bor … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; "Adolescence" was invented in the mid-1800's by the warlike Prussian nation. They had just suffered a humiliating military defeat at the hands of Napoleon and felt their downfall was due, at least in part, to their soldiers no … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; I've been awaking to darkness for the last few weeks. I’d have to say that the short winter days are one of the most challenging aspects of life in the northern tier, but things are turning around. The Winter Solstice occurred … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; Karntakuringu JakurrpaI've been driving cars for 45 years. It's been decades since I spent time and energy thinking about driving. I just do it. When I was first behind the wheel, when I was learning about driving, I had to th … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; I always used a hand drum as the signal for transitions. At some point, I started referring to it as "the old bangeroo."For instance, when it was time to tidy up, I'd say, "I guess it's time for the old bangeroo." Several kids … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; "The grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and, for children, it's tiresome always giving them explanations." This is perhaps the most famous line from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's novella The Little Prince.It's mem … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; A child psychologist friend once told me that he kept a doll house in his office, explaining that he could often learn more about a child while playing "family" with them than in any number of hours of traditional talk therapy … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; In January of 2000, I began touring kindergartens in anticipation of our daughter moving on from preschool. We had already decided that the local public school was off the table, largely because we knew one of the kindergarten … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; Maddie was a kid who could concentrate. From the time I met her as a two-year-old, she showed an amazing capacity to block out the entire world to focus on the self-assigned task at hand. You could stand over her saying her na … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; Einar JónssonA two-year-old was standing at the gate, his fingers through the slats, crying after his mommy who had left. The grandmother of another child was sitting with him. I wanted to go take her place, not because she wa … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; Recently, someone using the photo of a ruggedly handsome man tried to the get the attention of women commenting under some of the posts on my Teacher Tom Facebook page. It was the same message over and over, complementing the … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; When we're little, people tell us we can be whatever we want to be so we imagine ourselves to be princesses and superheroes. We don't aspire to become these things, we embody them. Then we're taught we're just pretending so we … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; We've been conditioned to equate our self with our mind, which we've been taught to think of as residing in our brains. Bodies, Thomas Edison asserted, are there to "carry the brain around." There are even those, so convinced … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; I looked up to see a familiar face. For a moment, however, I couldn't place it, but then recognized my friend who I'd not seen since he was five-years-old."I recognize you!" I blurted before his name came back to me. He was st … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; Over the years, thousands of people have written me, or come up to me at an event, with essentially the same question: What would you do about the behavior of this child?They provide me with context, with examples of the troub … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; Give them what they want. ~Winston ChurchillSome time ago, I shared a quite literate story by a four-year-old author. He wrote several other things, but after sharing the first one in front of the whole group he subsequently d … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; Wrestling was a regular feature of our curriculum at Woodland Park. Of course, it happened spontaneously, as it does in every preschool, but we would also sometimes throw down the gym mats and play in a pig pile. Before long, … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; Karntakuringu JakurrpaTypically sighted people have a blind spots that we don't often think about. We tend to be aware of the large one that is behind our heads at any given moment, but we rarely think about the tiny one that … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; My earliest memories of television were of watching our family's black and white Zenith set. I remember the day dad climbed onto the roof of the house to install the antennae which allowed us to receive two broadcast channels … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; "The imagination," writes George Orwell, "like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity."When I look around all all our problems, our disagreements, our complaints and concerns, what I see is a lack of imagination. We … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; After reading a story, then singing our final song, the children would come forward to hug me, not one at a time, but all together, and there we were, a massive scrum of bodies, wrapping one another up in our arms.From my firs … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; Author and poet Diane Ackerman writes:"(I)t probably doesn't matter if we try too hard, are awkward sometimes, care for one another too deeply, are excessively curious about nature, are too open to experience, and enjoy nonsto … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; The democratic education movement, or "free school" movement, grew out of the theories of psychologist, philosopher and education reformer John Dewey. The basic concept is to run a school based upon the democratic ideals of ci … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; A few years ago, I was explaining to some of our school's families how "sharing" works at Woodland Park: if a kid is using something that another kid wants to use, we coach the kids to say, "I want that when you're finished" o … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; A single flax seed is a tiny golden fleck, so small that a single one is hardly noticeable to the human eye, so insubstantial that its fragrance is undetectable, so meager that one can barely feel it with a fingertip, so delic … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; It is both a fact of physics and metaphysics that we are always in a state of becoming. Indeed, the entire world, as we perceive it, is in that state, while simultaneously, and paradoxically, we also always exist in a state of … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; KleoI often watch the Great British Bake Off, a competition show that good-naturedly pits amateur bakers against one another. I don't bake myself, but I find the show relaxing. After 13 seasons, there are no surprises, the jok … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; Over the past decade or so, I’ve listened to a lot of early childhood experts. More often than not, I find myself nodding along. They say things I think are true about children. Or rather, they say things I want to be true abo … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; We never had a teeter totter (i.e., seesaw) on our playground, but the children were always making their own, usually by pivoting a plank of wood over a log. Sometimes they would put the plank of wood over one of our swings an … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; As clean up time approached, I began to survey the two-year-olds, "I'm thinking that it might be clean-up time." Some agreed while others informed me that they wanted to wait "Three minutes" or "Five minutes." They all knew by … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; The boys were playing together as they often do, running, debating, forming and re-forming "teams," which was the trend of the moment. Being the day before a holiday, about half the kids were not at school, off on their travel … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; When I have something to think about, I take a long walk. There is something about walking that tends to free our minds to think more clearly. This is because our minds and our bodies are not separate things.As professor and a … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; Some time ago, I wrote about a new (to me) metaphor to explain an alternative theory of addiction. In a nutshell, the predominate addiction theory is based upon experiments in which rats in cages were given the option between, … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; This morning, as I sat outdoors drinking coffee, a gaggle of Canada geese flew overhead, flapping hard, heading east, honking. Several minutes later they returned, silently, gliding, having circled back. As they drifted down t … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; He approached me, his arms crossed, brow low. "Teacher Tom, ask me a question."For the most part, I strive to ask the children I teach very few questions. Or rather, when I ask them questions, I want them to be real questions, … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; I once taught a girl named Laura who would sit with the rest of us on the rug during circle time, but when she spoke, she popped to her feet to pace back and forth. She had fresh, thoughtful contributions to make to our group … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; Yesterday, as I transferred through the Montréal-Trudeau International Airport, I took a seat an a restaurant counter for my dinner. The bartender was playing music from her own playlist. As is increasingly the case, I didn't … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; I was working a floor puzzle with one of the kids. It's a popular puzzle, one with fairies, unicorns, and a castle, but everyone else was busy elsewhere so we were one-on-one. Soon, however, we were joined by another girl, and … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; For more than a decade, I prepared for my days with children as an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting took place in the room across the hallway. I didn't intentionally listen in, but over the years I grew to feel that I was, in a wa … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; They say that the Golden Rule is the only one we need, that every major religion has some version of it embedded in its theology. And it's a good rule, the most familiar iteration being, "Do unto others as you would have them … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; "Teacher Tom, look what I made!""I'm looking at what you made."I strive to hold a space in which children are as free as possible to create, explore, study, and play with as little adult judgement as possible. I am not there t … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; People are often surprised when I say or write that safety is our number one responsibility when it comes to our work with young children. After all, human babies are born uniquely vulnerable compared to other species and they … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; When someone says, "I'm doing this for your own good," rest assured it is not for your own good. Or at least it's not in your best interest, according to your own judgement, in this particular moment, and usually it is decided … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; I was sitting out of the way learning what I could from observing the children as they played. It was a wild game of throwing balls at one another, while the teacher occasionally called out words in Icelandic. I was trying to … | Continue reading
var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; There was a ball of pink yarn on the floor in a room where children played. One end had been pulled out. I picked it up and retreated to the wall, where I sat on a ledge, holding one end of the yarn. The adults in the room did … | Continue reading