Summer Reflections
This Summer I got to be in the classroom for Camp almost the whole time, and it left me full of stories to tell about what the kids were working on, and what I was learning and remembering alongside them. This is the collected stories I told in my weekly emails to parents this Summer.
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When I started trying to write something for you about what the kids were working on this week, I was still stuck in my own upset about the state of the world. Somehow, that had me accidentally write a blog post about what we are reading at the end of day group time, so here you go.
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At the beginning of last week, in the Big Yard, Teacher Jason, Teacher Gaby and I all said that things felt a little off. There was a sense of disconnection, or that kids were at loose ends. Instead of long, creative, collaborative games, they were doing things like dumping all the toys into a big muddy bucket, and then abandoning it. That's one way of us knowing we didn't supply them with the right stuff, or didn't present it in a way they could read.
So mid-week, we overhauled, and the guiding principle that we used to make our choices was: How do we supply them with the stuff they need to make their own narratives? That was a major reason for the disconnection-- there were no stories behind what we had supplied. They couldn't figure out how to use the stuff in that context, or rather, in the absence of context. I kept thinking about the Arnold Lobel book, Mouse Soup, where the mouse, trying to stall on the weasel cooking him up for lunch, claims that Mouse Soup will only taste good if it has stories in it, and then proceeds to tell some, buying time for escape.
The only thing that had worked well was the legos, which had been a source of incredible collaboration and creativity. To those, we added an obstacle course that ended up being partly for little cars and partly for little children, a barn with farm animals and a few people, that ended up making stories about traveling by airplane, and attending first grade, and we planned some other additions to hopefully fuel stories for the kids we have now, like a rocket ship backdrop for the kid who keeps trying to get someone to climb inside a tight space to ride in his rocketship, and writing table supplies that evoke an imaginary school, which is so different than our real school.
When Cottage kids imagine school, they usually have stern teachers, standing at the front and telling everyone what to do, letters and numbers, and rows of quiet children sitting upright in chairs, facing forward and paying attention as the teacher instructs. It is a marvel to see kids practice the thing that we have painstakingly avoided but which they all know is coming. Children play to process the things they know about but don't quite understand.
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It's hard not to think of the past week without thinking of some sad goodbyes from a few folks who are finished at camp and are now all done with their Cottage days. Foremost in my mind, of course, is Teacher Erin. Erin found Cottage when her son James was 2, and he came to Summer Camp in the Small Yard with us. She had been a Montessori teacher for 15 years, and was watching children in her home when we started talking about her joining the Cottage staff. In that short four years, she has become an integral and irreplaceable part of our Cottage family for so many of us, and we have learned so much from her. I am comforted in some small way by something I am always saying (to families, to myself) at the end of each year, when we have such hard goodbyes: Even though it's time to leave Cottage, you get to keep your friends. Teacher Erin, don't be a stranger. We love you.
I had the opportunity this week to spend time in the Small Yard! I found myself at the playdough table for much of the day, as kids practiced rolling out dough, cutting it, squishing it, making animals with it, tossing it, marking it with the end of a toy screwdriver and the side of a toy wrench, sawing through it, pretending it was food, asking to join and waiting for a friend to share a piece of it, watching and teaching each other, and sharing space on the bench together. Sometimes I think back to years past, when a parent would come for an admissions tour, see our kids hard at work like this, and say to me, "So, you don't teach them anything". I always thought it was so hilarious that an adult could be standing there and not notice any of the rich learning that free play provides.
These kids, without being forced, cajoled, controlled, or otherwise manipulated, come to this table and practice building their hand strength, which is what enables them to hold a pen or pencil as they begin to write. They practice coordinating their body to hold and use cutting tools like knives and scissors, which is no simple task for them. They watch and listen to how the other kids are making the things they are making, paying careful attention, and then try it themselves. They share narratives, describing pretend food or animals with detailed story lines, which is a literacy skill. They try experiments, not knowing what the outcome will be, and then repeat them to test what they understand. They practice expressive and receptive language, and use all the self-control they can muster to wait and cooperate with the other kids playing, so that they can keep the game going. Even sitting together on a bench takes a bunch of skills that I guess adults just take for granted most of the time.
So what do we do, the teachers? We see them. We listen. We are watching for what each child already knows how to do, and what they are still working on. We see where they still need support, and what we could give them to try next, based on what they can do now. We snuggle them. We hold and read to them. We help take care of their bodies and help them navigate their feelings. We reflect back that we have seen them and heard them. And ultimately, that might be the most important part, because warm, loving relationships that help kids feel safe and calm are the foundation of all learning.
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Over in the Small Yard, Teacher Wallace and I had planned a pillow pile for jumping, and the children looking for that feeling of impact pressure from jumping off the tires into the pillows got right into action. We also saw friendships blossom among some children who had not known or noticed each other before this Summer, which led us to want to supply the games they were choosing with the appropriate props, especially dress-up clothes and more ingredients for the play kitchen. The complex and varied play and accompanying conversations at the play dough table have continued to be some of the most rich moments of the day.
With the particular mix of kids we had in the Big Yard this week, which tended to be a little younger and a little more full-body-action-oriented, it became clear that Morning Meeting was not what all the kids needed. In our afternoon debrief meetings, the Big Yard team decided that instead of offering Morning Meeting, we would try ushering kids out to the yard at the start of the day, and instead offering a group time later in the day, as last year's Oak class had preferred.
One of the contributing factors was that it was getting so hot by the second half of the morning that some kids were just wilting, lying on the rugs of the patio, uninterested in going outside to play no matter what fun stuff we put out there. When we have enough adult supervision, it feels nice to be able to leave the gate open, and allow kids to choose to stay in the patio for some peace and quiet, or go outside and jump in the mud or what have you. With the teaching team and children we have, that has felt like something we could offer for most of this Summer.
That small choice to accommodate the real life kids we have here, instead of trying to get those kids to do the plan that worked for some other kids, ended up being the theme of all our debriefs this week. We are always looking for that perfect balance of the kids leading and having a strong voice in whatever we do, and also providing the just-right amount of structure and support so that the experience feels smooth, calm, and easy. Our background scaffolding, in response to the present moment needs of all those kids, is what allows the day to flow smoothly, transitions to feel like water flowing downhill, and kids to feel safe and secure enough to go about their work.
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In the Big Yard this week, some younger kids were playing when one of them pushed the other, and then that kid pushed back. When I learned about it, it was because one of them was crying, upset about that happening. A safe grownup was already out there helping. I had been helping a newly graduated near-Kindergartener say a difficult goodbye at the gate, and a second recent graduate came up to tell us about why someone was crying out in the yard. As they explained the pushing, both big kids rolled their eyes and told me that pushing never helps. Indeed, they went on to say that when you push to try to solve a problem, instead of talking it out, it just creates new problems. Together we lamented the unfortunate destruction of the game those littler kids had been playing and enjoying so much.
Later, a parent who was with us for the first time in the Big Yard got to see a group of recent Rainforest, Oak, and Kindergarten students collaborate on an elaborate restaurant game. Their self-managed game took the entire second half of our school day and involved almost every person in the yard: asking for and offering supplies and materials, negotiating recipes, writing menus, serving customers, refilling beverages, even rearranging tables and chairs to make it just the way they envisioned. I got to see through the parent's eyes for a moment, the marvel of seeing how the skills we practice in the Small Yard-- principally saying what we want, and waiting patiently as the person we are speaking to processes and decides how to respond-- plays out as the kids begin to have the experience and self-control to be able to do all of this without much adult help at all.
Kids can hear "no" and then feel a little disappointed without it ruining their whole game. Kids can say "no" at first, and then re-evaluate, finishing up and then giving another person a turn after all. Kids can share and move in and out of each other's space effortlessly, because they have established trust by playing together. And when there is a breach-- when someone subverts the unspoken rules, intentionally or not-- the kids call each other in. They begin to give each other the benefit of the doubt, that this breach must have been the result of a simple misunderstanding. So they explain and they try to keep the game going by including the person who seemed to have missed a cue.
When they're little, it seems like the day will never come when they can use that measured tone. Even now, at home, those same big kids may not be able to exhibit the same level of self control that they show so clearly in their peer group here at school. It's much harder to keep your cool with your own siblings or safe grownups. That's often the time when kids are most raw and vulnerable in their upset, even just over having to be in control in the mild chaos of the yard out here all morning. And so we parents see the tidal waves of screaming and crying (and and and...) that the kids at school may never see. It brought to my mind so many ideas from the theorist Lev Vygotsky, whose work is played out at Cottage every day. To choose just two gems:
“Play continually creates demands on the child to act against immediate impulse, i.e., to act according to the line of greatest resistance.”
and
"In play, the child is always behaving beyond his age, above his usual everyday behaviour; in play he is, as it were, a head above himself."
What an honor to be here every day to witness it.
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I do have one quick story I want to tell you from last week, that I keep finding lurking in the back of my mind since it happened. One day, I was in the Big Yard, with the mix of kids we have had this Summer. These kids range from freshly 3 to just about 7, and because of that (and because people vary widely), there is a broad array of skills that kids have either mastered or are still working on.
On this particular day, I had been sitting beside a person who was hard at play, who often asks me to do things for them that I know they can do themselves if they try. Our general approach is to encourage kids to do it/try it/build it/climb it themselves, because this is a place where we believe in kids and know that they are so very competent and capable, and also that many things can only be accomplished through practice. Therefore, I don't want to take their work from them by jumping in and doing it for them.
I stood up from there, and a person who will shortly be a First Grader asked me to help them with something they most definitely could do, and I, running on autopilot, said a thing I often say to kids who are 3 or 4, which was something like, "oh, you need help with x, I wonder if (another kid) would be willing to help you with that". It's a way to help kids figure out how to work together, to play together. Kids are often looking for an "in" to the game and have trouble finding it at first.
But a 6 year old? That person has the ability to invite play with another kid, and did not need me for that. And what I have decided, in the privacy of my thoughts, this person was actually asking me for was connection with me. I didn't need to get out of their way so they could find friends-- I could have taken the opportunity to just spend time with this person who soon will be too big to come back for any more Summers at Cottage.
So this week, that is just what I will do.
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One more week for us here, and you can feel it. The kids who are about to go off to Kindergarten are pretty keyed up, and there have been more tears and conflicts than usual with those kiddos. One way I am seeing it come out is in a bunch of fresh exclusionary play-- that's when kids play a game that purposely and explicitly excludes other kids, and it's very age-appropriate for 4 and 5 year olds, and also very hard to watch. It brings up every painful middle school memory for the adults standing close by, and it is a struggle to keep from projecting our own experiences onto what we see happening.
But what the kids are experiencing, although it is sophisticated social maneuvering, lacks the complex layers of what we may have experienced later on. These guys are working on trying to understand how power and social capital works, and they don't know too much about that yet-- that's why we see it in play. Play, as you all know, is how kids process and think through things they don't quite understand. And so it makes sense to me, regrettable as it is, that this week, when so many of these kids are about to shift out of this stable, safe place where everybody knows them and understands them, to the great unknown of their new schools, that this is when we would see a big bloom of sorting, categorizing, and designations of insider/outsider. They want to know where they stand.
I am happy to say that these Cottage graduates, as nervous as they might be about whatever lies ahead, do in fact have the skills to navigate this. They just need some caring eyes on them to help them remember what we have learned. So I have found myself saying things like, "X is playing this game, too. As you know, Cottage is for everybody", and invariably, the kids, who had for a moment formed a barricade, remember what they already know, and beckon those other kids to come in. They extend a repair. And they keep playing. And when they need another reminder, we will be here to help them, all of us, their safe grownups.
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One more camp story for you. A child came in a little late one day because they had been holding a special helium balloon, and just before they got to school, I guess, it had flown away. The child was so sad, they had a hard time even coming in. Once they got here, they were talking about the balloon, and how special it had been, and how sad they still were about losing it.
They sat with one teacher and then another, as we did all the things that we do when someone is feeling sad here. We listened to the story. We reflected. We drew the balloon together. We read a hundred long books. At one point, the child just sat by my side and cried, leaning on my leg, telling me, "I want to go home", and "I want to be with my Papa". And I said things like, "You want to go home" and "you want to be with your Papa right now", and "Well, the plan is for you to be at school today. I can stay here with you".
I don't know if all of it was about the balloon. That kid has a new baby at home. They are about to leave Cottage and start a new school. They have just lived through two plus years of a world pandemic. I mean, who's to say. But in that moment, it was about the balloon. And instead of distracting them, or trying to convince them that it was no big deal, or just moving on, we all just stayed there with that child-- the whole class just kind of made room. And if that is that child's last memory of Cottage, I guess that's okay with me.