Blog

September 27th

We started back to school a couple of  weeks ago amidst the joyous shouts, goofy smiles and sometimes copious tears that accompany the delicate “hand off” between parents and teachers at the beginning of every school year. This year was especially poignant in that we had to shut down the physical building back in March due to Covid concerns, and that our reopening was fraught with special preparations to ensure that children, teachers and families were safe in the midst of the ongoing pandemic. We also are acutely aware ( well at least many of us are) of the cultural moment in our country, of the political protests against police brutality and systematic, structural racism, and excited about the opportunities for real, meaningful social change toward racial and economic equality. And all of this must occur in an overarching  educational context of progressive educational traditions oriented around play based, child-centered, nature/outdoor education, transformative critical and creative literacy practices, mindful presence and insight, historical awareness, beauty, freedom, creativity, music, art, joyful learning, the whole child, sustainable community development, pragmatic utopianism, and love and respect for the earth and each  other. For us this means fully embracing a play based, emergent curriculum, oriented around the natural world and the children’s lives.

Good teachers understand that relationships, healthy, caring, supportive relationships between them and their students, provide the dynamic backbone of teaching and learning. The most fundamental message that teachers can communicate to the children under their care and tutelage is that they are safe, that they are respected, and that they are loved. As teachers and students go back to school, as parents make the difficult decisions about what is best for their children under trying, difficult circumstances, we are all excited and anxious at the same time. How do we put love into action as teachers, parents, and childcare workers?

I recently had the privilege, along with my colleagues, of listening to Dave Anderson, Senior Director of National Programs and Outreach for the Child Mind Institute [https://childmind.org/audience/for-educators/], speak about how to approach, cultivate and sustain happy, healthy, non-oppressive, loving relationships with the children under your care. We were specifically concerned about how to do this wearing masks that would cover our smiling faces, and with high, generalized anxiety and tension around returning to school in the midst of the Covid pandemic. Here are some of things he underlined:

• Being present with the child’s experience
• Expectation setting that does not become overly restrictive and teacher centered
• Maintaining safety
• Sustained quality time spent in child-driven conversation or activity
• Emotional and intellectual availability for support and problem-solving
• Validation of emotional states and the cultivation of emotional intelligence
• Descriptive narration of child’s activities to help inform the arc of the child’s efforts and intentions
• Reflection of child’s speech & efforts at communication back to the child
• Positive feedback and encouragement to each child (e.g., for perseverance or “prosocial behavior”)
• Support with emotion regulation in stressful situations
• Modeling of behavior and action in interacting with others
• Facilitating “typical behavior and abilities” for different developmental stages and domains
• Cultivating common interests & interactional rituals with the aim of raising happy, healthy, compassionate and wise children and building happy, healthy, intelligent, sustainable families, schools and communities

Each one of these suggestions can and should be developed at length within intentional, collaborative teaching and learning communities (good schools), but I relished one particular anecdote Dave shared with us about his own childhood. His grandfather would take him to delis and butcher shops, to buy sandwiches for lunch and meat for the family dinners, and the young David was fascinated by his grandfather’s interest, curiosity, attentiveness, and joy he took in this whole “world of meat” ( apologies to all vegetarians and vegans, but I hope you get the idea). His grandfather’s enthusiasm for meat—its preparation, where it came from, the butcher’s opinions and perspectives, the meal itself, and the conversations around this shared interest in meat— created a passionate triangle of attention and care between David Anderson, his grandfather, and the world, that Dr. Anderson carries within himself to this day.

Anderson’s anecdote in the context of raising and educating happy children capable of healthy attachments with others and forging dynamic, passionate relationships with the world reminded me of bell hooks in “Talking Back: thinking feminist, thinking black.” She talks about how she developed her passion to write. “It was in that world of women talk…that was born in me the craving to speak, to have a voice, and not just any voice but one that could be identified as belonging to me.” In listening to the women in her life she begins to dream of her place, her role in the world, and having a voice, a say, distinctly hers. “I can remember watching fascinated as our mother talked with her mother, sisters and women friends. The intimacy and intensity of their speech—the satisfaction they received from speaking to one another, the pleasure, the joy. It was in this world of woman speech, loud talk, angry words, women with tongues quick and sharp, tender sweet tongues, touching our world with their words, that I made speech my birthright—and the right to voice, to authorship, a privilege I would not be denied. It was in that world and because of it, that I came to dream of writing, to write.” hooks develops her love of writing- a specific modality of moving from being the object of other people’s desires to being a desiring subject who can speak for oneself—in part because of the web of relationships and speech acts of the caring, dynamic women around her.

Children as they grow try out different different strategies for interacting with other beings and the world. As we grow up we try to find our place in the world, and on the world we try to make our mark. On an episode of Lovecraft Country, a must see syfy/horror series on HBO, one of the characters gains access to a time machine where she can push up against the limits of her social milieu in experiencing and experimenting with who she really is, what she is really capable of. She discovers she has spent her whole life “shrinking” to fit into the parameters laid down by society, by white people, by her husband. It is the responsibility of teachers, parents, caretakers to help children find their place in their world without robbing from them the ability to do and become the kind of person they want to be.

I’d like to note five areas where we can put love into action through developing specific, skillful, teaching and caring practices: 1) choreographing smooth transitions between home and school and supporting children in navigating the challenges, opportunities, bumps and enticements of each day; 2) enacting a dynamic, non-possessive “circle of security” wherein all children feel safe enough so that they can explore the world, take risks, and find out workable connections between reality, possibility and desire, 3) usher children into an ongoing, creative, attentive “love of the world” that includes love and respect for oneself, love and respect for all human beings, and love and respect for the earth and its denizens, 4) inspire, encourage, scaffold and reward an omnivorous curiosity and wonder about life and what it offers, 5) cultivate healthy, happy, non-oppressive attachments and relationships between adults and adults, adults and children, and children and children, which enhance our understanding of our fundamental interdependence and at the same time emphasize personal responsibility and autonomy.

The task of raising and educating children is extremely straightforward and infinitely complex. But we can always get our bearings if we keep our eyes on the prize of raising and educating healthy, happy, smart, curious, compassionate kids who can in turn contribute to reimagining, building, creating and sustaining the beloved community, beloved communities: communities where we can all share in the wealth of the earth and participate in the diverse joys and pleasures of living and life.

The story of the week is “I Am Loved: a poetry collection”, written by Nikki Giovanni and illustrated by Ashley Bryan. The poems embody for me the active manifestation of a love for children that both protects and liberates at the same time. Take for example

Leaves
On a rainy day
When I’m sitting
In a tree
Looking for a friend
I hope you’ll be the one
Standing at the root
Holding out your arms
To gently catch
My fall

and

Paula the Cat
….
I’m Paula the Cat
Not thin nor fat
As happy as house cats can be

But now I’ve the urge
For my spirit to surge
And I shall go off
To sea

Taken together these poems, and the illustrations that speak in concert with them, both cradle the child and sets them free.

The song of the week is God Make Me Funky by the Headhunters. I hear this song, I move to this song, as a clarion call to root oneself deep in the funky humus of the earth and become the vital, creative force that is birthright of each one of us as human beings! Enjoy.