People often ask me if there is a particular curriculum to which I ascribe. More often than not, when I answer that it is up to the children, I can tell they are frustrated. They think I'm being rhetorical. Certainly, there must be some sort of pre-determined course of study. After all, that's how school worked for most of us. It's what school is. Of course, maybe I ought not call what I do "school" at all. Maybe I ought not call myself a "teacher." I mean, those terms take people down the wrong path. I could instead call it "a place for children" and label myself "facilitator ..read more

I remember my first exposure to the "technology" of treating children like fully formed human beings -- and I often do think of it as a kind of technology in that it's the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes. I'd previously been exposed to this technology via my daughter's preschool teacher, with whom I'd been working as a cooperative classroom parent for many months, but, as technology often does for the uninitiated, it just looked like magic, something Teacher Chris was able to do because she was Teacher Chris. I was in one of Tom Dru ..read more

I certainly hope that this sign is effective, but I have my doubts As we make our way around the modern world, there are a lot of signs telling us what to do. Keep Out Stay off the Grass No Parking And almost as often, we see that the fence on the other side of which we are forbidden is bent down or even cut away by people who would not be kept out. We see paths worn across the grass we are to keep off. And we regularly see vehicles parked in no parking zones. We see dogs running freely in areas designated with signage clearly scolding, "Dogs Must Be Le ..read more

In a comment on yesterday's post about my course The Technology of Speaking With Children So They Can Think, a reader asked for more specific examples of how we can step back from the language of command. I would assert that in most preschool classrooms, the time we tend to boss the kids around the most is when it comes time to tidying up so I thought I'd start there. When my wife Jennifer and I bought our first house, I spent the first weeks wandering from room-to-room, into the yard, and out to the garage thinking, This is our room. This is our yard. This is our garage. I even once ..read more

Over the last two decades, I’ve worked to understand challenging behavior in children. And more often than not, I find that the problem is me, not them.   When I look back on my day and feel it was largely spent dealing with uncooperative children, I’ve learned to look at myself.   When I feel that I’m “losing control,” I’ve learned to look at myself.   And when I resort to threats, scolding, or other authoritarian tactics, I’ve learned that the problem is definitely me. We’ve all been there. I know this because my inbox is full of messages from educators and parents d ..read more

"You have to go around that tree." The boy was telling a friend how to run the obstacle course he and the other kids had created. After running around the tree, there were some stairs to climb, a clamber through the sand pit row boat, a scamper up and a slide down the concrete slide, a stop in the garden to pick a ripe berry ("or something else to eat"), a jump off of something, a balance across something else, and so on until you arrived back at the starting point.  It was even more elaborate than my explanation and the boy being instructed listened with an intensity, aski ..read more

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 together, the three of us fit the final piece into place. Then we began admiring our handiwork, as one does. "I'm that one," said one of the girls, pointing at a fairy. "Okay," answered the other, "Then I'll be that one." When I didn't say anything, I was invited, "Which one are you, Teacher Tom?" I picked one to be "me." "And this is my pet," the first gi ..read more

"Octograbbers" was a game that the children played for months on end. It involved possessing two shovels, one for each hand, then using them like pincers to dig, pick things up, and occasionally, in the spirit of fun, menace one another.  We'll never know who invented the game of "octograbbers," but we can be pretty certain that it didn't emerge from Darwinian evolution. Or rather, not directly. It's not one of those things like walking or talking for which most human's are born with the biological programming. Octograbbers was what could be called a cultural phenomenon, one that ..read more

I know the secret to making your dreams come true. In an essay written for New Philosopher magazine (content not available online), Oliver Burkman discusses what's called Littlewood's Law, named for a British mathematician by the name of John Edensor Littlewood: Let's suppose . . . that you're awake and active in the world -- as opposed to sleeping or resting -- for a mere eight hours a day. Suppose furthermore that a tiny 'event' of some sort occurs at the rate of once per second during those hours: you see someone in the street, you read or hear a sentence, or have a th ..read more

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 boredom.  Boredom researcher John Eastwood from York University in Canada defines boredom as "The aversive experience of wanting, but being unable to engage in satisfying activity." He and others have found that boredom is linked to, and in some circumstances potentially the cause of, depression and anger, pathological gambling, bad driving, sensation see ..read more