Riding Very Fast: Extreme Summer Camp, Take 1

On my first day at Mount Holyoke, I received a binder with the words “If you jump in, you may ride very fast.” The words were exciting, but it took years for me to truly understand why it is the perfect quote with which to begin any new venture, academic or otherwise. Throughout my three years of college (that’s how fast I rode-I graduated a year early), I jumped into all sorts of things: classes, theatre, spoken word, blogging, weight training, waitressing, child care, history, intergroup dialogues, volunteering, crappy Chinese takeout, archival research, bus rides to nowhere in particular. In the six years since, I’ve tried keeping up the momentum, but find that my enthusiasm for many things is rarely shared by the people I work with. My 2016 resolution was to recapture the joy I used to find in meaningful work-and how the universe has cooperated. Today, we wrapped up our first ever summer camp at VLC and my god, did we ever jump in with both feet!

Real play, like real life, is messy and imperfect. Respectful child care combined with real play means there are bound to be imperfections. There will be disagreements, last minute crises, scraped knees and calloused fingers. There will be uncertainty and doubt and sometimes, tears. There will be worry that we should be doing more, doing less, doing better. Play is life and at VLC, we’re trying to teach life, not just to children, but to ourselves. I’ve always heard nice things about how teachers learn more from their students than the other way round, but never truly experienced it. Sure, I’ve loved all my history students and I’ve learned interesting things from them here and there, but I’m pretty sure I spent most of the last few years talking about the Russian Revolution and Paris Peace Treaties and checking essays against mark schemes. We’re only three weeks into the summer and I can safely say every member of the team has learned more about themselves and each other than they expected they would. Here is a list of reflections, partly because I love lists, mostly because I am dead beat after a full day of Real Play and cannot do eloquent paragraphs.

1. Bring some spirit and half the job is done. In previous jobs, I learned a version of this lesson: teaching is 50% theatre. But if teaching high schoolers is about being 50% cool enough and 50% actually knowledgable about my subject, then teaching preschoolers is about being completely comfortable with being a huge dork. I have never been less cool in my life. I’ve worn silly hats, sung Mr Knickerbocker in a Barney voice, wiggled my behind to the Hokey Pokey with ten parents watching. I’ve done storytime as Tullu the Ullu and high fived people for tying their shoelaces. Enthusiasm is infectious and it’s important.
2. Quiet and calm are underrated-and difficult to achieve. In my quest to help create the most over the top, crazy fun experience children have ever had (or “extreme summer camp” as we called it), I let my imagination run wild. This translated into a fast and furious whirlwind of kid-approved activities-108 in all. Let that sink in for a moment. A hundred. And. Eight. Some of the kids thrived in this environment. Others loved it for a while but eventually withdrew, gravitating towards the quiet pretend play areas away from the chaos. Some kids got more and more wound up and consequently, louder with every passing moment. It was through observing my own child at home, after camp, that it hit me that maybe this approach was just a little too MUCH. I’ve always found it incredibly difficult to stop Doing and in spite of practicing yoga, find Just Being overrated. My primary school teachers were sure I had ADHD, with my constant wiggling around, nonstop questions, complete inability to sit quietly and complete a worksheet. Karma has brought things full circle now that I have a toddler who is exactly like I was. I can channel my energy now into cerebral activities-my brain is hard to switch off even now-but he doesn’t know how. A summer camp designed by a mother who is just like him was sometimes too explosive a combination. It inspired me to add a wind-down yoga and mindfulness routine for the kids, to carefully consider how I can keep our preschool days slow-paced and calm and most of all, to acknowledge the ants in my pants may need a little calming down themselves.
3. Preparation is everything, but so is improvisation. I am endlessly impressed by one of my colleagues’ capacity for working and working and working on something until it is exactly the way it should be, no cutting corners. That is everything. But I’ve also learned I’m pretty good at thinking on my feet and coming up with alternative actvities, games, yoga routines, stories, conversations, when things don’t go as expected. Moral of the story? Do your homework, but go with the flow.
4. It’s human nature to be drawn to the kids who are chirpy, confident, fully engaged in the activity of the day, but it is not our job to enjoy those children while ignoring the introverted ones scattered around the room. It is also not our job to drag them into the activity we may have designed with a great deal of love. It is difficult to find a balance between giving kids space and encouraging them to join the class at a pace they are comfortable with. It is difficult setting limits that make kids feel safe while respecting their need for exploration. It is difficult catering to kids with vastly different temperaments, abilities and interests all at the same time. But hey, nobody said it would be easy.
5. Kids can do amazing things when you respect them enough to leave them alone. The more you trust them, the more trustworthy they become. I’ve had several opportunities to observe how this works in the past couple of weeks. In our first week, I was watching a free play session when a seven year old came up to me complaining that somebody had taken her instruments without asking. I asked her if she had tried talking to the kid who did it and she just blinked at me, expecting me to jump in and direct that he return the toys. “You must be frustrated. Why don’t you go tell him how you feel and work out a solution?” I suggested, half expecting that my feeble, well intentioned attempt would be laughed at. She disappeared. I saw a conversation happen. They worked it out and ten minutes later I had a couple of beaming kids who had just learned something about conflict management. On other occasions, this was a messier process. I saw a couple of two year olds battling over a single bucket of colored water. Unsure about who got there first, I had to restrain myself from breaking up the fight. It escalated into squeals and looked like one would yank the other’s hair. I called out something about using quiet hands and kind words, which they predictably ignored. But much to my surprise, in a couple of minutes that felt terribly long to me (itching as I was to intervene), one was holding the bucket and the other was pouring water into it. Unencumbered by adults yelling at them to share, they had figured out how to share. Our entire camp was an exercise in letting kids explore their own abilities. There were times when we failed. There were kids who slipped through the cracks-literally, kids wandering out of rooms to do their own thing until a volunteer spotted and engaged them. There were times when teachers, conditioned by years of living in a society that treats children like performing monkeys, implored them to join in, or worse, OBEY. I cringed at those moments, but teachers, like kids, need to figure things out for themselves. A few heart checks and a conversation is usually all it takes to get adults back on track, thankfully.

I have a treasure trove of anecdotes, memories and lessons from this camp, but it’s these five lessons that will carry us through our July session stronger, smarter and better prepared. I would like to say carry us through slower, because good God, am I tired, but it’s too late. I’ve jumped in, and I am riding very fast.

Going Green In The City

I referenced "nature deficit disorder" in an earlier post-it is something that preoccupies me a great deal living in Karachi. My personal, subjective experience tells me that reduced access to nature makes me feel miserable and trapped, makes my allergic asthma considerably worse and turns me into a sad, wheezing mess. I don't want my son to feel the same way, so I carve out time to go to the park or beach, or toddle around in our tiny lawn every day, no matter how hot or humid it gets. Again, in my subjective experience, the days when we get the most outdoor time are the days when he eats whatever is served instead of demanding cookies, sleeps through the night and throws fewer tantrums.

Research backs me up here. Studies of children playing outdoors show that they play more cooperatively and engage in more problem solving skills in green spaces (Kellert 2005). US-based studies show that children who engage in more outdoor play have better academic performance, most notably in science (American Institutes for Research, 2005). They are also more likely to eat fruit and vegetables and demonstrate less pickiness while eating if they are involved in growing and preparing food (Morris and Zidenberg-Cherr, 2002). Most importantly perhaps, in a world where childhood is more fast and furious than slow and simple, access to nature reduces stress levels significantly (Wells and Evans, 2003).

Does this mean children in Karachi are doomed to having poorer cognitive, social and emotional skills than their peers in greener areas? Not necessarily-incorporating nature is not always about idyllic countryside environments. Humans are adaptable creatures and it doesn't take very much to stimulate the parts of our brains that respond to greenery, water and natural materials. Letting kids play in sand, experiment with falling water-a running tap, watering can or bird bath-muck around in a gardening patch, or simply run around in the sunshine has plenty benefit.

Upper-class Pakistani society lives in mortal fear of sunshine and dirt and it's no wonder, given that both heatstroke and tetanus are easy to get. However, this concern must be tempered with common sense. Vaccinated kids who get dirty at the park or wet watering plants outdoors are more likely to be healthy and happy after playing outdoors than in any danger. It's also a good opportunity to teach them important self-care rather than allowing adults to worry and micromanage. You can teach children as young as two to wash their hands after playing outside and to sit in the shade when it's too hot to risk exposure. The things you can teach with a little time outdoors are limited only by the imaginations of adults-children are intrinsically wired to appreciate nature in all its forms.

School Is A Place Of Danger: Part I (Literacy)

I read in another teacher's blog recently that students perceive school as a place of danger, with their foremost academic goal being to escape danger as effectively as possible. I don't believe this to be an extreme position-a superficial glance at any middle schooler's views on the academic experience will confirm it. The idea of learning at school being a painful process is so deeply ingrained in our world view, there is little effort made by either parents or teachers to correct it. I would argue that accepting that children and teenagers are naturally resistant to learning is far more dangerous than we think and is helping create the dumbed down, anti-academic society we live in. It's particularly interesting how schools destroy children's natural love of reading, creating or listening to stories. Stories are so integral a part of the human experience-to learn through them should be the most human of acts. Yet, literacy and language classes are reduced to reward charts and stickers, book reports and dictionary definitions, robbing children of the opportunity to lose themselves in the joy of a good book. By second grade, books are another source of danger in school-some would say the biggest source. I've been studying the Reggio Emilia approach and there are some principles within it which are helpful in understanding how children learn and what can be done to create a positive, literacy-rich learning culture.

1) Children can construct their own meaning and are driven by their own interests to do so. Schools and homes often have separate spaces for toys and books. According to this principle, books should be associated with play, the true "work" of childhood. For older children, this can be applied in the form of interest-driven displays or shelves. For example, a child who is taking interest in dinosaurs could have a shelf with dinosaur toys, puzzles and books. For younger children, this means following their lead at storytime or when they are looking at books. The parent or teacher may want to talk about how Green Eggs and Ham is about saying yes to trying green food, but perhaps the child's imagination is engaged by a specific picture in the book instead. Literature is the door to many worlds and shouldn't be another way to enforce one-dimensional interpretation of information.

2) Children are natural communicators. The idea that children question and adults answer is damaging to both teachers and learners. When learning is viewed as a two-way process and the child is engaged with respect, he learns it is safe to be curious about the world. If the act of writing is guided from above, with a teacher assigning work that is not relevant to the child, it will become a chore. The culture can be changed if writing serves a purpose that children can understand. Writing something that has relevance-lists, labels, cards, game rules, treasure maps-is a way to demonstrate the usefulness of language while allowing for flexibility. Tracing "cat" nine times on a worksheet is a way to make writing a nuisance.

3) The environment is a child's teacher. Not all children will have the benefit of seeing parents incorporate reading into their lives. The learning environment is a way to promote a literacy rich culture. Role play areas can include books, diaries and newspapers. Toys and puzzles with letters and words, signs and labels, games which incorporate reading and writing, will all emphasize the importance of literacy.

4) Children have many "languages": spoken word, dance, pretend, drawing, building. All these languages can be engaged when encouraging literacy, whether it is through teenagers staging their own play or kindergarteners making the shapes of the ABC in a dance class.

5) Learning is its own reward. Incorporating traditional rewards systems for teaching language and literacy negates this idea. Giving a child a gold star for every 20 books he reads will indoctrinate him into the shortcut culture of our schools early in the game and rob him of the joy of reading. Conversely, some schools will punish children who don't read with black stars or red slips, once again emphasizing that reading is something you do because you are asked to do it. However, as a teacher I know it's not always easy meeting curriculum goals when students don't cooperate. Teachers need to be open to going the extra mile and following student interests when assigning literacy related work. If the high school syllabus calls for reading War and Peace, there are many ways to engage a classroom in lively discussion about its themes, whether it is through debate, theatre or first-person essays. If the primary school syllabus calls for every child reading for 20 minutes a day, incorporate stories into playtime, make books available and follow children's interests.

A world in which people read and write is a healthier world-few parents or teachers would contest that. What we need to do is re-evaluate why this is the case and change our own and children's attitudes to literacy in schools. There is no such thing as a child who naturally hates books, but there are many, many children who will never learn to love them because they perceive them as pitfalls that will land them in trouble with authority. It's time our schools learned dissociate themselves with danger.

Early Years Education: Research vs Practice

When I was six months pregnant, people started asking me if I had thought about preschool registration yet. They weren't being facetious; many "prestigious" preschools require that students be on a waitlist before they start solids, and it isn't unheard of for women to be making trips to their school of choice two weeks postpartum. Personally, I am a firm believer in delaying academics for six or seven years, and in the absence of a truly play-based early years program, gave very little thought to where my son would go to school. Of course, it is easier to be above it all before the kid is born.

People's opinions about the trend of increasingly early schooling (most preschools will admit babies between 16 and 24 months old) always interest me, because they betray the many confusions and inconsistencies in what we want for our children versus what we feel is "best." Most mothers express regret at the inevitably stressful experience of dropping off babies at school in the morning, considering most preschoolers begin their academic career before they are verbal, potty trained or even weaned off the breast or bottle. Many have said they feel it is "cruel" to send such young children to school. Others are upset about the separation anxiety, but pleased that their kids are getting a head start in life by being prepared for kindergarten admission tests. Others still are just pleased that their kids have opportunities to socialize in a safe space, with healthy outlets for burning toddler energy few and far between in Karachi.

There's no right answer: preschools do in fact provide children a healthy alternative to watching TV with the nanny while parents work, or being scolded by various household members for being constantly underfoot, as children tend to be. On the other hand, we have reams of research proving that actual academics (flash cards, phonics, worksheets) are not only not beneficial before first grade, they are often detrimental, as they take time away from the true work of a child, which is to explore through play. I shouldn't have to elaborate on why it is bad for children to be exposed to the pressure of parental expectations in admission tests, but because it is a HUGE issue, I will dedicate a whole separate post to it. So what is a working parent living in a joint family, or a couple with an only child with no other children living nearby, or an anxious mother who wants her child to go to the best school, or a lower-middle class family struggling to give their child a better future, to do? I'd say the answer is not to eliminate the trend of sending kids to school or daycare, but to redefine early years education altogether. Let's look at what a century of research into human development and education have to say about the early years:

1) Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky, while offering slightly different explanations of children's cognitive development, both agreed that the role of play is critical in the early years and determines everything from speech acquisition to numeracy. Most preschools today are well aware of the importance of play, but they treat it as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself, and the way it is carried out often contradicts the spirit of free exploration which research stresses as developmentally important. There is a difference between making up a game to teach a child how to count to ten and providing a play space which engages all of a child's senses. The former will get you a child who can count (and will therefore appear to be a more successful approach), while the latter will build a diverse portfolio of cognitive skills which will make learning a more natural lifelong process. At the end of the day, do we want children who are prepared for exams, or for life? Do we want a toddler who can count to a hundred, or do we want one who thinks critically, comes up with imaginative solutions to challenges and has excellent problem solving skills? Another critical component of Vygotskian theory is the zone of proximal development: the difference between what a learner can do, and what a learner can do with help. This "help," also known as scaffolding, is a tragically misunderstood concept in many educational settings. It is not helpful to ask the school ayah to run into the classroom to put away toys when a child is tired, It is helpful to have an adult ask a child to put away the toys while assisting with the job. It's not just about teaching responsibility, although that too is sorely lacking in many schools; it's about helping children gain confidence through fully engaging with their environment.

2) The idea of "helping" children versus encouraging independence is often misunderstood and therefore contested amongst parents and teachers. Many imagine a Spartan regime of forcing resilience upon helpless babies (I imagine this is where mothers get the idea that playschool is a "cruel" concept). Instead, research shows that a loving environment, where a child is securely attached to its caregivers, promotes independence; an idea which is paradoxical to many. How can making yourself physically and emotionally available to a child with sudden and unreasonable whims lead to resilience? Anthropological studies show that intuitive practices related to "spoiling" young children, such as co-sleeping, carrying babies after they can walk and responding to them when they first cry, have helped us survive and evolve as a species. But we also know, through simple observation. that if you keep tying a child's laces when he is old enough to do it himself, he will never learn to tie his laces. So where does one draw the line? The answer appears to be through creating an environment where adults are respectful, loving and attentive, but not anxious or hovering. Respect is about understanding what a child can do and letting him try, with the knowledge that an adult is there to assist when needed.

3) Risk-taking is not something that is often discussed with regard to early years schooling, but it should be. It is alarming to read more and more news reports of developed countries becoming nanny states, coming down hard on parents who allow children to walk to the park or climb on a jungle gym without supervision. It ties in with an overall breakdown of trust in society and it is doing our kids no favors. It is impossible to be a successful adults unless you are willing to take risks: talking to a stranger, applying for a new job, choosing a life partner-nothing is without risk. And the smaller risks we take as children, from somersaulting off the sofa to trying to make ourselves toast, teach valuable skills such as spatial awareness, alertness, planning and organization, If we eliminate the smaller risks, putting children in school environments where adults anxiously plead with them to be careful, be careful, be careful, we rob them of all opportunity to grow as individuals. This also ties in to the gender gap in educational achievement: girls are statistically less likely to take risks, because we instill a desire for perfection rather than experimentation, an idea that girls internalize to a greater extent thanks to the many ways we impart outdated ideas about gender.

4)  We need to move. Let's say it again: we need to MOVE, all of us, but especially children! The science is abundant on this one and I'm not going to talk about why exercise is important. Children are not meant to sit still in classrooms with occasional recesses to play outside. At preschool age, most don't yet have the fine motor skills to hold a crayon and complete whatever worksheet the teacher has set for them. We know this-as parents and teachers, we often talk about how important it is to let children play outside so they eat better, sleep better, behave better-yet there is a double standard when it comes to preschool. What is the point of constantly asking a toddler to sit down? Why should they be asked not to wriggle in their seats? It's not going to teach them discipline, as so many parents believe, it's just going to send them home with ants in their pants because they haven't worked out the need to move. I'm twenty eight and I get restless when I don't work out for a day. I can't imagine having ten times the energy and being told by people four times my size to shut up and sit down when I am longing to move. This should be obvious, but I still hear teachers and parents say all the time that this is "preparing" children. Preparing them for what? Long haul flights in the economy cabin of an airplane?

5) We need to respect and interact with our natural environment."Nature deficit disorder" is a phrase coined by an author in 2005 and while it hasn't quite reached the legitimacy of mental illness, I really believe it should. Being one with nature is not just about the simple health benefits of sunshine and greenery, it's about understanding the world we live in at a much deeper level than most children currently do. We need to know where the food we eat comes from; which creatures thrive in our environment and why; what living our lives costs the environment and how we can alleviate the problems this creates. I remember when I moved to Pakistan as a child I was puzzled by my peers' aversion to or hatred for animals, insects and dirt. They would shriek with alarm if a bee flew into the classroom, throw stones at stray cats and dogs, sooner be bored inside than risk "getting black" in the sun and mucking about in dirt was something for the maali to do. This is a problem and our schools need to fix it, starting with the mindsets of educators. The earth is not something to shrink away and hide from; it's the only home we've got.

These five principles are the ones on which a number of successful approaches to childhood development are built around, from the Reggio Emilia philosophy to the Waldorf method to the current Finnish guidelines for early years education. I'm waiting for a day when Pakistan catches up. My kid is here now and I'm not any closer to deciding where he goes to school.

Questions

What should a school teach?

Geometry, algebra, chemistry? Shakespeare, anatomy, geography? Should academics focus on preparing kids for the demands of a competitive, capitalist economy, or teaching them to think in the abstract, to become philosophers and scientists? Should class time be spent instilling the discipline individuals need to succeed in white collar jobs-sitting for long periods of time, meeting deadlines, sticking to a routine-or should it focus on hands-on life skills, like plumbing and carpentry? Should children with special needs be integrated into "regular" classrooms, or follow individualized plans in separate spaces? At what age is it acceptable to stream kids according to academic ability? Should urban schools have different curricula from rural ones? Is it worth funding the arts and sports in communities where there is enormous societal pressure to choose and stick to a traditional career? Should schools in postcolonial societies give equal importance to indigenous languages, even though they hold less social currency? What is the connection between public education and public health, and how can one be used to improve the other? How should educationists address economic inequality in societies with multiple education systems affixed with enormously different price tags? What is the purpose of school at all, and should parents take the unschooling movement seriously?

I don't have all the answers, but I am on a mission to come up with a few. Join me as I sift through the latest research, anecdotes, changemakers' opinions and my own experiences to make sense of what education is and what it should be.