The Mindful Child (and Adult)

This week we have been at the beach on a small island on the west coast of Florida with our family.  As everyone peels off to head homeward and Ashley and I enjoy one more day, we reflect on how grateful we are to have had this time where land meets sea with our sons, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren to chase waves and sand pipers, fill buckets with sand, and pick up glistening shells with names like Kitten Paws and Angel Wings. There is perhaps no better place than the ocean to draw us into the present. No matter what our age, most of the time, we let go of our preoccupations, the past and the future, our worries.  We are soothed by the rhythm of the waves, the light on the water, the texture of the sand under our feet and the distant horizon where sea meets sky.  We have so enjoyed this time with our sixteen-month-old granddaughter and our four-year-old grandson.  Watching children this age, no matter where, also brings us into the present moment.

As I reflect on our week, two enormous influences in my life come to mind. The first is the Reggio Emilia approach... in this context in particular, learning side-by-side young children while becoming a participant observer in and documenter of their play and learning.  The second influence is mindfulness as taught by Zen monk and master, Thich Nhat Hanh.  These two approaches guide me in my every day life and interactions.

I have loved reading Art and Creativity in Reggio Emilia by Vea Vecchi and have returned to it often.  In her book, Vea tells learning stories about following her grandchildren through their early years.  I remember watching Vea with her camera and keen eye, observe children at the Diana School in Reggio Emilia.  I wrote about some of these experiences in Bringing Reggio Emilia Home and in Bringing Learning to Life.

When our sons were 5 and 8, we attended our first retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh in Santa Barbara, California.  Over the years, we have attended several other retreats in Plum Village in France with Thich Nhat Hanh.  These multi-age, international, playful and thoughtful experiences have influenced the way that my family lives in the world.

My nighttime and beach reading collection this week includes A Handful of Quiet: Happiness in Four Pebbles, by Thich Nhat Hanh, Sitting Still Like a Frog: Mindfulness Exercises for Kids (and Their Parents) by Eline Snel, and The Mindful Child by Susan Kaiser Greenland.

I heard about these books from my daughter-in-law Caroline, who teaches kindergarten in the Boston Public Schools. She learned about them because this year, the Brookline School Staff Children’s Center, where our grand children attend, is focusing on mindfulness. I highly recommend these books. They will give you background, get you started or add to your understanding and practice.  As Susan Kaiser Greenland writes, mindfulness increases our ability to:

• approach experience with curiosity and an open mind

• calm down when we are angry or upset

• concentrate

• develop compassion, patience, humility, happiness, generosity and equanimity

• live gently and in balance with ourselves, others and our world

This week, our grandson, Asher, who is four today, taught us how to do “finger breathing.” Trace the fingers of one of your hands with a finger of the other hand.  Breathe in as you trace up the finger and out as you trace down the other side.  Do this one way and then back again, taking ten deep in and out breaths.  Just breathe and smile.

Yes, We Can Teach Fairness...Starting with Relationships

Frequently when I observe a classroom or a small group of students I become fascinated not only with the ideas that they come up with (whether with 3-4 year olds in blocks or 5th graders discussing "Matilda"), but also with their behavior, their interactions around sharing ideas. In recent article in the New Yorker magazine, "How We Learn Fairness," author, Maria Konnikova discussed current research that provides new insight on common behaviors around sharing ideas.

Two areas emerge: "disadvantageous-inequity aversion" (DI) and "advantageous-inequity aversion" (AI).  To put it simply, DI is: I don’t like getting the short end of the stick; and AI is: I don’t like getting the long end of the stick either.  In most cases, we humans prefer fairness.  (And, NO, I’m going to draw any parallels with the current political climate in the US…though you are welcome to.)

But why is this?

As teachers and parents, there are times when we witness ruthless competition among children: I am happiest when I have the advantage.  Yet, the research seems to bear out that students accept or reject offers (Here, you can have more candy…and not you….) not out of some abstract idea like “equality,” but rather from a perception of their social status.  Konnikova writes, Its not about right or wrong.  It’s all about me, and how do I come off in this scenario.

According to Paul Bloom DI is not about principles, it’s about status.  We have a natural aversion to getting less, not inequity.  The kids’ behavior isn't principled; on the contrary, it seems motivated by something very much like spite.  And the message is clear: I want to emerge on top.  The absolute number of candies matters less that my relative status.

Apparently, AI is also about social status.  If you live in a society where ideas of fairness and equality hold a privileged position, then it becomes meaningful to show yourself as embracing those ideas, even at personal cost…status gained by being an admirable role model (Konnikova).

To add more perspective on DI and AI, research shows that DI is innate (all over the world and in the animal kingdom, getting less than others is perceived as an insult); and AI seems to be a product of social life or culture.

This suggests that AI might require certain kinds of social environments in which to thrive.

Konnikova summarizes as follows: All of these findings have something to say about why we value fairness. Our ideas about fairness are relativistic, rather than absolute. In many ways, we approach fairness as a form of social signalling. People tend not to care about equality as an abstract principle; instead, they use fairness to negotiate their place in a social hierarchy. And, for that reason, we’re especially willing to give up our unfair advantages when there’s the possibility of strengthening a future relationship.

And there’s the kicker…perhaps the key, the same key we reference in almost every aspect of our work with teachers…it’s about relationships.  Study after study showed that, When participants…became more invested in their relationships…they gave up more to nourish and maintain them (Konnikova).

Yes, you can teach fairness, and it begins with growing relationships…awareness of others…honoring other.

Documentation Panels at The St. Michael School of Clayton

The St. Michael School of Clayton (SMS), 5 miles from the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, MO, has recently uploaded to their website an impressive array of documentation panels, 21 in all.  Each panel is easily viewed and read as a PDF.   SMS has also printed each of the panels as a 2’x3’ poster to display in the hallways, turning the school into a gallery of student work.

The SMS faculty has been composing documentation panels for over 20 years having adapted this reflective practice from their colleagues/mentors in early childhoods schools in Reggio Emilia, Italy.  The first panels were attempts to tell the stories of student projects through teacher narrative, photos of students working, student dialogue and artifacts of student work.  Some displays would take up entire walls of the hallways…as large as 4 feet high and 15-20 feet long.  Most also included a long and detailed narrative by the guiding teachers…more than you’d want to know…however, each narrative was a concerted attempt to articulate the process that the students went through and to explain the artifacts as evidence of learning.

The current panels are much more succinct and they are composed with a high level of graphic design skill, yet they include all the same elements as the original panels.  As you read through the panels you get a sense of the essence of a project, rather than a detailed explanation of the process.  However, what is more clear than in the older panels, is the connection between spontaneous or planned provocations and the deliberate development of skills and habits of mind.

For instance, in the panel Mapping the Movement of Animals we see that the teachers artfully captured the students’ fascination with a class cat and connected it with the concept and tool of mapping.  The teachers even helped the students transfer this knowledge to the science lab where they were studying millipedes.

From a whole school perspective, including preprimary through eighth grade, when you read through the panels, you develop a strong sense of the ways a strong reflective practice effects the day to day life in the school; and how the daily intentions the teachers support a gradual, profound development of skills and habits of mind within the students.

That SMS has uploaded their panels to their website for easy access to all is a gift to all educators...a generous collaborative action for which all can be thankful.

Why What You Learned in Preschool is Crucial...

Compare this New York Times Op Ed by Claire Cain Miller with the David Brooks column from the NYT on October 16 and you have a good spectrum on the importance of BOTH cognitive learning and social skills development.

Miller quotes Michael Horn, co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute, where he studies education: “Machines are automating a whole bunch of these things, so having the softer skills, knowing the human touch and how to complement technology, is critical, and our education system is not set up for that.”

Miller goes on to cite David Deming, associate professor of education and economics at Harvard University and author of a new study

Preschool classrooms look a lot like the modern work world. Children move from art projects to science experiments to the playground in small groups, and their most important skills are sharing and negotiating with others. But that soon ends, replaced by lecture-style teaching of hard skills, with less peer interaction.

Work, meanwhile, has become more like preschool.

Jobs that require both socializing and thinking, especially mathematically, have fared best in employment and pay.

Miller's article includes a fascinating interactive graphic grid that shows the jobs that have grown most consistently in the last two decades have been those that require high math skills and high social skills.

Again, I come to the same point I made in my comments on Mr. Brooks column, we need to create schools that extend what most pre-schools do well into the realm of cognitive learning; to impart knowledge AND to develop life skills.

* The image included was taken at Indianapolis Public School Butler University Laboratory School in September, 2015.

Schools for Wisdom...a critique of High Tech High by David Brooks

David Brooks wrote a critique of High Tech High in The New York Times on October 16, 2015.  Mr. Brooks gets a lot right, however, he cleaves so tightly to his own well constructed perspective of "intellectual virtues" that ironically, he misses the point he hints at, "a partial response." High Tech High may be going too far in emphasizing relational skills over content.  I've only read about the school, I've not been there.  And, I've seen lots of photos of the building design, that is far and away among the best school designs I've seen.

However, from my reading of Mr. Brooks, he doesn't see the possibility that the approach at High Tech High can embrace BOTH life skills (21st C. skills) AND his intellectual virtues (basic factual acquisition, pattern formation, mental formation that combined, create wisdom, the "hard earned intuitive awareness of how things will flow").

The point of the approach at High Tech High, and other schools striving to evolve a more generative methodology, is to impart knowledge AND to develop life skills; and to do so in ways that engage students, that include them in the compelling issues of their time, that empower them to be essential contributors to their immediate communities, and that prepare them to become productive citizens who lead fulfilling lives.

As I think through Mr. Brooks' critique of High Tech High, I imagine a new school, High Brooks High.