Peaceful forts is the rule

We've had a beautiful fall.  The colors, the warm days, the light filtering through the red and orange leaves...

This morning I wished a sunny day to one of our parents and he said that since his job is in a basement, he can't see the sun.  I feel so sad for him!  It is so wonderful to work in a light-filled space with the sun streaming in my windows.

Being outside in the light is a freedom and privilege that we try to maximize at school - especially since we are the beneficiaries of a 77 acre outdoor classroom.  We recognize that kids' day is ruled by adults so much of the time, so committing to get them outdoors for an hour or two a day is a priority.

We are doing a construction project right now that has put the play structure for grades K - 8 off limits and we have moved recess to the field and woods.  It is definitely fun - but as in many ventures with children, needs regular adjustments.

Here is part of an email that one teacher sent around over the weekend asking others to join in a meeting with the K - 5 children. (When you read this, you will see why I truly love my job!)

With forts, there are lots of concerns about exclusion (kids telling others they aren't allowed in their fort, cloaked in "there's no room"), kids "stealing" things or "destroying" the forts of others when unoccupied, which has led to guards, and plots to attack. My guys also complained that there were secret passwords and security guards who kept people out. I wouldn't say my kids are up in arms, but there's a lot of uncertainty and hard feelings in the works. As for sticks, I heard they are still being used as weapons and a bunch of my kids said that sword fighting is happening when the adults aren't looking. I did feel the other day that the consent given to use sticks for digging has become a definite loop hole. 

So, there was a meeting this morning at 9:00 and the kids and teachers came up with some new guidelines:
Peaceful forts is the rule...sticks can only be used to build forts, not to dig or for weapons...forts can only be destroyed with the consent of all builders...

It was definitely more peaceful today.  At recess, I was reminded that kids' natural proclivity is to be very industrious.  They were working very hard on forts, a new bridge, a see-saw - and I heard a lot of negotiation and talk to remind each other and themselves about the rules.  Sitting down together this morning to work it all out was a crucial process for the peaceful day we had.

I am tempted to take this lesson and apply it to our country's political process, and my optimistic view is that elections, debating among ourselves and voting are the ways we set and reset our rules in pursuit of industriousness and fairness.  I think "peaceful forts" is a pretty good rule.

Where the outdoors is both classroom and teacher

Kids are wired from birth to be scientists - to explore and discover things and use their senses.

Fourth and fifth graders today were begging to stay in the woods to continue their New York forest study.  They have each adopted a tree for a year-long project.  Tasks include describing the tree, drawing the tree from different perspectives like lying down or from above, writing a poem about the tree, and scientific investigation.

K-1's are studying salamanders and 2-3's are starting the year with their annual water study and participation in the DEC's Day in the Life of the Hudson River.  Middle schoolers have started something new - The Nature Patchwork Project, observing an area of the school's property for a year, and creating detailed nature observation journals that they will publish to Pinterest as a way to share their findings publicly.

Thomas Friedman in a September Op-ed We Are All Noah Now urges our generation  - and our children's  - to be the "Noah generation" - charged with saving the earth and its species from extinction.  To care about nature, children need to be immersed in nature and be environmentally literate.  In today's tech-focused world, that's not so easy.

How lucky are we that Parker is at the cutting edge of pedagogy in a unique learning environment, where the outdoors is a classroom and a teacher both?!

Time to catch a frog

It's a whirlwind at the end of the school year.  Now as the perfect blue of the June sky beckons, it's time to go out and catch a frog.

There is something about the rhythm and pattern of our school lives that leads to a winding up at the end of the year - and then an inevitable winding down.  Could it be that Shows of Work, field trips, launching a student-made boat on the pond, graduation speeches, our 25th Anniversary Celebration, a ground-breaking ceremony, the Board of Trustees annual retreat...et al...leave us craving the relative simplicity of summer?  Would we feel such a sense of accomplishment and the sweet pleasure of an iced tea on the patio if the ending of the year were not so frenetic?!

On the radio the other day, I heard a song I fondly remember from childhood and our family's seemingly endless seven-hour drive to the beach every summer.  Now I'm dating myself -  it was Nat King Cole's Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer.  That song just sounds like summer to me.

I think that "lazy" is the key word.  It is great to be lazy in the summer - and it can be the impetus for flights of crazy imagination.  Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of Broadway's Hamilton expresses it beautifully in this interview in GQ about how the key to parenting might be less parenting.   He recalls a car ride as a kid where a friend entertained himself with a stick - just a stick - for three hours.

At Planet Parker camp, kids are often down at the pond catching frogs - and they develop a whole fantasy about even that.  "This frog can't afford us," I heard one girl say.  What funny story about frogs lead to that idea?!

So, it's officially summer - grab a soda, some pretzels and a beer - or a frog - and enjoy some lazy days.  You've earned it!

Magical learning

Finding living treasures in the woods.

Testing for air and water temperature in a study of
human and weather impact on water systems.

Observational drawing at the pond.

At a school where being outside is the cornerstone of learning and a daily expectation, where kids eat lunch at picnic tables, have 2 daily recesses, go to the pond or a stream for science class, wander the meadows or gardens for observation, inspiration and contemplation - the passion for learning is palpable.  We are so lucky!

It's just no big thing, that during Friday Muddy Boots Club kids will get dirty and wet while building dams.  Or that climbing around on a ropes course in the woods is a gym class activity.  Or that iPads will be used for documenting pond life in preparation for video nature-news presentations.

We take it for granted that schooling at Parker will bring transformative connections with nature, push students into zones of challenge, and bring them insights and purpose.  It's not a big secret, what we are doing.  It is completely intentional. The practice of getting outside all the time makes it seem commonplace to us.  It has become ingrained in the way we function.  That is actually kind of magical, given the conversations around the purpose and practice of education in today's world.

Testing what colors honey bees are attracted to.

Getting kids to sit still

I love the things that neuroscience re-teaches us.  In this great article called The right- and surprisingly wrong - ways to get children to sit still in class we learn that the ways at Parker that we get children to "sit still" are supported by science.

We have lots of recess every day.  It's outside, unless it's raining.  Kids roll down hills, explore in the woods, and are determined to master the monkey bars.  (As it turns out, running around, rolling down hills, and hanging upside down are essential activities for stimulating the inner ear - leading to development of balance.)

There's Muddy Boots Club, too, and sled-riding in winter.  We have 2,000 Steps for middle school - a time in the morning for walking and talking - recess, and an outdoor "brain break" every afternoon.

Founder of TimberNook, a nature-based development program, Angela Hanscom says, "All (that's) needed is time and practice to play with peers in the woods – in order to foster emotional, physical, and social development."

It is interesting that the things that children do naturally - rolling down hills, building giant block structures, or lying upside down on the furniture - are almost absent in traditional school settings.  By giving children time to do what they love, they can much better do what we adults need them to do (for at least a little part of the day) - sit still.

School is a lot like summer camp

When children are interested in learning for learning's sake, you know something is going right in their schooling.  Rewarding students for taking intellectual risks helps them develop a mastery mindset, where motivation and engagement are high, and performance anxiety is low.  Kind of like summer camp.

This article in Mind Shift, What Schools Can Learn from Summer Camps hits the mark on something I like to think about: how at Parker we try to make school a lot like camp.  Camp is fun and spirited.  Kids pick things they are interested in: rockets, outdoor survival, LEGO robotics, cool chemistry, or cartooning to name just a few.  They sing together and play in the woods.  They bond with friends and counselors.  They love camp!

At its best, school is like that, too.  Exciting and interesting - a place where you can take on something you're not sure you can do.  Friendships are forged in the throes of shared experiences, working out conflicts, and when teams figure out how to work together.  Students find out that taking a risk has huge rewards, whether they are successful or not.

At Parker, we are so fortunate that the natural elements are in place: the creeks and woods, the pond and meadows.  We have developed a program that turns those features into benefits: capitalizing on the natural world to help children develop their tolerance for risk-taking, life-long curiosity and the courage and confidence to explore.

Kids need adventure

All right - we won't go quite as far as creating The Land as described in The Atlantic's article The Overprotected Kid.  But our Planet Parker Summer Program has elements of crazy - and that's why kids love it.  The new brochure is here.  Sign your kids up today for some old fashioned adventures!

 

Planet Parker

Due to a bit of technical difficulty we couldn't show this little slide show during the Planet Parker coffee this morning.  Here it is in all its glory!  Click on the link at the bottom for a full view.



Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app

Citizen science at work

This was our fifth year collecting data on the Hudson River for Snapshot Day.  All the information goes to Lamont Dougherty Earth Observatory at Columbia for analysis in this DEC project involving over 70 schools from the Troy Dam to Manhattan.  The 2-3's and 6-7's take their responsibilities seriously as they measure turbidity, pH, salinity, water and tide flow, and collect sediment samples, micro-invertebrates, and other measurements of river health. 

They get the thrill of being in the field and tracking this majestic river's health over time, monitoring the effects of human and weather activity.  Citizen scientist experiences like this lend purpose and passion to the learning for Parker kids - highly motivating!

The 77 acre classroom

There is probably nothing at school that is cooler than going outside to find new things on a beautiful day.  How lucky we are that such beauty is in our backyard!

Breaking the mold

On Friday I was witness to a wild game of Spartans vs Romans as kids ran through the woods between two gigantic fallen trees with spear-like sticks in hand.  "We are the Spartans and we are on the attack!"  A fleet of running children streamed into the Roman's tree when suddenly the cry rang out "Retreat!"

The utter joy and the crazy and spontaneous changes in the direction of runners, abandoned stand-offs, and altering fortunes of both sides made for thrilling viewing.  It reminded me of days in the (distant) past when I was a kid racing through backyards with abandon in the ever evolving games of a neighborhood throng.

In reading this article in MindShift, Breaking the Mold: School Fosters Design and Discovery I remembered what I love at Parker: the freedom to make school be about discovery, excitement and fun.  These past weeks at camp, kids have built shelters, gone tearing through the woods in "Capture the Chicken", labored through many iterations of design and programming to make a LEGO robotic dog's tail wag, and designed troll huts and fairy houses by the creek.  Everyone's imagination is sparked and everyone is participating and pushing themselves in some way.

The school year has more structure for sure, but the elements of choice within a theme and freedom within the structure remain.  Learning is richly full of questioning and imagination, with skill-building layered within to give students the tools to explore further.  Learning has a distinct purpose.

Education speaker Will Richardson says "We don't need schools to be better, we need schools to be really, really different."  Camp is a great model for how different  - and how exciting - learning can be.

The un-classroom

The Best Science Classrooms Aren't Classrooms says John Spencer in education rethink.  This week at camp, kids will be out collecting pollinators, exploring the fields and woods and following Parker's honey bees.  The spark of curiosity comes easily when kids are guided in inquiry in the great outdoors - right here in our 77 acre classroom.

Advocacy on Earth Day

For Earth Day, Parker kids learned that Monarch butterfly habitat is disappearing all across the migration path.  Buddies got together to write letters to Congressman Tonko, Senator Gillibrand, President Obama, and Grandpa Herating (a farmer in Mexico) to advocate for habitat protection. They are planting a butterfly garden with milkweed and other Monarch favorites that will become a certified butterfly way station.  You can learn more at Monarch Watch.

My favorite letter started: "Dear Butterflies, We are making you a lovely garden.  We hope you like it!"

The nature cure

"Take two hours of pine forest and call me in the morning..." The Nature Cure by Gretchen Reynolds in Outside Magazine, tells about the latest brain research on the benefits of being outdoors in nature.  Seems that even five minutes of time in the woods increases attention and short term memory, and decreases heart rate.  In Japan they even schedule "forest baths" as a restorative - like sun-bathing. Just smelling pine scent has a positive effect on the human system! 

Scheduling time to be outside - daily recess, Muddy Boots Club, science classes and other times in the woods  - is making a difference, I believe, for Parker kids.  The children express how much they love it and the teachers do, too.  It certainly seems to add to their ability to concentrate and handle the regular stressors of childhood - and it mitigates the screen time that has increasingly crept into our lives.  It's nice when brain science backs up what we instinctively know is the right thing!

Clean water advocacy

Amazing day on the river collecting water and weather data for Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory and the DEC.  Thank you to the many parents who helped out, too!  This year we found many fish - even the rare-to-spot striped sea bass, spawned last spring.  Click here for more about Hudson River Snapshot Day.

Learning how to learn

 

Follow me as I walk with the K-1 science class out looking for frogs.  Into the woods and along the sun dappled trail through Fort Ham to the West creek.  Look!  Something hopped!  We found frogs!  We also stood still to see and hear two woodpeckers and several chickadees.  Now we head back to school making very realistic frog sounds the whole way.  We gather in our circle to read a book about what we have just seen.  And then we write and draw about it.

This is active learning at its best.  Valerie Strauss in her Washington Post article Is Technology Sapping Children's Creativity? says: Kids need first-hand engagement — they need to manipulate objects physically, engage all their senses, and move and interact with the 3-dimensional world. This is what maximizes their learning and brain development.

Now you can follow me as I visit the Pre K 4 class.  They just made blueberry muffins.  Yum. Perfect timing!