Free to Learn and Play

Last week I discovered “The Independent Project,” and it has been consuming my thoughts ever since. I’ll let you watch the video for yourself, but in case you choose not to, I’ll summarize. Students at a high school in Massachusetts wanted to play a larger role in their education and so they created a semester-long self-directed study program. Each week began with a topical question and the students spent the week delving into the issues that interested them presenting what they learned to the group each Friday. They also tackled a larger independent pursuit as well as a group service project based on the needs and problems within their community. Since my time in the Interdisciplinary Master’s of Education program at the University of Vermont, formatted as self-directed study, I have been an advocate for this kind of education. I have practically been jumping out of my skin with excitement since I came across this video last week. The potential this project has to transform education is so enormous that I couldn’t not share it with you.

My work here with K is fully emergent, and though my work at Bella Mente was supposed to be, I was still learning how to employ the idea and struggled to fully understand it while at the same time negotiating the needs of the 18 children in our classroom. My curriculum with K emerges based on her developmental needs and personal interests and I’m finding that with only one child to focus on, I am gaining the mastery over this method that I previously lacked. I hardly do any advanced planning these days, except when it comes to the resource development projects I do during my independent work time here on the farm. While my project time has greatly increased from my days at the preschool, I use it in a very different way. I used to think of planning time by looking ahead, trying to guess at what the kids might take an interest in to keep us moving forward. Now, I use this time to reflect on what K is already working on and how I can add more depth to her play in the areas she shows me she is interested in developing.

Instead of trying to get her interested in the activities I came up with, as I used to, I now let her take the lead completely and play right along with her, taking mental notes on what materials and activities she likes best and how she prefers to develop her skills. During my planning time, I reflect on how we spent our time together and develop new resources and ideas for her to further develop the skills she had been working on. The chalkboard table I painted for K a few weeks ago was a project born out of her desire to draw directly on her nicely finished wood art table. She showed me her need, to stretch and develop her fine motor skills and artistry without the limits of just crayon and paper. I found a way to meet the needs she was communicating through her action without forbidding her from engaging in a behavior that has both developmental benefits and brings her great pleasure. She now uses the chalk table every single day and has since stopped coloring on her other art table, the one she knows she’s not supposed to draw on. It's a win-win. 

When K was struggling with her desire to pull the tomatillos prematurely from the plant, I brought her over to the pigeon pea bush where it didn’t matter how many peas she plucked, allowing her to productively exercise her fine motor skills and her desire to pinch, pluck, peel, squeeze, manipulate, and eventually eat a green vegetable all on her own. A week later we revisited the tomatillos and successfully filled a bucket with only the ripe and ready-to-be-picked fruit. She just wanted practice manipulating smaller objects and to her it didn’t matter that they were not ripe, she saw me preventing her from practicing a skill she felt was important. In this way, K shows me her needs and I make it my job to figure out the most fun and productive way for her to work on her preferred skills safely and within our set boundaries.

This is how our curriculum emerges; we are partners in its creation. K leads the way and I follow with observations, options and challenges to help her develop the skills that she has determined, consciously or not, that she is interested in working on. K is a very sensory-driven learner. The activities that appeal most to her are the ones that involve manipulating objects with her hands, putting things in her mouth, testing smells, listening to the sounds around her, and repeating what she hears. I know this about K because in order to develop our emergent curriculum, I have to constantly observe and reflect. I watch to see what she is drawn to, what catches and holds her attention, how she goes about gathering information, and what methods she most easily uses to successfully solve problems. I notice this about K not just because of my background in personality studies, but because following an emergent curriculum requires me to do so, though understanding the functions of personality according Myers-Briggs makes my job markedly easier. 

Click here for the source of this chart and check out The Myers Brigg Foundation to learn more

If I was pre-planning activities and materials for K, deciding without her what she should learn, then teaching it to her, I would spend so much time talking that I would likely never pick up on all of the nuances of her personality and learning style. We would both likely end up significantly more frustrated and with a far more strained relationship, devoid of much of the fun we have together. Clearly lecture style education is not appropriate for a nearly two year old, but K is a hands-on experience driven learner, lecture is never going to be the most successful way to hold her attention or interest, regardless of age. Through our play together, K expertly guides me toward a curriculum that meets her needs, and keeps her both happy and engaged. She is constantly learning and developing her skills at an optimal pace, making sure she gets the very most out of every experience. If she is capable of doing this before she is even two years old, why would this capacity diminish as she hits elementary school, middle school, high school and beyond?

Kohn's a critical voice in education reform

America’s public education system does not view children as capable or responsible enough to play an active role in what and how they learn. Rather, they are viewed as empty vessels waiting for adults to pour in whatever information they see fit. This model has little regard for students’ interests, personalities, and learning styles, let alone the problems that are most relevant in their communities. We know that all children are unique, we tell them all the time in an attempt to raise self-esteem, yet we contradict ourselves by forcing them to conform to a model of learning that was designed to produce obedient, faceless factory workers who all think and act alike. Sure, this form of standardized education makes it easier to test and rate our children but that doesn’t mean it measures the most important things. I was a terrible test taker; judged by my scores alone you would never know the extent of my skills, knowledge, motivation and love of learning. All standardization has done for our students (and thus our society as a whole) is to teach kids that school is boring and irrelevant, while at the same time making skilled teachers hate their jobs and burn out at alarming rates. How is this helpful?

I have often heard worried and skeptical parents wonder “given the choice, wouldn’t most students pick nothing but recess and snack?” I’ve worked with plenty of “difficult” kids who spend their free time reading books, tending a garden, or memorizing the names and favorite foods of every dinosaur that ever existed. These kids do this because all human beings have an innate desire to learn. So what quashes this quality that helped human beings evolve from apes into who we are today? There are likely many reasons for this but I’m willing to bet that students’ lack of a voice in the process of learning is at or near the top of the list. Students often stop or ignore the pursuit of their natural interests because our current model of education forces them to. Some students give up and suffer through school only to get out and have no idea what they are good at or even interested in. Other times students give up on school entirely, believing it irrelevant and pursue their interests anyway, but without the diplomas they usually end up just as disadvantaged.

I love the Reggio Approach because rather than a “teaching to” style of education, it embraces the ideas of “learning with,” which to me makes so much more sense. An emergent curriculum, which is essentially the precursor of the self-directed study detailed in The Independent Project, invites students to play and active rather than passive role in their education so they develop an inborn love of learning. If students are able to continue in this way, they will never reach the point of mental exhaustion and boredom that leads to recess being the only time they get to have fun at school. Following most current public school curricula, recess is one of the few times during the day when students have complete control over how they spend their time. Instead of seeing their learning as fun, it becomes something they need to escape from. In this approach, recess is the reward for suffering through something that is not enjoyable, perpetuating the myth that learning is in opposition to fun.

K worked at it all week and can now lift herself up on the swing!

In an emergent curriculum, play is acknowledged not only as a necessary component of learning, but the primary means for understanding the world. Interest is what motivates human beings to keep learning and honing our skills. Whether it’s Einstein playing with the ideas of physics to postulate the Theory of Relativity, or Gillian Lynne playing with the movements of her body that led to the choreography of the Broadway classic Cats, play is a crucial part of the process. When I am with K, I let her show me how she likes to play and from there we build our curriculum together. Right now she is most interested in learning to master her physical skills so we spend our time together climbing, swinging, jumping, stretching, and manipulating all kinds of materials in all kinds of new ways. After she has worked her body as much as it can handle, she tells me so and we shift gears. K is also interested in expanding her vocabulary and learning the power of her own voice so we read, sing, talk, rhyme, count, shout and write together. At some point each day K gets hungry and asks me for some blueberries, her current favorite, so we stop for a snack before heading back out for more play. Through our emergent curriculum, K is challenging herself every day and surprising both of us with her rapidly increasing capability.

If a student as young and fiercely independent as K is already capable self-directed study, it seems crazy to me that post-preschool students not be afforded the same right to have a say in what and how they learn. After all, aren’t we each an expert when it comes to ourselves? No one knows better than I do that I learn best when information comes in the form of a story. Though I struggled through and never enjoyed math and science in school, I have picked up countless biology and agriculture lessons from the farm narratives I love to read, and I got my only A in a math class when my high school geometry teacher started each lesson with the story of the philosopher who postulated the theory in question. When framed in a compelling narrative, I could learn almost anything and do so willingly all the time. But K prefers to experience things first-hand, trusting her own senses to teach her about how the world works, her imagination is not the effective learning tool that it always has been for me. We see and interact with the world differently.

An emergent curriculum leaves room for both K and I to learn in the way that is most effective for each of us, while at the same time allowing us to see the world through one another’s eyes. This approach to teaching and learning does not require a separate curriculum for each student, rather it invites all kinds of learners to come together, share ideas, experiences, questions, and perspectives to create a more complete understanding of each topic. In the Independent Project, students pursued the aspects of a problem or topic that most interested them and studied it for the week with the goal of sharing what they learned in a way that would engage and interest their fellow students. Each student walked away from the week with a general knowledge of whatever subject was being explored as well as a deeper understanding of one piece of the puzzle. Isn’t this the very same outcome most teachers hope for when they design their curriculum? The only difference is that in a self-directed study, the students do the design work. This frees teachers to engage and connect with their students, listen to their ideas and ask thought provoking questions, and offer the individual support that every teacher wants to provide but simply doesn’t have the time or energy to give.

More resources like this on my Pinterest page

I can’t speak for all teachers, but for me, and many teachers I have worked with, the passion to teach comes from a love of learning and sharing information with others so that we all can realize our true potential. An emergent curriculum is equally more enjoyable for me as it has been for those I have had the privilege of teaching. I have learned more about math and science and art and literacy from engaging in study alongside my students than I could have imagined and I loved the learning process more than I ever did when I was the student being taught at in grade school. My enthusiasm for learning does not go unnoticed by my students, either. When they see me so genuinely engaged in how the diet of a chicken effects the hue and nutritional content of its eggs yolks, that information gets planted deeper in their memories and leaves them wondering what else might be effected in a similar way, or even just about cause and effect in general. The intense passion I model in the process of engaging with them on a subject that deeply interests me shows them the joy in learning new things and seeking out knowledge. This desire to learn and the know-how to make it happen are the most important things I, or any teacher, could possibly hope to pass on to the next generation and this is the foundation of what I hope to teach K in the short time I am here with her.